Star Wars Rebellion

It's amazing how obsessive compulsive I can be. In one Easter sitting, while hopped up on chocolate bunnies, I spent 16 straight hours playing Rebellion. Other than the occasional bathroom break and a trip to get something to eat, I did nothing but click away at my mouse. At the end of the session, I had to own up to three facts.

a) Too much chocolate is bad for the system.
b) My index finger is not meant to be constantly active for more than 4 hours at a time.
c) Rebellion, in spite of the time I have spent with it, is not a good game.

In fact, Rebellion ranks up there with Rebel Assault 1 and 2, and Masters of Teras Kasi as prime examples of how to do a disservice to the Star Wars legacy. For all its strengths and complexity, the game falls down because of only two factors. But the two flaws are doozies and the rest of the great work that went into the game suffers at their expense.

Real Time vs. Turn Based

Rebellion is an empire building / resource management game of the classic type. I'm surprised that LucasArts didn't make this game, based on the Star Wars universe, earlier. The game focuses on the power struggle just after the conclusion of A New Hope. The rebels have destroyed the Death Star and are starting to gain support across the Galaxy. At this point, players can choose to command the Imperial Forces, under the dark guidance of Emperor Palpatine, or stand beside Luke and Mon Mothma in the pursuit to outwit the Dark Lord of Sith and his master.

Once you've taken on the role of strategic commander of all resources, planets and forces, you will have the daunting task of retaining or gaining control of over 200 systems and in the process, must accomplish a few major objectives in the game. If you play as the Alliance, you will need to defend the Rebel HQ, protect Mon Mothma and Luke, capture Vader and the Emperor and take control of Coruscant, the seat of Imperial power. If you play as the Empire the objectives stay basically the same it's just the faces that change.

Now, with this in mind you would have thought that Coolhand and LucasArts would have had to go out of their way to screw things up. However, they did, and the first problem was the decision to allow the action of the game to transpire in real-time. I guess this was the integral factor in making Rebellion seem different than any other game of its kind. "Real-time" has also become a bit of a catch phrase in the industry and I can tell you that most of the spin-doctors consider turn-based simulations to be an outdated and unmarketable ideal.

The fact is, though, that many gameplayers do not consider turn-based games to be a pariah. In fact there's a reason why all other games of Rebellion's genre have been turn-based. It works. Managing a galaxy is not a simple, straight- forward task. The complexity of the game multiplies with each world that you add to your babysitting list. When the scale of responsibility reaches the proportions that it can in Rebellion, you can't just sit there and wing it. Macro management takes time, planning and thought. Rebellion inundates you with a barrage of seemingly never ending messages. The real-time nature of the game handicaps you into playing the game in a reactive instead of proactive manner and macro management turns into micro management. The end result does not produce emotions of excitement and tension (as I'm sure the creators meant it to). Instead, it becomes a confounding and frustrating experience.

Mind you, there is a speed meter which can be toggled to allow you to a little more forethought. But, in the end, Rebellion really should have been a turn-based game, at least in single player mode. I can understand why they wanted a real-time aspect for multiplayer. No one really wants to sit and wait for the other guy to finish what he's doing before you can progress to the next set of tasks.

Time to Attend Game Interface 101

Flaw #2 in the game is the gawd-awful interface design. My mouse finger will never forgive the architect of this painfully sluggish, confusing and unfriendly interface. It demands that players do much more clicking than is necessary. It restricts you to the number of windows you can have open or viewable at any one time and there's no multiple object, drag and drop to speak of. It's awful I tell you, just awful.

For example, say I have a bunch of starfighters assigned to a planet. I want assign 26 squadrons to the Fleet in orbit. Do you think I could select all 26 and then drop them into the fleet window? No, I have to select each one at a time, select "move" from the menu and then click on the destination. That's three mouse operations for one action. Now I have to repeat. 78 clicks later I finally have a fleet with a fighter escort. Phew. Oh but wait, I have to do a troop transfer to the same fleet. Click, click, click�.

Dealing with the various messages in the game is equally as exhausting. Although you can filter out a number of the topics, you would be ill advised to do so, since knowledge is power. However, each time a message appears it highlights the topic icon on the left of the screen. This can include manufacturing notes, loyalty issues, enemy engagements and the like. If you want to see the messages, you'll need to double click on the icon and a full screen window appears with a list of the message headings. Then you double click once again on the message and deal with its contents. It would have been so much easier and simpler if you could have just hovered over the icon to get a drop down list of messages, which you could then click on.

Full screen windows are a waste of space and the real kicker to this is that there isn't even the ability to play the game in any other screen resolution other than 640x480. The game's graphics are simple enough that the game doesn't require a powerhouse of a computer to run. So I'm not sure why LucasArts didn't just use Windows 95 as the interface and allow for variable resolutions such as 800x600 or 1024x768.

The Positive Slant

In an effort not to sound like a complete hypocrite, I do have to touch on the positive elements of Rebellion. There has to be some reasons why I kept playing the game other than the fact that I hit an "I've spent 8 hours already and I'll be damned if I quit before I see something significant," point of no return. The biggest and most obvious of these reasons is the fact that hey, it's Star Wars.

All the characters from the three movies and the countless books are highlighted in the game. Talon Kardde, Roget Jiriss, Admiral Daala and Shenir Rix are some of the lesser-known characters that can be recruited for missions and command. To a greater extent the major characters' various stories are carried through in the game as well. Han will have to constantly escape the clutches of Jabba's bounty hunters, Luke will need to eventually journey to Dagobah for Jedi Training, and Leia will need to find out about her Jedi heritage after Luke has a run-in with his father.

As the game progresses, it becomes vitally important that you find each of the characters available and make use of their inherent talents. Diplomacy, espionage and leadership are crucial to success. Systems that you control are prone to uprising if the enemy decides to stir up some trouble on those worlds. You'll need the smooth talkers to keep things calm. And constant espionage missions are key to finding out about fleet movements and chinks in the enemy's armor. All of this is very cool. But once again, the horrible interface gets in the way of any enjoyment that this character rich universe has to offer.

I was also somewhat fond of the tactical display that is offered as an option, should two fleets collide in space. You can allow the computer to take charge, but if you want, you can command the flow of the battle yourself. A tactical window then pops up and you can view the 3D space of the battlefield in any way you want. You can then assign fighter squadrons to attack other fighters or capital ships, send task groups to flank the opposing forces and the like. But as neat as the idea is, I would like to have had even further control. You can't actually target specific ships. They will always default to the greatest threat. I was a little frustrated by this because there were times when the battle would fare badly for me and I needed to get the hell out of there. But you can't if one of the enemy ships has a gravity well, which prohibits the use of hyperdrives. It would have been nice to focus on that ship to allow the remaining forces to escape.

Tread Carefully

Rebellion had all of the basics to become a highly engaging title. It's such a shame that LucasArts botched this one so badly. And still, like I've mentioned, I played and played and played, hoping that there would be a payoff somewhere down the line. 7 days and countless hours later I still haven't found what I was looking for, and the rookie level, small universe game that I've been working on is far from finished. Star Wars may be a tremendous draw but LucasArts is going to have to stop using it as a crutch for their games. If they're not careful, the current string of awfulness is going to produce a backlash among the gaming public. I can only hope that they redeem themselves with Force Commander. In the meantime, make sure that you, and not your computer, have the right mix of prerequisites to play this game. If you don't have Obsessive Compulsive 98, 32 grams of chocolate in your system and an extreme love for the Star Wars universe, steer yourself clear of Rebellion. It isn't worth the punishment.

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