Rebel Galaxy

I went into this game with high hopes. It's very well reviewed and I loved the Privateer/Freelancer aspects of game. Imagine my surprise when the first mission places you in a 6 on 1 combat situation and your only instruction is a one screen "tutorial" with three lines of text. The combat control is just flat out awful and I died repeatedly on the first mission. Not a fun start to a game so I'm putting this one away for now.

The game is an example of passionless work. the physics aren't there, you are restricted to a linear flight and only allowed to turn left or right or increase/decrease speed. you cannot travel up and down as you would in space giving you a feeling of driving a car.(I think they wanted to make Dukes of Hazard but they should have made it a racing sim instead) If you have a good perspective of sensing space and depth that will not help you here. When you are near space stations docking is accomplished by merely traveling in a strait line near the docking area, really weird too, you do not need to navigate or straiten out your flight as in using up/down movements so it is weird and boring and no skill at all involved in space ship flight. in combat, you are also merely required to go right or left and adjust speed. I guess they had sea faring ship-to-ship battles in mind here(or maybe shotgun dude in passenger side of car-thank "Mexican Maphia" here, not space combat) as far as using side cannons and forward turrets, but this is space and this sort of thing does not work at all! It is, in fact, really lame and droll. I think the primary means of making this game was to put in a southwestern mid town theme and some southern rock music. it has no barring on any kind of space sim at all and is inferior to most every other Space Sim/Space Combat game out there. Thank Freelancer with only the X-axis, and a few flatly acted characters that are neither unique nor interesting. the usual "aunt handing the torch over to the young and yearning upstart" routine. you can southwesternize it without mutilating the whole point of the genre! Independence War 2 had a Soutwest theme and was quite good! But this is atrocious! And if you think your going to be Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, or even Walker Texas Ranger the space cowboy, forget it! unless you only listen to Lynard SKynard and know nothing about playing any games what-so-ever, you won't like this game at all!

and yes, when you zoom in with your mouse, the lasers look incredible. you should get this game.

Would give it 5 but still some glitches

Caveat 1: I didn't get that far into this game. Treat this as initial impression only, but from reading around the place things don't seem to change that much. Caveat 2: This applies to mouse/keyboard control only, as that's what I have. I don't have a console-style controller, and I don't think one should be necessary to play a supposedly PC game. First, the good points: 1) It is beautiful and as smooth as silk on even my modest rig. 2) Voice acting is solid. Some of the accents aren't the best, but it's I've heard worse from TV shows. 3) It has noble goals. (Not that your character does.) Now for the not so good 1) Settings/options. Graphics adjustable only at game launch, before the graphics engine starts, so if you change your mind about resolution or windowed operation, you have to quit and restart. Sound and controls are only accessible once you actually start a game (ie: not the main menu), so for a few minutes you'll be going deaf until you can turn the sound down/off. 2) There is no tutorial. You learn to 'fly' (more on this in a moment) by doing it - and maybe getting your butt shot off in the process. That wouldn't be so annoying if you just respawned somewhere, but getting dead is game over. There are pop-up text overlays explaining some game concepts as the situation arises, but you're still being dumped into a live-fire exercise when you can barely steer your ship. 3) Zoom. There isn't any. You're too close already, and you actually get closer when you elect for an aimed shot. 4) Camera angle. Left/right - ok. Up/down - tough. 5) Throttle. LEAVE MY <expletive> THROTTLE ALONE YOU STUPID <expletive> AI! There is more, but the rest just sounds like whinging even to me. Suffice to say, I've uninstalled it.