Rebelstar. Rebelstar... where have I heard that name before? Turns out, long, long ago, I failed to emulate Rebelstar for this very 1001 list. I was apparently really rather interested in seeing X-Com on a ZX Spectrum and was saddened by not being able to play it.
I've still not gone back and tried to get it going again, but maybe now that Rebelstar: Tactical Command is making itself known on the Game Boy Advance, I'll be more inspired to try getting Rebelstar going again.
Wait. The Game Boy Advance? There's an X-Com on the GBA?
Frustrations
Yes, indeed there is. Rebelstar: Tactical Command is the fourth game of the Rebelstar series, bringing its turn-based suicide squad simulator into your hands. It sounds like a great fit. Tactics, skirmishes, gameplay split into chunks... bite-sized battling on the go. I should be looking forward to this. And yet...
The game starts immediately with these still images. They're not awful, but they're also not my cup of tea, either. I'm not familiar with the storyline of the Rebelstar series, and if this even continues on from the previous title, but the gist of it is this: aliens of some kind abduct people on their thirtieth birthday after tracking them down via microchips implanted into their heads.
Ok, well, not every game has to have a stellar plot to succeed. It's all about the gameplay, right? That's the important bit. Let's get passed this waffle and into the gameplay.
We play as Jorel, the new kid on the block, orphaned on account of his parents turning thirty. Now a member of some kind of resistance force, we're put through some drills to get us up to speed on alien hunting.
All you need to do is imagine a game like X-Com ported to the GBA. Each character has a set number of action points which can be spent on moving, shooting, and the like, all in an attempt to rid the map of threats.
With just two buttons, everything is OK'd with the A-Button and backed out of with the B-button, so it's a slow and steady isometric affair as you select yourself, your action, the square on the map you wish to target for whatever reason... it is the definition of turn-based.
And it's the definition of awkward. To move the camera you need to move the cursor towards the edges of the screen, but the D-pad is at a different angle to the isometric grid, so pushing up correlates to up and right. It's hardly a game-breaking issue, having to mentally rotate your D-pad until it makes sense, but it is annoying.
The physical act of shooting something is dead simple, though. Select how you want to shoot, based on percentages that are no doubt complete lies, select the target you wish you shoot, then watch oversized rounds travel at a snail's pace into - or wildly stray of - the target.
For any fans of animation, avoid this like the plague. I've seen better flipbooks.
Oi.
Working our way around the small map, we level up but are told there's no real point in upgrading anything but our rifle skill, so why even give us the choice, and we complete our training mission with an 'Advanced' ranking, whatever that means.
It's not time for this story to get going.
Oh, it's awful. Jorel has two expressions, and rarely uses the second. The old guy whose name escapes me doesn't emote either, so Tactical Command doesn't give you much to look at. As for what it gives you to read, well. Let's just say I don't care for it, and it's not engaging with me.
Will new characters shake things up and persuade me to stick around?
Nooo, God! No, God, please, no! No! No! Noooooo!
So the characters aren't interesting, the art style isn't appealing, the plot is awful, and the gameplay is a little fiddly, but otherwise is technically there and working. In the next training mission, we learn about facing and line of sight and the like, proving that Rebelstar: Tactical Command does have a sizable amount of stuff going on under the hood.
But something is bugging me about that hood. The way it looks. It's reminding me of something, and I can't place it.
No, I can place it. It's Habbo Hotel. I look like I've come straight out of that awful place into a world infested with aliens. Ugh, and now I can't unsee it.
I'm close to abandoning this game. I'm just not feeling any of it. The gameplay might be great in terms of what it manages to do on the GBA, but the lick of paint slapped on the top is just not doing it for me, and the storyline to string us along is about to try and fail to keep to here.
I am outta here. Thankfully, I'm over thirty now, so I've already been claimed and turned into liquid food or whatever, I don't know. I just know that I don't have to go through this mess.
Final Word
Those who can get past its flaws can be rewarded, so we're told. There have to be better rewards from other games, surely? Is the only reason for Rebelstar: Tactical Command's inclusion because it was nearly two decades since the last game, and was Julian Gollops' last of the genre?
Maybe there is a good game here. I read there's a difficult one here, though what would the genre be without ridiculous difficulty? But because there is so much getting in the way of it, I don't want to have to put the work in to find out.
To be fair, I do think there is a skirmish mode that you can play and ignore the story by doing so. Maybe that can give Rebelstar: Tactical Command a second chance. I doubt it, though. I think it's more likely for me to go all the way back to the ZX Spectrum and be amazed by that than it is to be amazed by the GBA any more.
If you can get past what you've seen here, good for you. If not, there are way better X-Com experiences out there.
Fun Facts
I thought I was joking about the being turned into food thing. Spoilers, apparently I'm not.
Rebelstar: Tactical Command, developed by Codo Technologies, first released in 2005.
Version played: Game Boy Advance, 2005, via emulation.