Iron Brigade has just brilliant production values for a downloadable title. For the most part, it looks as good as many boxed titles, with excellent animation, graphics, art design, and some fun little quirks in there, such as the victory animations, and the fact you can run round the ship which serves as base, lobby and shop in one saluting those on deck.

 

 

The voice acting is particularly well delivered in Double Fine fashion, with a collection of incredibly over-the-top Russian and American accents that really add to the general charm of the game. It’s not ever laugh-out-loud funny, but I certainly chuckled through quite a portion of the dialogue.

 

 

Multiplayer is really key to Trenched’s/ Iron Brigade’s core gameplay. As noted, the game is really tough by yourself. However, with 3 others by your side, it’s more than manageable. This is because the difficulty doesn’t scale dependant on the number of players. In fact, later levels are pretty much unplayable without assistance.

 

 

Trenched supports 4-player co-op, but I found the game to take a long time over matchmaking, then suffer from frequent lag, player disconnects and general gripes which should have been sorted given the fact the game has been out in North America some 6 months. When you get a good game, it’s really, really good, but these were few and far between in my experience.

 

 

"Iron Brigade" may be 6 months old (released as Trenched in the US), but it’s still well worth a purchase for Europeans who have been waiting for so long. The game still looks and plays well, and although it is best enjoyed online, even solo it offers a good, enjoyable chunk of content for a decent enough price. I doubt it will get further patches, but if the multiplayer worked perfectly, this would really be a must buy.

 

 

 

 

 

+ Looks and sounds great