While far from a perfect experience in its current state given its pretty high price for an EA title, I can say that what's good here is none the less worth the admission. As a veteran of Elite, SC and Star Trucker, I felt right at home with the awesome flight model of this title. The atmosphere is great, the combat is fun, and just driving around threading the needle between the skyscrapers, and under the bridges, hasn't gotten old in my 15+ hours of gameplay so far. If like me, you ever flew around ArcCorp and wanted the freedom to zip around the megacity in your ship and do bounty hunting there, G-Rebels is the game for you. If like me you always found a hole in your library for a game that makes you feel like you're flying a spinner around Los Angeles in 2049 while Vangelis plays in the background as the rain pours over your windshield, G-Rebels is definitely the game for you. It's basically AirCar on steroids, or Cloudpunk with teeth.
Still, a lot of work remains to be done. While I genuinely believe all the bones for a top tier combat flight sim are already there, I can't wait to see how the devs expand. On top of new maps, a few issues still need to be addressed. Some of those might be a dealbreaker for some people, so i'd like to bring them up. I will skip most of the stuff regarding ship loadout, customization & progression, as well as the more glaring issues regarding performance, mission design (especially the delivery missions) and balancing, as it's all on the devs radar. I would rather spend my time touching on other issues.
First thing for me was that the scale of the city in this game felt off. While initially impressive visually, the immersion falls apart when you start flying close to the ground or zipping around buildings. The cars look like toys, and the city feels comically small. When you miss a turn and collide with a skyscraper, only to realise the windows are the size of a computer monitor, the magic dissipates pretty fast. The game will give you plenty of reasons to notice that as well, especially with the delivery missions that require you to keep a low altitude and squeeze around the buildings. It's simply too cramped and clashes quite a bit with the realism of the game. Besides the scale, there's also the issue of the city looking quite repetitive, and lacking clear landmarks. That would help with navigation a lot, but also amplify the fantasy. Don't expect to see variety of districts, or a Tyrell corp megastructure. It's one big slab of neon-clad grey with rectangles of various size, and most of them are too small for you to land your ship on their rooftop. I hope the devs find a way to make it work! The cities are one of the main appeal for this game, second only to flying and combat, and they need more character in my opinion. That scale issue also applies to other ships, as well. Even the bigger sized ones feel small, and during combat you will often feel like you're trying to hit high velocity pixels given the optimal engagement distance.
Second thing is regarding the flight model right now. A few things appear to be missing from the kb/m experience, or from the game entirely. You can't roll your ship, which makes banking into hard turns, or tracking your targets, quite awkward at times as you fight the automatic stabilization. I'm not asking for the ability to do barrel rolls, mind you (that wouldn't jive with the VTOL fantasy). Just the ability to bank into turns! Coupled with the inability to look around the cockpit (devs are working on a button), I still come away from every combat scenario thinking to myself ''damn, I wish I could just roll into those turns!''. After looking at some VR footage, it became apparent that the kb/m experience was more like flying an helicopter than a ship. Seems like a lot of maneuvers are only possible with a HOTAS type controller. Then there's the issue that the more you upgrade your ship and the faster it goes, the more I also found myself longing for a way to cap my speed dynamically for two reasons: match my target's speed, but also get into a more comfortable cruise speed when just flying around the city. Would be nice to simply use the mouse wheel to set a throttle cap. Pedal to the metal is fun, but ultimately I just want finer control of the ship.
I also wish they would push the immersion further with a few features, such as docking and landing. The ability to land on platforms and just chill there would be amazing. Give me a landing gear button and let me land in those hangars or platforms, please! Even fast travels between sectors feels a bit stale right now, compared to SC, E:D or Star Trucker (loved those damn gates!). I wish there would be a bit more physicality and thought involved in this act, rather than simply flying into a holographic waypoint and losing control of the ship.
The ship's HUD could use from improved readability as well. Speed and altitude readings are to the far edges of the screen, which felt less than ideal on a regular monitor. Hull, Shields, Engine boost, missile readyness, canon cooldowns... They are all very important information that *is* there, but just doesn't read well enough. I wound up decreasing the FOV quite a lot as it allowed me to see the HUD a bit better, but wound up sacrificing visibility in the process.
In regards to the AI voices in this game - it kinda does the job. It's not good, far from great, but it's not completely bad either. Sure, it feels a bit lifeless and lacks personality, but I don't think anyone is expecting this game to provide AAA-levels of narrative realisation. My biggest gripe is I find myself not even being able to distinguish between Eli Carter and Zulu One because they basically talk the same, and your character uses the same radio distortion filter as the other characters coming over on the radio, which amplifies that feeling of sameness and confusion. Easy fix here is remove the filter from Zulu One's voice, but also hope that somewhere down the line they end up hiring a few actual voice actors for the more important characters. I would rank that pretty low on the list of priorities, though.
There's other stuff as well but would rather not make this feel like a long rant, as I do enjoy my experience overall and think the team will get around to address all that stuff eventually. G-Rebels rules, and I can't wait to see how this game evolves with a few major content updates.
