Your family is gone, taken at the age of 30 by the Zorn, the strong arm of the Arelian Empire. In a strange Logan’s Run-esque way, when people hit the age of 30, the lizard-like Zorn take them away, never to be heard from again.

A chip is put into all humans. You can’t run, and you can’t hide. Occasionally, though, there is that human whose body rejects the chip’s programming, and who can escape outside the control of the Arelians and their Zorn henchmen. Those few usually wind up in the rebel force, dedicated to overthrowing the Arelians and reclaiming Earth.

That is the backdrop for Rebelstar Tactical Command, a third-person shooter viewed from the isometric vantage point, and released on the Game Boy Advance by Namco and Codo Technologies.

Players take on the role of Jorel, a new recruit who will rise in the ranks of the rebel force to lead the fight against the Arelians. The game is a hybrid of sorts, spanning the turn-based tactical shooting elements and the role-playing genre through leveling, and skill and equipment upgrades. There are four basic modes of play, and they are pretty much self explanatory – campaign, skirmish, multiplayer hotseat and multiplayer link.

The levels are charted out in terms of maps, which players advance through with small squads, battling the enemy. But where this game takes a bit of a departure from the norm is that everything plays out like a chess game. Line of site comes into play and players expend action points during a turn – if you have points left after you execute primary moves, you can duck behind cover and force the enemy to hunt you and maybe expose themselves to attack. However, as stated, this is line of sight and you may not actually see the enemy until you are in position to do so. That means the enemy could be behind a wall, or other environmental set piece.

In many ways the game sticks to some of the standard turn-based elements, like gridded maps, but rather than just throw players out there, the grids are color coded to allow players to know – at a glance – how much they can accomplish in a given move. Range too far and you won’t have action points to do anything else but move, but stay within certain color schemes and you will have enough action points for an attack. The different types of attacks carry different action point costs as well.

Some of the environmental elements are destructible, if you have the right weapons, so an enemy hiding behind a wall may not remain out of attack range for long, if you plan right.

The sound and graphics of the game are merely serviceable, so do not expect to be blown away from these elements. But what they do offer is a nice support vehicle for the gameplay mechanics.

The game does not concern itself so much with micro-managing but rather concentrates on squad-based tactical combat, and as such, Rebelstar Tactical Command is one of the finest titles to appear on the GBA in that regard.  

Gameplay: 8.3
The tactical elements, line-of-sight aspect and role-playing elements make this a deeper game that one is usually treated to on the platform. The controls have a small learning curve and the load times are kept down.

Graphics: 7.5
Serviceable and colorful, but nothing to get overly excited about.

Sound: 7.0
Standard fare here, but still supports the graphics. 

Difficulty: Medium
This is not so much a reflexive game as a cerebral one.

Concept: 8.0
While the graphics and sound are not much, and the control scheme is almost stock, the idea behind the tactical turn-based combat makes this game shine.

Multiplayer: N/A
The game does support multiplayer through the Link mode, but at the time of this review, no other players with the game were available to test it.

Overall: 8.0
The game has many typical elements and several that have been seen before in other titles. However, where Rebelstar Tactical Command really shines is in the wonderful way it supplies gamers with information in a lucid, logical and thought-provoking combat system. The word ‘tactical’ in the title is not merely an adjective with little meaning – it is meant here and players had best be ready to think their way through the maps, not run and gun.