G-Rebels screenshot
Image: Reakktor Studios & Senatis

Who here remembers the G-Police games on the original PlayStation? A peak example of that brief era where convincing-looking humans were hard to do on consoles, so everyone just made vehicular action games instead, and they were great. Too fast and arcadey to be called sims, but involved enough to feel authentic. German indie studio Reakktor Studios clearly do, and they've just released a whole-hearted tribute game, albeit in early access - G-Rebels.

For those unfamiliar, the G-Police games were aerial shooters set in a surprisingly large and open cyberpunk dystopian city, and you were the pilot of a highly agile VTOL jet. You can zoom around at speed when you have to, but in dogfights you can hover, dodge around enemy fire, or use buildings as cover. G-Rebels looks to be all of that and a bag of chips, with a bigger open world, a much more detailed city and (if you have the hardware for it) full optional VR support, although early reports say that mode is a bit buggy at present.

While there haven't been many initial user reviews on this one, they're almost all positive so far. It would seem that the studio has been working hard since the release of their previous game, the twitchy arena FPS TOXIKK, released way back in 2016. It is still in early access, with an incomplete campaign and some features still being worked on, but the game seems to be on the right track.

The only jet-powered fly in the nano-ointment here is Reakktor Studios admitting that the game features AI-generated voices. While I don't want to make accusations, some of the character portraits in the promo screenshots have me wondering, too. Given my love for the G-Police games and just how solid this one looks, it probably won't stop me from trying G-Rebels, but it does slightly sour my anticipation.

G-Rebels is out now on Steam for £26.75/$30, with a 20% launch discount running until July 27th, coinciding with the end of the current German Games showcase. The studio reckons it'll be a relatively brisk six months in early access, in which time they'll be finishing up the main story, expanding the open world, and finalizing support for flight sim hardware like HOTAS stick setups. I can only hope that they also bring in some human voice actors in that time, too.