Samstag, 18. September 2021

Rebel Forces (PC) Review

 

Rebel Forces is probably the best game by Freeze Nova (developers of games like Pixel Battle Royale, PixelForces.io, Dragon World, Galactic Force and the Masked Forces games). If these games don't mean anything to you, than congratulations, you seem to have good taste and are capable of avoiding trashy games. If you on the other hand know these games, than you also know what to expect. Freeze Nova games are usually low effort games with subpar graphics and basic gameplay. Rebel Forces is no exception of this, but at least manages to have one really decent game mode.

To say Rebel Forces took inspiration of Freeze Novas Masked Forces games would be the understatement of the year. Freeze Nova has published since Masked Forces 1 in 2016 around a dozen very similiar games, that only have very slight differences in terms of weapons and maps (Freeze Nova also published more unique games like Dragon World or their Pixel games, but they also are rather low quality). Rebel Forces is one of their free games on Steam, but otherwise doesn't differentiate itself very much of Masked Forces 3 in terms of gameplay. Weapons and visuals are practically the same and all of the Rebel Forces maps have also been part of either Masked Shooter Assault or Masked Shooters 2 (All of the Freeze Nova games also share the same background menu style and level system).

Talking about the maps, there are 6 in total. The best one by far is Towers, which has two large towers on opposite sides of the map, a bridge in the middle and a couple of smaller buildings around as cover opportunities. It is the only map that has some decent verticality and works especially well with the Doom mode. The Arena map is also not bad, but didn't really live up to its name. Arena looks more like an industry plant than any form of Arena. Gas Plant and Factory X were also bit boring and kept the industrial grey look of the first 4 maps (These 4 maps are also in Masked Shooters Assault btw). Garrison and Outpost are very similar to each other. Both are military camps and look a lot more green than the other maps (Both are maps from Masked Shooters 2). Nonetheless the later two are a bit too small for matches with more than 8 players.

At least you can give the 6 maps of Rebel Forces credit for being the best versions of them, but the difference isn't too large in comparison with the other games. All the maps are a bit too empty and boring in comparison to higher value games, but they at least get the job done. More details and map elements however would have been appreciated. 

All Multiplayer game modes can't be played with Bots instead of human players (like you could in Masked Forces 3), but there are instead specific Solo missions, with which players can own extra ingame cash and XP. These missions are the same as in the Masked Forces games and they can only be described as boring and tedious. You get challenges like 'kill 3 enemies' or 'win a Deathmatch against Bots'. Players can use the gained cash to purchase weapons for a loadout (Loadout only for DM and TDM). This 'progression system' is pretty annoying and useless. Owning money is pretty fast, but that doesn't make it anymore interesting. They should have just unlocked all weapons from the get go and scratched these offline missions entirely. Nobody is going to enjoy a grind against mindless Bots.

The weapons in the game consist of Pistols, Revolvers, SMGs, ARs, Snipers, Grenade Launchers, Mini Guns and Rocket Launchers. The variety isn't bad, but sadly the gunplay mostly is (Hit detection can feel like rolling the dice, sometimes it works, other times not).

The Multiplayer modes consist of Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and the Doom mode (The developers stripped the Battle Royale mode from Masked Forces 3 for some reason in this iteration...). After playing Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch I was left with an underaverage impression of Rebel Forces. The gunplay isn't really that great and except for the ability to jump a bit higher than in most other Shooters, there wasn't anything special about the game. If you mix this with severly outdated visuals and some movement issues (there is a short annoying delay if you change the direction of your movement, like the players would be ice-skating. It may be realistic, but it is also unusual and very uncomfortable in an FPS. Masked Forces 1 had the same issue and they also removed the new sprint funtion from Masked Forces 3 for Rebel Forces), than this impression seems quite logical.

The redeeming factor of this game however was the Doom mode. In this mode all players start with Rocket Launchers into the match and the server hosts can optionally also active double movement speed and double jump heigth. This mode is actually chaotic fun and the only redeeming aspect of Rebel Forces. Admittedly the Doom mode was already part of Masked Forces 1 and Masked Forces 3, but I believe that Rebel Forces in combination with the Towers map puls it off best (Rebel Forces is also the only free game of those on Steam and the browser versions of the Masked Forces games don't always have a stable performance).

 

Result:

The regular gunplay in the Deathmatch modes left a rather poor impression on me and I was ready to quickly quit the game before I tried out the Doom mode. The chaotic explosive fun is in my opinion worth a try and manages to exonerate Rebel Forces. It may not be a bad game thanks to the Doom mode, but it is overall still not more than mediocre, if you consider the rest of the gameplay, the movement or the visuals.  

 

5/10

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