-Quick Review-
You have no idea what I’ve gone through to play this game.
Star Wars Rebellion is a Real Time Strategy, Grand Strategy Game Developed by Coolhand Interactive and released in 1998. Much like my obsession with the old Star Wars Flight Simulator Games, this is back in time when YOU MUST READ THE MANUAL WITH THE GAME TO PLAY IT, you’ll command troop movements, capital ships, special units, and the main cast from the Original Star Wars Saga across the Galaxy as you take the mantle of the classic Star Wars Conflict: Empire vs Rebels.

Review Video:
If you don't like reading, or are curious about watching gameplay check out my video here:
https://youtu.be/do5_Z4PHDdo

-Detailed breakdown review-
Star Wars Rebellion’s Story: Star Wars Rebellion takes place immediately after the Star Wars: A New Hope. Or for my fellow Star Wars Nerds, The Day After the Battle of Yavin. You do have some control over how the story progresses, but at some point Luke will go to Dagobah, Bounty Hunters will go after Han Solo to try to cash in on that pesky Bounty Jabba put on him, and if Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker encounter each other Luke will make the dreadful discovery of who Vader truly is.
The story is nonlinear, and some things can be completely avoided! Like in my game playing as the Rebels, Han Solo was never captured and Luke finished his training on Dagobah without interruption. We also stayed away from building anything major on Hoth, Bespin, Yavin, Endor and Tatooine.

How I Learned To Play: I like challenges, and I like to try to figure stuff out on my own and on the fly. So, when I first played Rebellion I just installed and booted up the game and jumped right in. I received a briefing from Imperial C3-PO because being an avid TIE Fighter pilot I had to support “the Good guys”!
After the briefing I realized “Oh… this game is going to be far more complicated than I expected”. I walked into this game completely ignorant. I thought I’d played most of the Star Wars Games on Steam!
Then I started to get notifications on the side bar, stuff about ships moving, building constructions being finished, and then I got notifications about planets joining the Rebel Alliance, Planets are Rioting, AND I’M OVER HERE TRYING TO READ THE IMPERIAL C3-PO DROIDS ADVICE AND STUFF IS STILL HAPPENING OMG WHAT IS GOING ON?!?
It was in this moment I realized I can’t figure out this game on my own, my choices were clear… Read or watch a guide someone made… Or read the game manual.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3357048146

Gameplay: Let’s quickly explain the “Win Condition” for Star Wars Rebellion. As the Rebels you want to take control of Coruscant, and also capture Palpatine and Vader. As the Imperials you need to FIND and destroy the mobile rebels secret base and randomly placed Base while also capturing Luke Skywalker and Mon Mothma.
The next thing to remember is Star Wars Rebellion is “Real Time”. The only time the game is paused is when you have the pause screen popped up, or you’re looking at the load/save/options menu. You can’t pause and read notifications sent by your helper droids, if you’re reading or taking too long to decide on something, you can know your enemy is already at work.
There’s so much going on while playing Star Wars Rebellion it’s daunting to try to simplify it enough for a review. It’s real time, you’ll move Fleets from planet to planet, you’ll move troops on and off Fleets, you’ll send characters across the galaxy on various missions to gather intelligence, improve diplomatic relations, and more. You’ll need to manage mines and Refineries to maximize resources. You want a 1:1 ration; One Mine for every Refinery anywhere in the galaxy under your control. You’ll also manage Construction Yards building various facilities from Shipyards to planetary defenses like shields and cannons.
While doing all this you’ll also be trying to work your way towards your end goal objective… to win the game. It’s really easy to get caught up in micromanaging all these different systems and riding the highs and lows. All that coming from someone who just struggled to play the game on the easiest difficulty! This is a game for people who LOVE strategy games!

Atratzu’s tips for how to play Star Wars Rebellion: The rest of these notes you should consider more like “Atratzu’s tips for how to survive Star Wars Rebellion”. First one of few things to note going into the game is there are tool tips which pop up as you hover over buttons, those help to learn what each button does and means. You can also select the time speed between Slow, Medium, and Fast. Take Advantage of that, slow the time down to think, and make decisions, after you’re done, then increase the time speed so you don’t have to wait.
I also started to use Keyboard shortcuts after clicking buttons for the first 10-15 hours of gameplay. Alt 1-9 to switch what you’re tracking on the Galactic map. Alt + (+/-) to increase or decrease the game’s speed.
One of the hardest things I had to wrap my head around was how to win over and hold a planet's support. When you start out, you’ll see a galaxy star map with a bunch of different colored and sized stars. Depending on what you’re viewing the larger the star the “more of that thing” it has. Be it Sorted by Popular Support, Idle personal, Idle Fleets, Fleets enroute, Idle Shipyards etc.
It’s important to note you can control a planet and not have that planet's political/popular support. A planet's support is shown by the green, red, or red and green colored bar beneath it. Always Remember in this game: Green = Imperial, Red = Rebels. So, if you see a planet which is Green, but has a full Red Bar under it, it supports the Rebels but is under Imperial control, if the imperials left, they would switch back to Rebels!
One of the last stumbling points for me was sending special characters on Missions and trying to build stuff on one planet and send it to another planet. I could figure some of the rest of the stuff out on my own, but I really needed to read the manual and follow the tutorial for it. You’ll need to select a “Target”, so oftentimes you’ll need to have multiple windows up, one for the system you’re in with your troops, the other with your target, be that target a ship, planet, ground troop, Darth Vader, etc.
A lot of the rest of the game will just come in time as you get used to the user interface, and rules. I suggest checking out the game’s manual and following along with the tutorials to get a grasp on how to play.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3352839502

Conclusion: Did you know that when Star Wars Rebellion first came out, it received mixed reviews, and some people downright hated it? Since then, it’s definitely risen to be much more popular due to more of a cult following.
I can understand some people not being interested in Star Wars Rebellion, especially today with how much work I had to do to figure out how to play this game. I messaged my brother with a screenshot of reading the manual and said, “I’d better get a diploma for all the work I’m doing to learn this game”. I’ll expect my certificate of accomplishment in the mail, in the comments, or in the steam awards this review hopefully earns (If anyone reads it).
Star Wars Rebellion was great! I’ve never played anything like it, and I was floored by the expanded universe characters who made appearances! But once again, I think this game is perfect for the Ven Diagram of “People who like Strategy Games” intersecting with the circle for “People who like Star Wars”. If you’re between those two I strongly suggest giving this game a try. If not, the reception could be really hit or miss.

-Quick Review-
Delta Force is a Tactical First Person Shooter, where you play as a member of the United States elite army special operations origination known as “Delta Force”. While a lot of information about Delta Force is very “hush hush”, it’s regularly used for recruitment and promotional material for the Army and you’ll probably notice it was very popular in media in the 80’s and 90’s, with the 1986 film also titled “The Delta Force” starring THE ONE, THE ONLY, CHUCK NORRIS.

At the time Delta Force was pretty good with pretty average graphics, but looking back on it, you feel less like you’re a member of an elite team and more like you’re trying to spot the funny looking pixels so you can shoot ‘em dead, before they shoot you dead in like one or two shots. (That’s a full set of Pew Pew)


Review Video:
If you don't like reading, or are curious about watching gameplay check out my video here:
https://youtu.be/sfnsJ8GSd2M

-Detailed breakdown review-
Story: There are five Campaigns each one is available to play at the start of the game, you can select between Peru, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, and Novaya Zemlya… Places I couldn’t have found on a map when I was in highschool. I also won’t find them on a map for you as an adult. You can google it for yourself.
As you finish missions in a campaign you’ll unlock more missions, there’s a total of 50 missions in Delta Force which are typically “Go to this place, shoot all the things”, occasionally you’ll need to blow up some trucks, crate or an object like an antenna or satellite dish, a couple times you’ll escort/save a hostage or Prisoner of War… But all times you’ll “Go to this place, shoot all the things”.
There is a story for each campaign and an objective you’re working towards in each campaign, but I’m going to level with you; I wasn’t paying any attention to the briefing text before the mission. It was typical “action-game-story” stuff. For example in the Peru Campaign you’re taking down a drug Cartel, so you’ll have a mission to neutralize enemies, a mission where you’ll blow up drug crates, another mission to find a code book, and the final mission is to neutralize guards around a Drug Lords estate and then capture the Drug lord. In other words, “Go to this place, shoot all the things”.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3368621618

Windows Border Remover: The first order of business with Delta Force’s gameplay is to say “Hey, I had to fix the game”. When I was playing there was a windows bar at the top of the game cutting off information at the top of the screen. Not only was this irritating, but it was also hiding important information at the top of the screen!
There are a few potential solutions. I followed PepperBelly’s “Windows 10: Proper Fullscreen” Steamguide. Your Options for fixes are: something called “dgVoodoo”, “WindowBorderlessGaming”, and lastly “WineD3D wrappers” ...In the end I followed a steam guide which had me download a couple files to slap into the game folder and the boarder went away. Like magic. I really dislike downloading stuff for old games because there's an inherent risk of downloading something malicious, but I really couldn’t stand that border at the top of the screen so I took the risk. (Hopefully my computer isn’t crypto-farming in the background)

Gameplay: Now then, getting back to actual gameplay for Delta Force. You’re playing a FPS; movement with arrow keys and the camera controls with the mouse or the number lock directional keys. …It was a weird time when not everything moved with WASD… okay? Speaking of which, whenever I started playing Delta Force I inevitably reached for WASD and always ended up changing the active waypoint (“W” Key), and brought up Audio Commands (“A” Key).

Speaking of mildly irritating key bindings, let me give you a MAJOR IRRITATING KEYBINDING. So you’ll spend a lot of time looking at the Map (“C” Key), and you’ll also be squinting to look into the distance for little pixel men who can shoot way better then you so you’ll use your Binoculars (“B” Key)… all well and good. Now hold onto your butts, what key is between your C and B keys on a standard QWERTY Keyboard? That’s right, the “V” Key! And pray tell, what does the V key do? IT BLINDS YOU WITH A BLACK SCREEN FOR A FEW SECONDS AS YOUR GAME TOGGLES BETWEEN DIFFERENT RESOLUTIONS!!! WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT WHILE PLAYING A GAME? WHY WOULDN’T YOU JUST GO INTO YOUR SETTINGS? DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I ACCIDENTLY HIT THAT KEY AS I WAS GOING BETWEEN MY MAP AND BINOCULARS!?! Delta Force is a Tactical First Person Shooter, meaning in the time it takes to switch resolutions I can only sit and listen to people shooting at me and hope they don’t hit me while I’m trying to fix it. Absolutely maddening. Awful, awful key binding design, they could at least put that key somewhere else instead of between my two most used key bindings.

There’s a lot of key bindings, but you don’t really need anything more then your number keys (or scroll wheel) for weapons, right click to bring up the scope, left click to shoot, mouse wheel click (aka mouse 3) to go prone, arrow keys to move, “C” key to look at the Map, “B” Key for Binoculars. “V” Key to let Jesus take the wheel.

When you first start the game, you’ll make a profile where you name your Operative and select between a few faces. Then select a campaign and mission, look through the briefing which will show you roughly where to expect enemies, what your objectives are, and you can change your loadout from the recommended loadout… 95% of the time I had the M4 Carbine with extra ammo loadout the other 5% of the time it was a sniper because the map was massive and flat.

When I first played this game on Windows 95, I remembered it being way more difficult to play because it was hard to see where enemies were. I was over here trying to echo locate people shooting at me based on the direction of the shots while listening with Stereo Speakers. I also didn’t understand screen resolutions so I probably played on the wrong resolution and couldn’t see anything. I’ve been playing on a pretty typical 1920x1080 resolution (the game's resolution can range from 320 x 240 to 800 x 600 stretched to fill my monitor of course), I didn’t struggle finding enemies nearly as much as I used to. But on the super big wide maps, I still defaulted to my echo-location-ways. And of course, you’re still shooting funny little pixelated people in the far distance. You can try to play the action-fast-FPS-style where you come around the corner and blast ‘em, but you only have a few seconds to pull that off before the AI realizes you’re there and blasts you right in the face… more likely when you round the corner to blast the guy, his best friend will nail you before you even get the chance to pull the trigger.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3372405134

Conclusion: In conclusion “Go to this place, shoot all the things”.
I liked playing NovaLogic’s (1998) Delta Force 1, but I picked it up as a hand-me-down and grabbed it again on a 90% off sale. In today’s day there’s so many games out there, I don’t know what the reasons people would have for going back to old games like these unless there’s some kind of “clout” or “speed running” community. Pretty minimalist story (which you only get in text briefing and debriefings) and pretty standard FPS gameplay (weird key bindings though).
Delta Force is fine, if you want to check it out, expect to tinker with the files a bit to get it working, but it worked for me, I enjoyed replaying it... But if you’re not playing this game due to nostalgic reasons, I’m not sure what you’re doing.