For me, it has to be Alien: Colonial Marines as it’s terrible due to inconsistent frame rate (moments the game ran smooth and times where lag was insane, even with the best hardware). Both player & enemy AI is crap since the combat wasn’t even that immersive plus Xenomorph AI isn’t as intimidating due to it being poorly implemented.
‘Star wars : rebel assault’ was a masterpiece of awful - at least on DOS. I don’t know if it was better on console and just a crappy pc port.
I actually enjoyed playing it because of how awful it was. I think i made it about half way through the levels - hard to know - hoping it might get better, but many of the levels the controls were so bad it was pretty much perseverance and luck. The gameplay was tedious, yet also hard due to the controls - which tbf might be realistic for how actual space shooting would be.
Whenever you did pass a level the feeling was relief that it was over, and thankfulness for the luck, certainly not triumph. Save points were not after every level which was especially tiresome, and proved that it was luck more than skill.
I don’t think I can blame my pc or my joystick, as this came out around the same time as the legit brilliant ‘Star wars: X-wing’ . The contrast between the two was remarkable. X-wing played very well even on what was probably a potato of its day. I reckon I’d have bought rebel assault based on the strength of X-wing and trust for lucasarts as a brand (until this game).
I think it was hyped due to having full motion video sequences or something or maybe just starwars fanboys, but gameplay was utter dogshite.
Rebel Assault wasn’t good, but it wasn’t all that bad IMO. It was just a game that was rushed in order to use CD-ROMs and FMV. Everyone that had a PC that could play it that I knew owned it though, so I bet that did well sales-wise.
You’re absolutely right that it was nothing compared to X-wing or TIE Fighter (the true GOAT of that sort of game).
It was actually one of the first (or the first?) CD-Rom games for PC IIRC, and was often bundled with the drives themselves - at least that was the way i got that game back then. You are right, it was pretty random if you would be able to progress or not.
I beat the demo before getting the actual game, the demo was just levels 1, 2, and 10. When you beat the demo it gives you a code to skip to level 11 in the full version. I ended up beating the game after using the code, but I could never beat level 3, so I never even got to play levels 4 through 9.
I don’t think i’ve ever managed to finish those fucking flight training missions.
Rebel Assault was neat, but the controls were terrible. Using a joystick to point a cursor on the screen is frustratingly inaccurate - and not all joysticks were created equal. Cheaper ones were inaccurate and had weird axis profiles thta made the game even harder than it should have been - and trying to play it with mouse was at least as frustrating.