I’ve been patrolling the skies and capturing down hostile plane in flight sims because the Nineteen Eighties, all the best way again to blazing away at single inexperienced pixels within the unique Sublogic Flight Simulator for Apple II. Since then, I’ve whipped the Kilrathi aboard the Tiger Claw, crushed the Rebellion in TIE Fighter, gunned down the Red Baron in, effectively, The Red Baron, and buzzed my very own condo in Microsoft Flight Simulator. So I used to be fairly tickled by the chance to spend a number of hours with G-Rebels, an in-development sport that mixes a number of issues I dearly love: aviation, Blade Runner, and open-ended approaches to gameplay. This amalgam of design influences produces one thing that’s curious, formidable, and dripping with potential, however which I’m undecided has but been tuned sufficient to search out its footing.
G-Rebels is about after a local weather catastrophe wipes out a lot of the world. You’re now a member of one in all many factions piloting armed plane referred to as Skyblades between the skyscrapers of what seems to be off-brand Blade Runner LA. You search the air for enemies, traffickers, and rogue replicants. Yes, they’re truly referred to as replicants… I’m no professional on copyright regulation so don’t ask me how.
Now, vehicle-oriented video games have to satisfy a really particular requirement to succeed: the car needs to be enjoyable to pilot by the environments supplied. And that’s the place the issues start for G-Rebels: flying round is extra usually a chore than a thrill. Sometimes, it’s even a bore.
G-Rebels refers to your Skyblade as a glider, however that description isn’t actually correct. Its closest real-world analog is a helicopter, as you’ve gotten the flexibility to hover in place virtually wherever. But in contrast to an actual chopper, there’s no fixed dance of fingers and toes mandatory on the a part of the pilot to maintain issues steady more often than not. Only cornering or altering altitude quickly places a lot pressure on the pilot. Instead, your Skyblade effortlessly hovers, scoots, and strafes up, down, and aspect to aspect like some flying first-person shooter avatar. If you’ve ever performed the traditional FPS Descent, issues will really feel eerily acquainted.
Yet it takes a very long time to get an actual grasp of the X-Type Skyblade, weirdly as a result of it’s such a forgiving car. Compared to a flight sim and even an arcade shooter like Star Wars Squadrons, there’s little or no sense of momentum or gravity at work. You can cease and shift your velocity from ahead to straight upward in a second, however every thing feels weirdly underpowered. Your Skyblade has the dealing with traits of a sci-fi Nissan Versa: gradual, dependable, predictable, anemic, and totally boring. I already drive a Nissan Versa in actual life, and I don’t want to hold its regular, value-conscious banality into my fantasy worlds.
Upgrades assist considerably, particularly in regard to the punch of your weapons and your straight line velocity, although I nonetheless felt like I used to be merely updating my flying sedan right into a flying minivan. In the top, the issue with G-Rebels is that whereas the car type suits the Blade Runner aesthetic, the controls and capabilities are a nasty match for the near-constant canyon flying. More consideration must be given to proximity warnings and spatial consciousness, an issue compounded by the mission design. The marketing campaign is sort of merely front-loaded with escort duties and timed waypoint challenges, anachronistic designs that sap a lot of the richness from the atmosphere.
G-Rebels takes place above a flooded world the place skyscrapers rise from artificial islands and inhabit the slim area between thundering waves and near-persistent clouds. Within that area hover different Skyblades – some benign, others piloted by nefarious foes. Mission design is fairly easy: go to waypoints, go searching, discover targets, and blow them up with out dying your self.
There’s a narrative, a plot, characters and such, however not loads that I cared about. Voice performing was hammily scripted and badly delivered, and the tones of different pilots had a soulless ring to them that led me to consider they had been doubtless AI generated… which a have a look at the Steam web page appeared to substantiate. That’s deeply disappointing.
I shouldn’t go a lot additional speaking about G-Rebels with out mentioning its best sin: the presence of tightly-timed waypoint-to-waypoint-to-waypoint dashes. I assumed that we as a species had collectively agreed to discontinue these horrible sections in video games after Superman 64, however apparently G-Rebels’s builders disagreed. Why anybody thinks sprinting to 5 waypoints again and again in a reasonably graceless car that I’m simply studying to fly is an efficient gameplay expertise is past me.
What doesn’t disappoint is the gunplay, which looks like one of many most-realized facets of G-Rebels. Fans of flight sims and arcade flight shooters are going to be fairly aware of the bottom modes obtainable: a brief vary gun mode helpful for dogfighting, and a for much longer vary guided missile system able to hitting targets from huge distances with an digital lock-on. Both are thoughtfully designed. I discovered that following my mind’s now near-instinctual flight-sim programming labored very effectively. Slightly main turning targets at shut vary often resulted in strong hits. and adjusting my lead at distance labored simply because it ought to. The missiles had been potent, however the weapons had been a lot enjoyable I largely caught to them, poking out and in from behind the megalithic buildings to snipe.
Your management panels and HUD are a triumph of type over operate. Dashboard screens could make the relative positions and altitudes complicated, and appear to alternate between offering too little or an excessive amount of data. Instrumentation feels prefer it was designed extra to create fairly preview captures than to rapidly present the data a pilot may want when flying an antigravity tank between tall buildings in a thunderstorm.
You do not get numerous the traditional dogtails and vitality techniques you’d count on from a flight sport set inside a planetary ambiance. Gravity actually isn’t a lot of an element, so dogfights are much less chases and jousts than shootouts between flying tanks. There are methods to be taught and make use of, however most of what you’ve learnt in different flying video games doesn’t actually apply right here. Usually, capturing first and quickest is the perfect assure of victory.
The metropolis itself has potential, however in its current type largely fails to ship something particularly attribute. The buildings are decently-rendered sufficient, however little or no of what you see actually feels distinct, a lot much less lived-in or actual. It feels extra like a set or a stage made for a online game than any actual residing, respiration world.
G-Rebels may turn into one thing actually entertaining, however proper now it is nonetheless very a lot a piece in progress. It’s cool, but it surely’s not but constantly enjoyable. Missions and plane dealing with design have an extended solution to go earlier than it hits that. You can see the potential for one thing fulfilling, however the components haven’t fairly come collectively but right into a compelling system. I haven’t but seen an official launch date for G-Rebels, however I’m hoping it’s far sufficient out that the group has time to refine its ambitions and create the carefully-tuned flight fight expertise they’re so clearly lovingly laboring to understand.
Jared Petty is a former IGN editor who likes writing about how great and foolish video video games are. You can discover him at Bluesky as Bluesky as pettycommajared.
