G-Rebels Is a Sci-Fi Flight Combat Game Where You Feel Like You’re Flying a Nissan Versa

Now, vehicle-oriented video games have to satisfy a very particular requirement to succeed: the car needs to be enjoyable to pilot via the environments supplied. And that’s the place the issues start for G-Rebels: flying round is extra usually a chore than a thrill. Generally, 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 anyplace. However in contrast to a actual chopper, there’s no fixed dance of arms and ft needed on the a part of the pilot to maintain issues secure more often than not. Solely cornering or altering altitude quickly places a lot pressure on the pilot. As a substitute, your Skyblade effortlessly hovers, scoots, and strafes up, down, and facet to facet like some flying first-person shooter avatar. In the event you’ve ever performed the traditional FPS Descent, issues will really feel eerily acquainted.

But it takes a very long time to get a actual cling of the X-Kind Skyblade, weirdly as a result of it’s such a forgiving car. In comparison with 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 little thing feels weirdly underpowered. Your Skyblade has the dealing with traits of a sci-fi Nissan Versa: sluggish, 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 pace, although I nonetheless felt like I used to be merely updating my flying sedan into a flying minivan. In the long run, the issue with G-Rebels is that whereas the car model matches the Blade Runner aesthetic, the controls and capabilities are a unhealthy match for the near-constant canyon flying. Extra consideration must be given to proximity warnings and spatial consciousness, a downside compounded by the mission design. The marketing campaign is kind of merely front-loaded with escort duties and timed waypoint challenges, anachronistic designs that sap a lot of the richness from the setting.

G-Rebels takes place above a flooded world the place skyscrapers rise from artificial islands and inhabit the slim house between thundering waves and near-persistent clouds. Inside that house hover different Skyblades – some benign, others piloted by nefarious foes. Mission design is fairly simple: go to waypoints, go searching, discover targets, and blow them up with out dying your self.

There’s a story, a plot, characters and such, however not a lot that I cared about. Voice appearing was hammily scripted and badly delivered, and the tones of different pilots had a soulless ring to them that led me to consider they have been seemingly 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 declaring 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 time and again in a pretty graceless car that I’m simply studying to fly is a good gameplay expertise is past me.

What doesn’t disappoint is the gunplay, which appears like one of many most-realized facets of G-Rebels. Followers of flight sims and arcade flight shooters are going to be fairly accustomed to 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. Each are thoughtfully designed. I discovered that following my mind’s now near-instinctual flight-sim programming labored very effectively. Barely main turning targets at shut vary often led to stable hits. and adjusting my lead at distance labored simply because it ought to. The missiles have been potent, however the weapons have 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 perform. 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 shortly present the data a pilot may want when flying an antigravity tank between tall buildings in a thunderstorm.

You do not get a lot of the traditional dogtails and power ways you’d count on from a flight recreation set inside a planetary environment. Gravity actually isn’t a lot of a issue, 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. Normally, taking pictures first and quickest is the very best assure of victory.

The town 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, respiratory world.

G-Rebels may grow to be one thing actually entertaining, however proper now it is nonetheless very a lot a work in progress. It’s cool, nevertheless it’s not but persistently enjoyable. Missions and plane dealing with design have a lengthy solution to go earlier than it hits that. You can see the potential for one thing satisfying, however the elements haven’t fairly come collectively but 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 workforce has time to refine its ambitions and create the carefully-tuned flight fight expertise they’re so clearly lovingly laboring to appreciate.

Jared Petty is a former IGN editor who likes writing about how fantastic and foolish video video games are. You can discover him at Bluesky as Bluesky as pettycommajared.