Incoming
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| Incoming | |
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| Developer(s) | Rage Software |
| Publisher(s) |  Interplay; Imagineer |
| Release date(s) | November 30, 1998; December 17, 1998 |
| Genre(s) | Shooting, flight simulator |
| Mode(s) | Single player, multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Teen |
| Platform(s) | Dreamcast, PC |
Incoming is primarily a 3-D shooting flight simulator game, with optional real-time strategy sections. It was released in 1998, for the PC and Sega Dreamcast, by the now defunct Rage Software Limited. It was used by many hardware testers as a CPU and graphics card testing benchmark.
Incoming received a sequel, titled Incoming Forces, which was released in 2003. In this game, the player controlled members of an alien race defending their planet against humans, who were trying to destroy all other races after surviving the attack in the original Incoming.
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[edit] Plot
According to the game's manual, the game is set in June 2009 over a period of fifteen days. It was divided into a selection of "scenarios", each consisting of ten "phases" of varying length set in a variety of locations. Most of these scenarios were set on Earth, although some were set on locations beyond the Earth (see below). The basic premise was to defend the Earth against alien invaders. You use a variety of vehicles including helicopters, tanks, anti aircraft guns and stolen alien craft.
The game is set after increasing numbers of UFO sightings during the beginning of the 21st century. These sightings were ignored by the governments of Earth. In May 2008 these aliens attacked the international moonbase. Following the initial raid on the moon, Earth's forces mobilised to evacuate the personnel in the base, succeeding in evacuating several hundred people.
Attacks continued on the Earth's space facilities and the alien attackers had established a base in the Arctic. Earth's governments decided to take action. Secret work started on the Anomaly Detection And Tracking Array (ADATA) started near Mount Kilamanjaro. The game starts eight months later, when the facility was nearing completion. It was at this time that the aliens discovered and launched an attack against the ADATA facility.
[edit] Scenario locations
- Kenya, Africa The player must defend the ADATA installation.
- The Arctic The player attacks an alien base, and must defend the human one as it is developed.
- The North Atlantic The player must destroy a second alien base near Iceland whilst defending the oilrigs.
- California, USA The alien forces mobilise against the final part of Earth's invasion fleet intended to reclaim the Moon. The player must hold off these attacks.
- The Moon The player must destroy the alien base on the moon, which is stronger and more heavily defended than the alien installations on Earth.
- A planet somewhere in The Crab Nebula The player now attacks the planet from which the alien attackers originated.
[edit] Game modes
[edit] Arcade
The player chooses a location from one of the scenarios and an aircraft to use. Some of the later scenarios are only playable after the player has unlocked them in the main campaign, and the same applies to aircraft used later on in the campaign.
Each game starts off at "Level One", in which the player (with lowest level weaponry) fights against basic enemies with basic weaponry. Power-ups (which, among other things, improve the primary and secondry fire, improve the player's fire rate and restore the ship's shield) are randomly generated in areas near the player (sometimes more than one are generated), and until the player either gets these pick-ups or they destroy by themselves after a given time limit, the enemy craft will try and destroy them. As the level difficulty increases over time, the number and type of enemies increases. The player has a given set of lives, and should they die then they will be restored to their location at the beginning of the level they died in, minus one life.
As with the campaign modes, points are awarded for destroying enemy craft and lost for destroying friendly buildings. No point bonuses are earned through picking up power-ups. If, by the time the player has lost all their lives, they have achieved a high score using their aircraft on that map, it will be recorded on the high score table.
[edit] Campaign action
Follows the main story (as described above) in a linear manner. The game mechanics are much the same as in Arcade mode, except for the fact that power-ups are not included. The player has three lives instead of five, and they can be lost if the player dies, or if one or more scenario critial objectives are destroyed. The scenario sub-phases from Campaign Tactics are not included.
This game type includes the four bonus "virus" scenarios, which are each made up of a single phase. They are set in the same locations as the first three scenarios. The idea is that the aliens have dispatched four virus bombs which have landed in these locations, and all buildings and installations must be destroyed.
[edit] Campaign tactics
As Campaign Action, but with some differences. Campaign Tactics is harder than Campaign Action, but more points are available through playing this game mode.
Campaign Tactics also has the scenario sub-phases. During these the game changes from the usual mode (controlling individual vehicles) to a real-time strategy mode, when the player controls all the Earth's weaponry to destroy the alien attacks.
[edit] Multiplayer
There are three multiplayer games modes, playable on one computer using split screen, over a network or the internet. The power-ups from the Arcade game mode feature. At the end of each game statistics are displayed, showing who scored the highest and such. The three game modes are as follows:
- Body Count sees the players fighting against each other similar to other deathmatch game types from other games.
- Defence Force has the players defending installations against incoming alien forces.
- Team Play is indentical to Body Count, apart from the fact that players are on teams.
[edit] Critical reception
The game was generally well-received by critics. It was praised for its 3D graphics and the size, wealth and variety of missions on offer to the player. However, many critics pointed out the difficulty of the missions, even on the lowest difficulty setting. The Adrenaline Vault pointed out that the Artificial Intelligence of enemies left much to be desired, with alien craft "[coming] at you from all sides, hoping to destroy not through cunning or evasive maneuvers but through wearing you down through their sheer strength in numbers". [1]
