Incoming(Action Game)
I was a lonely, bitter man last summer. I went to see the movie Independence Day the night it opened, and I absolutely hated it. It was implausible, cheesy, predictable, and superficial. Seems I was only one to notice or care, because my friends were falling over themselves to praise it.

You Aliens Get Off My Lawn!
As I sat down to review Rage's Incoming, the same curmudgeon that hated Independence Day started to emerge. Incoming is also implausible, cheesy, predictable, and superficial. In fact, at times, it even looks like Independence Day. Swarms of alien ships go up against fighter jets and attack helicopters. Huge round motherships zap military bases with killer ray guns. You even commandeer a UFO and bring the fight to the alien menace. Oooh, did I hate this game!

Then there's the fact that Incoming lets you control what seems like 101 vehicles, none of which behaves realistically.Aircraft can't loop, and they steer like cars. F-22s and Harrier jump jets have guided machine guns and 20 flawlessly accurate air-to-air missiles. Flying vehicles can smack into the ground without scratching their paint. And don't even get me started on the UFOs! Everyone knows this isn't how a real UFO would handle.

Furthermore, there's the issue of the number of enemies you fight. You go up against wave after wave of incoming aliens, shrugging off volleys of deadly laser beams as if they were raindrops in a summer shower. Not since Space Invaders or Galaga have I seen these kinds of odds. Incoming is like a rail shooter without the rails--point-and-shoot simplicity at its most gratuitous. It's a waste of perfectly good PC technology on gameplay barely worthy of a console. Oooh, was I going to write a mean review!

But by the time I sat down to actually start my invective, I realized I had played through half the game and didn't want to stop. In spite of myself, I was having great fun swatting down aliens like flies. Sure, it was stupid and often repetitive. But, like Space Invaders or Galaga or Independence Day, it was giddy, mindless, dopey fun. To my horror, I found that I actually liked it.
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Incoming(Action Game)
Rage in the Machine
Incoming was developed by Rage, the blokes (they're English) behind Darklight Conflict, an unaccelerated space-combat game that put most 3D hardware support to shame. Rage has since seen the light, namely the colored, dynamic, real-time light: Incoming requires a 3D card, taking full advantage of all the tricks you'd expect from a title with such an emphasis on graphics. Part of the reason Incoming is so beautiful is that it doesn’t have to waste valuable CPU cycles on troublesome issues such as physics or AI. The varied terrain is always sharp and clear, the skies are vivid, and the explosions are so immensely satisfying that you'll barely notice that the game has about as much interactivity as watching a fireworks show. Rage may make pretty games, but it still hasn't learned much about gameplay.

Not that it matters. The bite-sized episodes, combined with the gorgeous visuals, make Incoming a cinematic experience in a summer blockbuster sort of way: it's a bunch of action sequences loosely strung together. The missions are basically about shooting stuff, although there are some halfhearted attempts to expand their scope by giving you something to protect, sending you off to shoot things such as icebergs, or forcing you to take out shield generators to expose your real targets. One option for playing through the missions, called the strategic campaign, shows that someone decided it was necessary to superimpose a pointless strategy element over the game. In this mode, the action is occasionally interrupted with a poor man's version of a real-time strategy game, which compels me to offer a word of advice to the guys at Rage: stick to action.

Another word of advice to Rage: let your gamers configure their controls. As with Darklight Conflict, the control options for Incoming are limited. Mouse support, which would have been great for the turret sequences, is too sluggish to be useful. And some more advice: when you do a 3D game, include a 3D radar screen; otherwise, there's no way to tell whether your enemies are above or below you. One final recommendation: ignore old curmudgeons like me who complain about the lack of gameplay; you're doing a fine job of providing us with quick and spectacular thrills without the burden of a learning curve. After all, if people listened to whining guys like me, the producers of Independence Day wouldn't have raked in all that cash and gone on to make Godzilla.
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