This relates to Rebel Assault 1 only... I played this game a ton on my old Apple IIgs. Or maybe my first 386. Probably spent a day configuring a boot disc to get all the RAM I needed. Even back then, part of me knew, this game had nothing to it. It's terrible. Flying beggars canyon is so evocative. The screenshots pull you in. But then you find you are pretty much on rails with really wonky hit detection on the walls. You aren't really doing much. Same with the assault on the Star Destroyer - so cool! But again you are on rails, and limited to pretty much flying down one side and trying to mouseover red boxes. Same TIE attacks on each pass. And if you miss one of the turbolaser batteries, you have to sit there for minutes waiting for the attack pass to cycle through again. This was supposed to be the "arcade-y" game, against the sim of X-Wing and others like Dark Forces. The other games were great. Masterpieces of their time, and still curios worth experiencing today. Rebel Assault was never good. And I played it over and over and over. It was all we had.
There's a lot of good stuff here. A sparse but interesting story, great environments, a decent tech tree, and lots of equipment and upgrading. I am enjoying it. But I'm not loving it, and there are three downsides to the game. First, the combat. As others have mentioned, it is basically "click the monster". You put the cursor on the monster and, for the most part, click the left button. Occasionally, you'll click the right button instead, or press a number key to perform a different attack, but those are just stronger versions of the left button. This is the primary dynamic of the game and it can leave you feeling a little like you are playing trashy mobile gamified nonsense. pointclickpointclickpontclickpointclick....this is fun. The second is the controls. Not only is it one button combat but the same button is used for movement. If you happen to not click one of those fast moving monsters, you'll start running toward it instead. You can, however, hold the shift key to ensure that you stand in place and attack, but this takes your fingers off of the 1-5 keys where your special attacks reside. Kind of a bummer. The devs realized these clunky controls and adjusted the difficulty down to compensate. This eliminates frustration, thankfully, but also reduces the interest of the game. Finally, the tech tree. There is a nice tech tree, but there are only a few nodes, most with 10 levels to buy, and many of them are variations on the same thing. This means when you level up, you'll often just get more of the same rather than a game-changing skill or trait. If it is game changing, you'll spend 10 levels on the same thing. As I said at the top, though, I AM enjoying it. I'll finish the game to learn the end of the story, to see all the lush environments, and for the simple joy of leveling up and equipping-up a super-beefy monster killer. Got to get that next rare armor drop. Torchlight is great for those things, just not great for everything.
