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Jim Raynor would be proud. Not only does Rebel Galaxy's starting ship cut a distinctly Hyperion-styled silhouette against huge starboxes whose bloomy nebulae serve as a reminder that gaming's love affair with Hubble is far from over, but StarCraft's heroic good-ol'-boy would presumably approve of the audio, too, which eschews synth and strings for what sounds like a couple of meatheads whacking away at Fenders in the kind of bar that has chicken wire across the stage. That's a pretty long sentence, and you have my apologies, but Rebel Galaxy earns that approach. It is a simple game at heart, but a breathless one as well, a scamper across empty space from one mission to the next, shootin', lootin', tradin' and enjoying the butt-rock. It is Elite, if Elite weren't the product of Cambridge grads who spend their spare time pondering neutrinos, but rather the people who make Budweiser commercials.It's exploration and blasting with gentle conversation tree pruning as you chat to wonderfully rubbery SyFy channel aliens in the bars that inevitably litter any space ports you come across. There's an engagingly off-tilt narrative that starts with you trying to track down your aunt - I like to think of her as a space aunt - who's gone missing, and seems like rather a shadowy character, and there's also a lovely sense of a universe ticking over all around you, with miners, pirates, and various other factions all eking out a living and offering you work.
Rebel Galaxy provides a very comfortable trajectory as you take on missions, upgrade ship parts, buy new craft and eventually venture further out. If this sounds familiar, it should. Rebel Galaxy's being made by Travis Baldree and Erich Schaefer of Double Damage Games. It's just the two of them here, with a few contractors, but they have a lineage that goes back to titles like Fate and Diablo, by way of Torchlight and Torchlight 2. Set aside the ships and the warping about, and this offers the same welcoming, unchallenging quest structure of a dungeon crawler - and the same cumulative energy too, as you get bigger and stronger and the particle effects get wilder.
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