Incoming

Developer: Rage Software
Publisher: Interplay; Imagineer
Release date: November 30, 1998;
Genre(s) Shooting, flight simulator
Mode(s) Single player, multiplayer


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.

~

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.


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.

Game modes

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 (Until level 10, after which
they will not be restored regardless of lives retained).

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.


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.


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.


Multiplayer
There are three multiplayer game 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 details such
as highest scorer. Three game modes are available:

Body Count, in which the players fight against each other; similar to other
deathmatch modes in other games.
Defence Force has the players defending installations against incoming alien
forces.
Team Play is identical to Body Count, however players compete in teams.


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.


1. Un-rar game package.
2. Mount or burn cd image.
3. Install game
4. Play and have fun!

In my earlier teens I was addicted to this and was my favorite game, hope you enjoy it as much as I did (and still do)!