Game Reviews

Rebel Onslaught

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| Rebel Onslaught
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Rebel Onslaught
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| Rebel Onslaught

Rebels never give a good first impression. After all, they're causing trouble. Hear their case, though, and things look different. What at first seems unruly takes on a worthy light when you tilt it in the right direction.

Rebel Onslaught makes an underwhelming first impression. The first level is, to be blunt, boring. After a fair amount of perseverance, you come to realise the powder has been kept dry until later levels when it explodes into a frenzied fight.

You’re put in the cockpit of a futuristic space fighter and must weave your way through fleets of attacking alien craft to protect the Earth from invasion.

Despite Rebel Onslaught keeping a lot of its qualities in reserve for later on, what’s immediately noticeable are the controls. Although it takes time to find the sweet spot, the accelerometer functions decently for navigation.

Smartly, manual controls via a thumbpad situated in the bottom-left corner of the screen are provided. It's a matter of preference whether you find one superior to the other; both perform admirably.

The ship shoots a basic laser automatically, which frees you from having to fiddle too much with weapons fire and allows concentration on aerial tactics.

Secondary weapons are available in the form of missiles and smart bombs that clear the screen of enemies. Additionally, you can perform barrel rolls to avoid incoming fire (which there’s no shortage of) and dodge objects.

Although you're in a space ship, you occasionally have to carry out missions close to the ground. The real beauty of Rebel Onslaught is found when winding around behemoth enemy mother ships, ducking through their artificial canyons, or weaving through buildings as they topple, forcing you to perform balletic manoeuvres to avoid the descending debris.

It’s great to see the game gather momentum as you progress, but it’s also a shame that it's confined in the earliest levels.

In many respects the early levels are wasted. They feel more like a series of endurance tests intended to eventually reward you with the game you suspected Rebel Onslaught to be.

It also attempts to ramp up the difficulty level quite artificially by limiting the number of lives you have on individual levels. A more sweeping difficulty arc would be welcome here, rather than punishing you for overzealousness when you refuse to let the last ship in an attack pattern get away.

Rebel Onslaught provides invigorating action that requires perseverance to uncover. It's worth working through the initial levels to experience the harrowing second half. After a while, it really starts to shine.

Rebel Onslaught

An average game that turns into a fly-by-the-seat-of-your pants sci-fi extravaganza – assuming you’ve got the determination to push through to the later levels
Score
Spanner Spencer
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.