That psychic shockwave you just felt was my brain registering the words “Yes, G-Police was definitely an inspiration” in the Steam forums for G-Rebels, an upcoming cyberpunk flight combat simulator. You’ve never heard of G-Police? Oh my god. Get in here, you prancing summer child, you daughter of chaos, you strawman son of a gun. Sit the fuck down. Everything is going to be OK now. I am about to tell you of G-Police, the only good videogame ever made.
Lately I’ve been hounded by the suggestion that I am a miserable bastard who hates videogames. As evidence for the defence, please accept exhibit A: I was so nuts about G-Police as a kid that I’m fairly sure I convinced an older boy I was a serial killer, or about to become one. “THE COCKPIT ON THE BACK OF THE BOX ISN’T THE SAME AS THE ONE IN-GAME, SHAUN,” I explained to him, while he backed towards the stairs. “THIS IMPLIES THE EXISTENCE OF ANOTHER GUNSHIP.” Where is Shaun now? I haven’t seen him for decades. I must let him know about G-Rebels. I must climb through his window at night and whisper the good news into his face.
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It’s sort of Problematic to like G-Police inasmuch as it’s a game about cops in refurbished military hovercopters who are not punished for accidentally shooting Fifth Element-style taxi cabs with hypersonic missiles. But in fairness, the cop storyline is a cheesy work of noir, rather than jackboot fetishism. Lead guy Slater is a hard-boiled wingnut who has joined an underfunded force on Callisto to search for his missing sister. Also, the G-Police spend most of their time fighting evil corporations. One of the corps is called Nanosoft. See, I knew I could talk you round.
The game’s star quality is without doubt its setting, a network of forgivably cuboid habitat domes that contain teeming cities of ground traffic, holographic adboards and circling bogeys. True, the trade-off for that complexity and bustle is an incredibly short draw distance, but I would argue that the gloom is entirely consistent with the Bladerunny theme. I am not one of those CHARLATANS who want Sony to somehow resurrect developers Psygnosis purely so that they can reboot G-Police in Unreal Engine 5.
As such, the thing that turned me off initially about the G-Rebels demo is that I can see all the way to the horizon. I’m not sure how I feel about it being so bright, either – rather than a sun-starved Jovian moon, the new game is set on Earth, albeit a dystopian Earth where most people live in floating megacities.
Still, grab the controls and swoop low over the heaving roads and it’s as though you’re safely back on Callisto, especially when you bounce off a low bridge and embarrass yourself. The city in the demo is beautiful, with a touch of Coruscant to the skyscrapers that jut above the clouds, and little flourishes such as adboard jingles that become audible as you careen past.
Where G-Police was mission-based, albeit with the occasional mission that offered the chance to roam from dome to dome, G-Rebels is more of an open world upgrade-a-thon with the opportunity to branch out from beat (hover)cop(ter) into the role of “bounty hunter, racing pilot, bodyguard, mercenary, pirate” or “hunter for lost artifacts”. Possibly we can be a rebel, as well? A grebel, even? The story blurb suggests that you might eventually reconsider your loyalties: “are you fighting for the right side or are you part of a dark conspiracy?”
I’m not sure how it stacks up as a dogfighting sim – in overdue vengeance for all the blameless Bruce Willises I blew up in G-Police, I lost the first random battle I started. But the handling feels like a good foundation for lots of aerial punch-ups, with the ability to hover and strafe and a nice, slippy heft to the turns.
The fly in the ointment is that developers Reakktor Studios have made seemingly limited use of generative AI. “Some of the intercom dialogs are using AI generated / modified Voice Overs,” they write on Steam. “Parts of the marketing assets – including store texts other than english or german- are modified / localized with AI.” I hope they think twice about that when it comes to the full release, which launches sometime this year. Thanks to reader Galactic Man for mentioning this in the latest Maw round-up.
