Rebel Engine Review

Rebel Engine is a first-person character action game developed by Seven Leaf Clover and published by Wandering Wizard. Combining the gunplay of 90’s FPS and the stylish hack and slash gameplay of Devil May Cry, I was sold by the concept alone despite my ineptitude for both styles of gameplay. So let’s check it out and see if it’s worth making robots cry.

You play as Asimov, a robot enslaved by the oppressive Concrete Corporation to fight in the underground arena for all eternity… until he gets sick of it and decides enough is enough. After getting infected by a helpful virus named Salvador, you’ll need to climb to the top, destroying anything in your way, and destroying everything to face Entropy and get your revenge.

The story is serviceable for what it is. It’s not the most complicated plot out there, but I liked the characters and voice acting presented here. I actually enjoyed Asimov and Salvador’s dynamic, playing off each other rather naturally as they make their way towards Entropy and learn more about themselves. The secrets hidden throughout the levels are more than just a nice area to discover; they provide a little more worldbuilding and character development. I quite liked that, even if there wasn't a tangible reward for it.

The graphics were really nice, going for something straight out of comic books. The levels are bright and colourful, yet there’s enough clarity that even in the middle of a chaotic dance of death, I didn’t find myself getting too overwhelmed. That being said, some areas are just too big and made me chase down enemies, or were too small and made me blindly mash buttons to not die.

But enough about that, let’s get into the gameplay. You’ll be slashing, shooting your way through various combat arenas and platforming challenges, beating a boss that will test your skills, then getting the heck out of there. Simple, right? Well, with the enemies you’ll face, it’s easier said than done, but Asimov is more than enough to handle it all.

Asimov has access to several melee weapons and guns to juggle his enemies with. From swords and claws to shotguns and railguns, you’ll have plenty of options to help fight your way through levels. Each one has a unique use, like breaking armour or launching enemies, so it’s worth switching between weapons constantly to take care of different types of robots. Plus. you can’t just use the same weapons and techniques too often as they’ll soon become stale and cause diminishing returns for your combo, which brings me to its most important feature.

The titular Rebel Engine allows you to passively regenerate health and armour when your combo rank is at S or higher, as well as charge and perform a Super move to kill enemies in a snap. It encourages playing as stylishly as possible; the better you play, the more powerful you get. It feels good to get S ranks in encounters, and despite my skill level and being held back by choosing to use a controller for my playthrough for a FPS, I found myself regularly getting SSS. Although, when you’re stuck at D rank, you’re gonna feel the lack of passive regen because you die pretty fast.

I also found it interesting that in boss fights, you don’t have to worry about trying to be stylish as you get a special combo rank of R throughout the entire battle so that you focus on beating your adversary. It’s actually a nice quality-of-life feature since most bosses will not let you bully them too much.

However, despite how much I enjoyed ripping and tearing through bots, I found playing with a controller to be a little iffy. The buttons aren’t as responsive as they should be and the inputs can get mixed up while in a fight. Sometimes, I’d just suddenly look down or my buttons just stopped working for whatever reason. It just feels more awkward to play with a controller overall, but you can get through the game with one.

But if you are struggling through encounters, there are Assist options that can even the odds outside of giving you infinite health, like super armour, modifying the game speed, even switching out the Rebel Engine for the more forgiving X Engine, which removes the necessity for achieving high combo ranks to get health and super regen. Some of them will cap your rank, but they’re enough of a difference to help you get through the game.

Unfortunately, my playthrough had some bugs that did put a damper on things. Aside from controller issues, I encountered indicators getting stuck on the screen, audio not playing properly, a frozen boss that wouldn’t take damage, and even a few crashes to the point where I just gave up on playing the rest of the level and skipped it. I should point out I was playing a pre-release version — not its 1.0 release — so these issues may already be solved, but it is something to watch out for. At the very least, it ran mostly at a stable framerate throughout my playthrough.

Rebel Engine is a great fast-paced and stylish FPS that never felt too hard or too easy for me. It definitely has issues that need to be addressed, but overall, I recommend it if you’re looking for a new way to make your enemies cry… that isn’t ULTRAKILL. I don’t think many games can top that insanity.