Rebellion was Lucasarts' first foray into the Real Time Strategy computer game genre, keeping with their general policy of allowing a period of time before attempting a game in a new genre. This has been their successful policy with games like Dark Forces for the first person genre, and X-Wing for the space combat genre.

Rebellion allows the player to take control of either the Rebellion, or the Galactic Emmpire in their struggle for control of the Star Wars galaxy. You use the various characters (consisting of the standard Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Darth Vader... to the more obscure characters from the Star Wars novels, such as Garm bel Iblis, Daala, and Mara Jade) to perform missions of sabotage, assassination or abduction, diplomacy (to woo neutral planets to your cause). Inevitably, the opposing fleets will meet, and there will be battle. This battle takes place in a 3D tactical mode, where you can maneuver your fleet against your enemies and determine the final outcome.

Rebellion is not in the style of other standard real time strategy games, such as Warcraft or Command and Conquer. In fact, the ease with which the player can modify the speed of the time means that Rebellion could in fact be played as a turn-based game.

The interface of Rebellion is not simple. There will often be multiple windows open at a time, which can cause some confusion to the player, who must keep track of dozens upon dozens of tiny details, especially later in the game. This complexity makes the game's learning curve a bit steeper, as well.

The 3-D combat mode also leaves a bit to be desired, thanks to the pixelicious textures put onto the capital ships, and the star fighters not having a 3-D model, but only a two dimensional representation.

Overall, it was a playable (and sometimes enjoyable) game, though it suffered from some near-fatal flaws, and was not a revolutionary game in it's genre (which is not a huge 'dis.

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