By refusing to fully occupy either the real-time strategy or 4X genres, Rebellion phases into a new breed of space opera. Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, the first stand-alone expansion for the RT4X (Real-Time 4X, for “explore, expand, exploit and exterminate”) title, is a contemplative middle finger to both the restraint and the relative bombast that drive comparable games like StarCraft II or Civilization V. Ironclad Games believes in my revolution, even if I’ve since surrendered to modest slacks. My freedom cry echoed across my bedroom, to no one, “No pantsation without representation!” Just brilliant. My own father had fought in wars for as much, I reasoned, and I deserved a dissenting voice. My argument followed that if a man-child wished to approach a teenager’s essential moments less-fettered by hand-me-down cargo shorts that was his inalienable right.
My mother forbade this practice under pain of hunger, a maneuver I then branded the “No Pants Act” and protested by forced sit-ins from my room. When I was in the seventh grade, I refused to wear pants to dinner. The stand-alone expansion to 2008’s acclaimed and intricate real-time strategy game takes Dan Crabtree back to middle school.
