Platform: PC

Developer: Double Damage Games

Publisher: Double Damage Games

Release Date: August 13, 2019 (Epic Store)

Genre: Space Combat and Trading Simulator

ESRB Rating: N/A (T based on Rebel Galaxy)

Nerd Rating: 8 out of 10

Reviewed by: Variand

If there’s one thing my daily drive into work is good for, it’s to remind me that I don’t want to be on this planet any more. This is probably the driving force behind my escapist gaming habits always bringing me back to the space themed sci-fi games. Games like Wing Commander: Privateer, Freelancer, X-Rebirth, etc. – if a game lets you pilot a ship in space, I probably want to play it if only to pretend I’m not on this planet anymore! So of course I was chomping at the bits to get my hands on Rebel Galaxy Outlaw.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

While you cannot fight as a frigate or larger, you will still have to fight against them.

The Space Combat and Trading Simulator genre is one that has changed very little. From early genre entries like Wing-Commander: Privateer, Freelancer, and Darkstar One, we get in our ships and zoom to the next waypoint looking to smite space-pirates, rob space-truckers, or just look for the best prices in the galaxy. Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is no different in this regard, going as far as feeling like a true spiritual successor to WC:Privateer, but where it stands out is the the great atmosphere (#DadJokes) in the game.

The main hub of every station the Concourse is where you link to all other shops

Outlaw Rebel Galaxy stands out by giving us one of the most polished games in the genre I’ve seen to date. Each of the 60+ station concourses feel unique in one form or another. I could be just a different positions camera view, or even just the signage, but it shows that each station was adjusted and not just cookie-cutter backgrounds like most of the genre have resorted to using.

Expedited Shipping

Besides the environment, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw does try to help deal with one of my biggest complaints with Space-Sim games (See Into the Stars review), and that’s that Space Exploration is boring. So Double Damage Games has added in a quick travel feature where you set an autopilot to fly to your destination after a quick screen fade. This does speed things along gameplay wise but also takes a bit immersion away from the game. And while the autopilot an optional alternative to the original sublight warp, the game will nag you with a chirp and flashing option every other second. You’ll find yourself fast-travelling just to stop the annoyance.

There are a large array of weapon types to choose from. But you can’t go wrong with tracers and auto-cannons

They’ve also added an auto-targeting/tracking feature that allows a player to simply hold a key and let the computer control the ships’ flight and speed to follow the locked target. It’s a pretty handy system and does its job very well – maybe a little too well. I found myself almost completely reliant on it by the time I completed the game. And once I found out holding the brake key would send your ship into a drift and rotate freely without altering current trajectory, auto-targeting basically turned me into the Death Blossom from The Last Starfighter! Though much like the autopilot fast-travel, the auto-tracking feature is completely optional, and even disabled in other game modes.

Whatever you do, Do it with grace and style

Double Damage Games has added several very gamer-centric features to the game that I find pretty damned amazing. The two biggest are the extra licenses for the rights to use the music in game videos and live streams of Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, and while this isn’t anything amazing by itself, they’ve added a feature to filter out any music to which they were not able to secure these rights, helping protect innocent streamers and youtubers from take-downs. And they’ve even gone as far as to give a copy-paste response to any automated Content ID matches you may encounter. That’s pretty awesome! Solid fist-bump to Double Damage Games for that one!

Ship painting is incredibly powerful with free draw and stenciling. A Twitch streamers dream to brand all their ships.  Dickbutt added for NerdBerry

The painter allows you to paint directly on textures and see the result on the ship in real time! (Click to watch)

The other more notable feature added to the game is by far one of the most robust ship painting features I’ve seen! From any ship dealer, you can launch a side application that allows you to draw directly on your ship. I found it to be extremely robust, and is probably on par with other 3D model painting applications. You can draw directly on the 3D model of your ship, or open the texture file and paint on the textures themselves. And with the Stencil tool, you can import your own images and paint them on the ship in part or whole. It will even supported my drawing pad/stylus without any special setup. The levels of creativity that this empowers is simply staggering to think about! The flip side, is I wonder how many will find themselves overwhelmed by it as well.

Unforgiving, Noob-Friendly game

Some missions can get extremely one sided without much warning. Paused radar targeting allows you to strategically prioritize the biggest threats.

As a whole, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is a solid game that takes steps to make the genre more inviting to new players that haven’t trained up their spacial awareness yet. But even shortening the time-to-action wait with fast-travelling and giving auto-aim doesn’t change the fact that the game literally just drops you in front of a ship and says, “Go repay the favor for a free ship!” There is no Tutorial section to speak of. Instead Rebel Galaxy Outlaw uses in-game prompts to show controls. That said, it doesn’t take long for your starter craft to become completely overwhelmed. So much so there were several instances where I could not even run away! I was frozen space debris before I even realized I was outmatched! There are even missions later in the game, when I had a fully equipped fighter with pretty much the best weapons/shields/armor, where I was obliterated in seconds! That’s not to say the missions are too hard, but it’s very easy to get oneself into bad situations accidentally – And I would call myself proficient in this genre.

This is also the first time I have ever preferred playing with a gamepad over a joystick/HOTAS. Double Damage has stated that the game was designed from the ground up to work best on a controller and they weren’t kidding. The amount of finagling required to get basic, if a bit old, Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick to play comfortably was longer than it took to beat the game with controller. Even then a mouse-and-keyboard setup felt like they took all the controls of the ISS and splattered them willy-nilly all over the keyboard. For both joystick and MnK, I don’t think there was a single key I left mapped to default. So if you’re just looking to pick up the game and play, make sure you plug in your gamepad!

This space trader delivers

While Rebel Galaxy Outlaw has its share of quirks, it’s a solid entry in a fairly niche genre that already has some standouts. There’s nothing this game does poorly, and has several points where it does things great. If you’re a fan of the genre, you should already be playing this, and if you’re interested in the genre, this is a great starting point because it has lots of features to help you get used to the nuances.