I can clearly recall sitting in the living room of a childhood friend, jerking a cheap joystick back and forth trying not to crash into a corridor of spikes in what was supposed to be a training mission, dying, loading and repeating ad nauseum until I about wanted to launch the disc out of the window. So, one could be completely understood in asking "why would you want to play a game as absolutely horrible as Rebel Assault?" Well, allow me to explain.
A mixture of nostalgia and curiosity brought me back to the forgotten PC FMV-Shooter series about three years ago when a copy of Rebel Assault II for PS1 popped into a local shop for a rather reasonable six dollars. I threw down my cash, went home, and fought the PS3 to play it. About twenty minutes later, I gave up and dug out the PS1. Then it started. Two solid hours of cheesy cut scenes, abysmal writing and acting, and quite possibly the most unsatisfying ending this side of Final Fantasy VII, and I had the game finished.
It was about this time that I realized that my childhood self had about as much intelligence about the way the game is built as I did about nuclear physics, sex, or even that big bloody yellow thing hanging in the sky. I had no idea then what an FMV shooter was, nor what an FMV was. The PC was this odd little thing to play video games on, and I thought that all of the flight based Star Wars games were supposed to control like X-Wing or Tie Fighter.
Having fulfilled the need to finish the game, I remembered those spikes sticking out in the third level of the first Rebel Assault, and my interest in playing through the CD dinosaur emerged. I hunted for a cheap copy of the PC version, and was met with insane prices and a lack of availability through Steam and it's competitors. As a result, it fell to the back seat.
Until I picked up a Sega Genesis with all of the lovely trimmings. Back in November, I plopped twenty bucks into the cash register of the same store where I bought my copy of RAII, and hunted for the port of the first. Thankfully, the port was a bit more accessible, and probably easier to deal with than the awkward backwards compatibility with older windows games that Vista 64-bit has. It was time to play through once again and put aside my grudge with ye olde spike canyons.
Little did I know that FMV flight became easier from the first game to the second, and the controls would do the same. I don't know how I actually make it through the flight run on Beggar's Canyon on Rebel Assault, but it was extremely frustrating on every try. The Genesis control doesn't exactly seem suited for flight games, and this fact unfortunately carries over to the only other Star Wars game on the console, SW Arcade for 32x. No, I'm not counting the chess game, because it's still chess.
Well, practice made suitable, and I trekked my way straight through to the third level. The second was a fair bit easier.
What I found in the third level was the same spiky mess that I fought tooth and nail against in my youth.
And I finished it on the first try.
After that, I shot through the game, only getting hung up on a single level (which is insane in it's own right). I've since attempted a run at a higher difficulty, and am almost finished, thanks to the lovely set of passwords that I'm storing in my blackberry as I play through.
Now, onto the part of the Rebel Assault series that confuses me; enemy attacks. In addition to the odd laser blast hitting you for no other reason than you can't drag the cursor over fast enough, when a ship you didn't kill passes you by, you take damage. Immediately. There isn't a break to suggest "there is a ship on your tail and you took damage from a shot". It's odd, awkward, and completely unfair during a small selection of the missions. There is a difference between knowing the pattern after dying once or twice, and just having too many targets to take out in a small period of time due to the oddity of shooting sprites on an FMV background. The touches of latency between shot and kill are in place to allow that little bit of breathing room in the actual difficulty of the game, and I am thankful for it. But there is only so little you can do in some scenarios. Case in point, there is a stage at the beginning of the Death Star attack run where not-Luke Skywalker has to take out an entire Star Destroyer worth of Tie Fighters. The level of memorization required is strikingly high, and this is easily the most difficult level in the game for two reasons: the first is that on any difficulty but easy, you take enough damage from the ships you miss to make getting through the level an incredible challenge, the other is the trio of Ties, flying underneath the range of vision you are given from your cockpit, that attack one of your wing mates. The death of this pilot restarts the level. Allow me to make this clear--you get about ten seconds to kill three fighters. In order to pull off this herculean feat, you have to start firing before they even come into view, and even then you have to have a massive amount of luck in order to take out the three fighters. Not to mention if you have any damage and do succeed, the remainder of the level is a touch difficult. Not insane, like the wave you have to take out here, but pretty hairy nonetheless. Past this level, the entire game is extremely easy in my opinion. Of course, I haven't finished it on normal because of the Tie Attack level that is barring me from completing my Normal run. If I do surpass this run-in with evil game design, I will probably shoot through the other three levels without even breathing because the preceding levels were so easy on the normal run through because they weren't that much difficult from the Easy mode. Either I got pretty good at the game my first try out, or it's just not that varied in terms of difficult, IE, increased damage and nothing else, that I can handle Hard when the time comes.
So, dated game play, design, and video, awkward controls on both version, and a wholly bizarre experience aside, I love Rebel Assault. I know that everyone considers these games to be a mess, and they are, but they are such a lovely little mess that I don't know what I'd do without them. They are fun, and they feel like Star Wars. That's all I can ask for.
Alright, good day everyone.
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