Rebelstar: Tactical Command

Format Game Boy Advance

Developer Namco Bandai

Publisher Namco Bandai

Genre Sim / Strategy

5 Comments

Ah, turn based strategy. How we do miss thee. We miss the subtle thrill of enemy AI going about its business every time we've positioned our little troops in strategic places. We miss not being rushed all over the shop by frantic real-time troops. Basically, we miss the slow-paced, and somewhat scary, beauty of the ancient X-COM PC series. Admittedly these days handheld owners can bathe in the delights of wonders like Advance Wars and Fire Emblem, but can you position a little man in a window with a sniper rifle and know that you have a 20% chance of shooting an alien in the head? Can you buggery.

The cheery blue chaps of Tactical Command are a light-hearted crew of renegades, living in the vivid wilderness of an Earth that's in the iron grip of some nasties known as the Arelian Empire. These evil alien blob-monsters get miffed whenever people start getting old - and take them off for deadification pretty pronto should wrinkles appear. A rebel base upon which to train, do missions from and watch faintly bizarre and extremely Japanese-style cut-scenes is thereby provided by your revolution-friendly GBA - along with a plethora of neatly set-up turn-based missions to frustrate and delight in alternate measures.

As the game progresses more and more cheery characters join your gang - you start out with your good self, a friendly all-rounder with nascent leadership potential, and soon join forces with a sniper, heavy-gunner, sneaky chap, medic and a few other turn-based talents (such as a flotilla of battle robots) as the game goes on. Action Points are calculated, grenades are thrown, doors are blown off, inter-turn 'Overwatch' snapshots are assigned and (inevitably) your little heroes are blasted into atoms by a mini-gun wielding Arelian rendered invisible by the fractious lines of sight of your tiny doers of derring do. This can cause serious anger-induced damage to your GBA - or at least it does when your own brand of smug self-confidence means that you haven't saved for an aeon - but you know Rebelstar is just a game that keeps on dragging you back.

Missions are clever in their design as well - always having you do something a bit different. Flee from a large enemy force who'll enter a battlefield three turns after you with nasty alien dogs perhaps, or free a member of your party from captivity, or scout enemy terrain in case there are bad guys hanging around (and guess what, there are...). All these and more will give you extra reasons to draw breath in the mornings, even though that same breath will later be used to expel a glistening torrent of swearwords and resigned grunting when your plucky team eat Arelian thunderstick.

Problems? Yes. Yes there are problems. The GBA, unequipped to handle anything but basic 3D-ovision, can do the isometric - but the isometric can make it pretty tricky to work out exactly who is where, who is seeing who and who is shooting who every now and again. Rebelstar isn't for the MTV generation either - it demands patience, and it will pound upon the heads of those who make rash decisions with its dinky blue turn-based boots.

I cannot tell a lie - the Advance Wars series provides a more polished and super-slick strategy experience than Rebelstar. But for that pure X-COM vibe and the utter joy of a turn-based plan coming together, Rebelstar Tactical Command has twenty hours of love on offer - which should be more than enough for those who want to spend their AP wisely when the game eventually reaches these shores.

Will Porter