Rebel Engine

The dev provided me with a review copy. Bless him for that. That said I found too many problems with the game that I can't not put a negative review. With a heavy heart because I can tell a lot of work went into this and there is some quality here. First you can't change the movement keys. Since I have an AZERTY keyboard, that makes the game mostly unplayable for me. I find it really weird that you can change all keys in the game except movement keys. Second, there is a problem with the interface when I play fullscreen. The menu buttons highlited are at an offset from the mouse. So I was forced to play windowed which added a second layer of frustration to my already bad impression. I don't know what causes this problem but I already encountered it in some games. As for the game itself, well, I think the whole concept doesn't work, it tries to mix melee and ranged attacks into juggle combos, which doesn't really work. To try to moderate the problem, the game makes it so that both you and the enemies can zip around the playfield, being alternatively close enough for melee, and at a large distance adequate for shooting. This feels really weird and schizophrenic, as you're never real…

2 hours in so far and from the perspective of a character action game enjoyer, yeah, this game slaps. It's got launchers, combos, freedom of expression all wrapped in a nice cartoonish presentation. It's great! (so far)

I really enjoyed my time with Rebel Engine. Combat is basically a FPS combined with a Hack and Slash and is focused on a good mix of both melee and ranged combat which you use in tandem with each other to perform cool combos to increase your style points. I found the story to be really fun with some great voice acting and music along with a great art style which all comes together to give the game a great personality and charm. The game will take you about 4-5 hours to get through on a first playthrough and there is a Arena based mode for more playtime.

The game looks and feels like a 90s Saturday morning action cartoon in the best way. Even though it's rather low-poly, the game still looks really good and a huge part of that is due to the fact that like I mentioned it's taking inspiration from old school cartoons with how overly saturated it is. I dig it! Now, the one downside with this is the writing is cringy but it feels like it's doing so in a way that's super ironic. It's not gonna be everyone's taste but if you want some of that old school cheese, you're probably gonna enjoy it. But the gameplay is the best part. There's so much crap you could do with the mechanics like picking up some random bystander and throwing them at an enemy or picking up the actual enemy and launching it at another, summoning a black hole only to crush them with a giant fist, grapple an enemy before slashing at them to regain your armour before comboing them mid-air and lauching at the ground with a gun that plunges them to the ground. There's a hell of a lot you can experiment on. I think I only have 3 issues with the game. First of all, it's really easy and a hard mode sounds really needed since even with my parries being not the greatest and at …

The core mechanics here are EXCELLENT. This is pretty much what I wanted from Ultrakill as an FPS character action game. There are certainly issues, but if that sounds up your alley you should absolutely go for it. The biggest issues so far are audio / visual. Some of the enemy sound effects are abrasive more than anything, and some of the character designs aren't the way I would have gone to put it kindly. I enjoy the overall art style and art direction but it's not always the nicest game to look at or listen to. Still, worth noting the animation work is really good, the guns look, feel and sound great, the music is good etc.

I'd say, over all this was a pretty good experience. The visuals are great, really dig the vibe and the style. Though sometimes some of the enemies do get lost in the backgrounds. ASIMOV and Salvador at first feel like they're gonna be some generic annoying funny haha quirky quip characters, but the writing's good enough so they don't really get on my nerves at all. The combat and movement isn't that deep, but enjoyable enough (the air kick is a banger) especially later on when you actually unlock everything. I do have a major gripe though, and it's with the sound. Firstly, I feel nothing really has any mmph to it, like anything from explosions, shooting, movement or parrying. They all have sounds sure, but they don't really feel as strong as they should. Nothing really feels satisfying from a sound design front. Voice acting's good though. Secondly, the sound mixing and levels are honestly kinda awful at times. Especially towards the end, some voices were almost inaudible. And some sounds seemed to completely be missing.