Have you ever wanted to travel through space at thousands of miles per hour? Have you ever wanted to come face to face with extra-terrestrial command-like characters? Do you like good old dogfight-style games in space? Well, Rebel Galaxy has made the switch from the PC, onto the consoles, but has it been a good one? Yes, and no.
Rebel Galaxy was released to PC gamers via the Steam network back in October, where it has been given a very positive and fantastic experience by gamers, and reviewers alike, leading it to acclaim and one of the quickest downloaded games in Steam history. Recently, it has just made the switch to next-gen consoles. Described as a “swashbuckling space adventure” you have the opportunity to decide which is the route for you. Will you be a character that delves straight into the main story missions? Or will you side-track and go into a route of trading, mining and bounty hunting?
You will build up your inventory, and build up your ship to stand against some of other pirates (so they are called within the game) who are trying to rob you of your loot, while trying to go and investigate and pulse out areas within space, and trying to add even more tradesmen material to your collection. You`ll upgrade for more powerful shielding and guns to withstand the attacks, and even being able to command a AI to do the work for you, using their precision shooting skills to make sure that no-one stands in your way.
From early on, you`ll cruise around in your ship, travelling to several locations for missions, and then from then, is when the ability to get completely lost at space comes into play. You could be warping through space when you suddenly get a radio distress call from another ship, that needs your help. Do you ignore them, make them fight it out for their own back? Or do you stray away from your objective to be the hero? You`ll be the one that makes the decision for that. I, personally am always one to try and get on with the main story, as I find myself that when I stray away from the storyline missions, I then find it very difficult to get back into them. I`ll always attempt to do the main missions first, and then once that`s been done, come back to the side missions and part with them.
Now, as you can imagine, and I`m sure you remember in those astronomical lessons all those years back, Space is massive, but with very little actually around the atmosphere, where Gravity doesn’t see. You find yourself travelling around for ages to get from point A to B, and thankfully, the warp feature (the ability to kick your ship into overdrive and speed off at a very quick pace) will cut down a lot of the time, but even still, you`ll find yourself travelling more from point A to B, rather than actually playing the missions. You have the ability to boost (quick burst for a short amount of time) and this is beneficial, especially when you are caught in a dog-fight between pirates who want to try and put an end to your quest, or who just want to steal your loot.
Onto the combat system, and I have to be honest, it`s one that took a while to get your head around. Not so much for that, but it takes an awfully long time at the beginning of the game, to power up your ship to be able to take on some of the larger ones. Even with a AI behind your back, you struggle up against some of the powerful ships. Now, of course I expect fully within a game that you`re going to have to upgrade, and fully utilise your ships weapons and machinery before you can be the dominant force in space, but it was the fact that every time you went to an objective point, they could spawn anyone, and then you`d be involved in a fight that you didn’t necessarily want to be involved in. But, you`ll utilize your trigger buttons on your controller, one for precision aiming, and the right trigger, that we all know for being that button to fire.
Graphically and soundtrack wise, it offers a good sense and mix of both. Sound it focuses on rock genre, and offers a memorable soundtrack throughout, which actually quite worked with the game. Graphically, it`s talked about as being one of the only games to be able to run at 1080p on Xbox One, which is impressive seeing that some of the main-stream games are unable to hit that. It also runs at 30fps which compared to other consoles, is a good frame rate, and I never noticed it drop below that, which is good, because no-one wants to play a game that drops it`s frame rates every 5 minutes.
Rebel Galaxy will be a huge hit for fans who are of the space-adventure games, with a good story, good graphics, and lots to get involved with and to do, to keep you occupied long after you start playing.
A huge thank you to XCN for suppying us with a Review copy.
