Incoming Forces (PC)

Today's game is Incoming Forces, the sequel to Incoming by Rage Software, the people who brought the world Hostile Waters and a whole lot of football games before finally evaporating into mist in January 2003. Apparently Go! Go! Beckham! Adventure on Soccer Island wasn't the cash cow they'd hoped for.

I played Incoming for the first time a few days ago, so it seemed like a good idea to play this one as well while the earlier game's still fresh in my mind. Unfortunately though Incoming doesn't seem to be the kind of game that stays in the mind, but I'll try my best to compare them anyway.

(Click the pictures to expand them to a slightly less retro resolution.)

The game begins with a real-time cutscene featuring a lone starship on its way towards an Earth-like planet. Though not Earth itself this time interestingly.

Hang on, a long space ship flying past the screen from the top right of the camera with its engines blaring at the end of the shot... crap it's going to drive me made trying to remember where I've seen this before.

Oh that's right, it's from the start of half the space sci-fi games and movies made since Star Wars.  Directors really love using that shot in their introduction, and who can blame them? Though it was already getting to be a bit of a cliché 12 years ago.

Oh no, the space ship exploded! A wing of starfighters showed up and immediately blasted the vessel into space dust without even a hint of a warning. I mean seriously, they really do blast the thing into a cloud of particles.

Man, those bloody aliens just won't leave humanity alone will they? We kicked their ass all the way off our planet in the first game so now they're harassing us in space!

Meanwhile, Commander Rile's floating head is explaining to... someone else that he's the leader of the Earth Fleet, on a mission to eradicate the Terauman threat from the galaxy. I suppose those must be the aliens from the first game then. This isn't really the best voice acting I've ever heard in a video game to be honest, but the poor guy is obviously struggling with some kind of eyebrow twitch as he talks so I'll give him a pass.

Rile then demands an immediate surrender, and I still have no idea who he's talking to as he's still just a head in the void speaking directly at the camera. The aliens who blew up the ship I guess.

Oh he's talking to the Kaiyodo, a different alien race. I think. At least I can be pretty sure that I'm looking at human spacefighters gearing up for war here.

Hang on, these are the fighters that destroyed that ship at the start of the game. So it's the humans that are going around space and starting shit this time around, driven by paranoia and a thirst for revenge after the attack on their home. In case you're wondering, yes the the game was released after 9/11, but the plot was already in place years before.

Yeah, the humans are definitely meant to be evil in this: they've deliberately shown one of them... smoking a cigarette. Wait, they're all smoking! Do these idiots not realise that they're in a sealed metal can right now, millions of miles away from proper fresh air, about to climb into a much smaller sealed metal can?

Anyway it turns out that the aliens didn't immediately surrender to the human fleet for their crime of being aliens, so humanity is getting fired up to bring the hurt. They don't even need to wait for more ships or troops to arrive from Earth, as they've already brought them all here just on the off chance that they might need to instigate a war.

And so the fighters launch on a mission of pre-emptive anti-invasion alien subjugation. After all, these dirty aliens won't ever invade Earth if their civilization lies in ruins; bombed back to whatever their equivalent to the stone age was.

Of course they claimed they weren't even interested in invading Earth, but you never know with aliens do you? Best to crush them beneath your spaceboots and settle the matter early. It's much cheaper than having to hire XCOM later.

One of the Kaiyodo troops on the ground takes the opportunity to run in slow motion from the explosions going on all around him. It was kind of a goofy looking run, no motion capture here it seems, but it's fine. After all, everyone else he knows was likely too busy dying to notice.

Our crack cigarette squad finally touches down planetside and charges out of their transports armed with space M16 rifles (that look a lot like regular M16s except without a pistol grip.)

And so the Human-Kaiyodo war begins, with me playing as the noble non-smoking aliens fighting to defend their land from invaders. I suppose it makes sense that the Incoming series would always side with the race that has their anti-aircraft turrets already set up.

Alright this is me actually playing the actual game now! Well, the actual tutorial level anyway. Incoming didn't have a tutorial and didn't really seem like the kind of game that'd even need one... right until it threw a surprise RTS interlude on me mid-mission, so I'm grateful for the instruction. Plus it's entirely optional.

Right now I'm still at basic flight training, trying to fly my fighter through a series of rings within a time limit. I'm using the mouse this time around after my Xbox controller freaked out in the menus, but I'm finding it absolutely effortless to steer the thing through the hoops like this. Or at least I was until I switched to third person view for a more interesting screenshot; now I keep crashing into the rings because I'm never quite in the place that I think I am.

Shooting isn't really working out for me either like this. There's no crosshair and I can't even tell if I'm aiming too high or too low here. It doesn't help that these are special alien slow-lasers that take about half an hour to drift over to where the enemy fighter used to be.

Aiming is far better in cockpit view, but these slow-motion lasers are still a pain in the ass. I'll be very surprised if I manage to shoot down anything this week.

I shot down something! It went into a death dive and made a satisfying explosion on the ground below. There you go lads, something new for you to walk away from in slow motion.


LATER.

Alright enough training. Incoming had three different single player game modes, but it seems that this only has a regular campaign for me to play.

The first planet I'm defending is an agricultural world called 'Life'. Well I suppose its a better name than 'Earth'. Those dumb humans, they named every other planet in their solar system after mighty figures from their mythology, then went and named their own homeworld after soil.


MISSION 1: INCEPTION.

This is me in my hovertank buggy then I guess. It may not look all that heavy, but nimble it ain't. When I've gotten the thing to turn it's a real effort to get it to stop again.

It's not all that great at shooting either I'm afraid, as it takes several hits to kill anything. I miss my tank from the first game, now that thing was capable of bringing the pain.

Combat in this mostly involves approaching a target until the crosshair turns red, and then pressing the fire button until they explode. There's little in the way of numbers on screen so I have to just guess how long it'll take for a target to come into range, and when they do I've got their incoming fire to worry about as well. Worrying's mostly all I can do about that though in this piece of crap, it's not exactly agile enough to dodge out of the way.


SOON.

'Transfer to the Fighter', huh?

In Incoming 1 I'd automatically get yanked out of my current vehicle at the end of each phase of the mission and thrown into another one, but it appears that I have some choice in the matter this time around. I have a choice on when I want to press the transfer button at least.

Once I've done what it's asked though I can leap from ally to ally without a care, taking over the mind of the pilot like I was Tanner in Driver: San Francisco (the commander in Hostile Waters would be a better comparison maybe, but I never miss up a chance to give a shout out to Driver: SF). The only limitation is that I need to be in range of the replacement vehicle and have line of sight.

It's so nice to be inside a fighter again! Sure I can't hit anything with these lasers, but the manoeuvrability of the craft is incredible. I can hover and dart around with so much grace, sliding backwards and sideways, spinning around 180 degrees on a dime, that I'm basically playing this like a first person shooter right now. I'm actually flying circles around my enemies, blasting them with lasers from all directions.

It isn't working.

I'm not exactly dogfighting here, but the game's definitely closer to a flight sim than Incoming 1 was. Right now it's simulating how I can't hit a enemy with lasers even when I'm at point blank range.

Where's the button to open the cockpit? I want to try throwing my shoes at them, see if that works out any better.

Huh? Oh I was supposed to be defending a paramedic ship wasn't I? Nice game over screen though, I'm liking the sad piano music. I especially like the way I apparently get infinite lives this time, unlike in Incoming 1, so I can jump right back in at the last checkpoint.

The game doesn't seem to have handy shortcut keys for things like 'target the attacker of current target', 'target nearest enemy' or even 'select target', so I'm left to observe the situation with my own eyes, locate the ship I'm meant to be protecting and shoot at the enemies buzzing around it specifically. Fortunately the game does at least give me an arrow sending me to my next objective, so finding the paramedic ship shouldn't be hard.


SOON.

Well that wasn't all that difficult in the end, after I tried slowing down and avoiding any extreme aerial acrobatics while lining up my shots. I apparently have to fly my spaceship like it's a jet plane or else my laser bolts start sulking and nothing gets done.

Now the wounded at this settlement can receive the emergency aid they urgently need. It's a little strange though, seeing one of these cutscenes go well for the Kaiyodo troops for once. Usually there's fire and tragedy and running, but they barely even had reason to do a goofy walk this time.

Oh there we go, the settlement has been attacked mid-cutscene and now they have some explosions to pose in front of. The paramedic ship escaped though, so it wasn't a complete disaster for team Kaiyodo.

More importantly none of this is my fault, so I don't have to restart the mission.


LATER.

With my paramedic activities completed I'm sent on the offensive instead, tasked with blowing up the enemy bombers while their own fighter swarm tries to dissuade me. You can tell by my shield monitor on the bottom left of the screen that I should be more concerned about this than I am (I don't have all that much of them left), but I feel semi-invulnerable while I'm darting around in this fighter! I'm just too awesome for them to hit (except for all those times I did get hit).

My biggest worry is not taking out the bombers fast enough and having to do all this again. I'd like to keep this farming complex as an explosion free zone.

There we go, got one of the enemy bombers... and dropped him right onto the farming complex in a massive fireball. Crap.

It's cool though, I don't think things like this count towards damage. I have no basis to assume that though, except for common sense.

I'm definitely finding it much easier to hit these enemy craft now that I've figured the secret to air combat: don't move while shooting. Turning's not so bad, but if I fly sideways I'm forfeiting all rights to have my shots end up anywhere near where I want them to be. Which is a real shame really, because I'm great at flying sideways in this.

Objective complete! An excellent excuse for another goofy stroll across the screen I reckon.

The enemy units are all driven away, the people cheer their victory... a giant missile comes over and presumably blows all of them up. Mission complete!

I made it onto the high score table! Not bad considering that my points were wiped to zero every time I failed an objective. I totally kicked the ass of those default high scores.

It seems like there's around 16 missions like this in total, which is a massive step up above Incoming's 6, in cold semi-meaningless numbers anyway. Without knowing how much content the later missions have in each game I can't really compare them.


MISSION 2: VITAL SUPPLIES.

To survive a prolonged conflict it is vital that the Kaiyodo get emergency food supplies to their sister planets, and this row of human artillery shelling their water treatment plant isn't helping them do that.

Obviously they need to be removed, and I'm the one who's going to go out there and handle it. Oh hang on a second, I need to get this bit of the cutscene out of the way first...

Can't forget to show the goofy run with explosions in the background! I'm going to pretend that this is always the same guy we're seeing in each of these cutscenes, who has had the bad luck of being stationed right next to every exploding building in this war, one after the other.

Okay now we've gotten the formalities out of the way I can get into my jet fighter and go on a good old-fashioned strafing run on this artillery. I'd try using new-fashioned first person shooter strafing but I'd only end up missing.

Aw, they've gone and put me back in the hovertank for this job! Swapping between vehicles would be a lot more interesting if I wasn't always switching from great to crap. This thing just sucks all the joy out of charging directly into enemy fire.


A FEW DIRECT HITS LATER.

Oh c'mon quit shooting at me, I'm running away! Go bother someone else.

Well I got one of the artillery tanks, but I'm my shields have been hammered in the process and those things don't grow back. I need to get my wounded ass down to a refit base immediately, and fortunately I can cycle though my waypoints to find it. Then I just need to get my hovertank onto the repair panel and in a few seconds they'll have the thing fighting fit again.

I can sometimes switch into a healthy ally unit to stay in the fight, but right now it's all red dots as far as the radar can see. Those tech guys back at base really need to upgrade this transferring trick so that it works with enemy vehicles as well.

Oh come on! They blew up the water plant while I was off getting repaired? That was... that's just...

Nah I got nothing, it was totally my fault for leaving some artillery intact and active while I ran off to heal. Though I could've been given a little warning! So many things are relying exclusively on my intervention to save them, and yet they don't do a whole lot to attract my attention when they're in urgent trouble.

In games like TIE Fighter on the other hand, your commander is very vocal with the mission updates, especially when a ship you're meant to be defending is in danger. If that ever happens he makes damn sure you're aware of it, and you're given all the tools you need to pinpoint its location and learn who is attacking it.

In fact I can still recite the commander's Mission Critical Craft poem from memory:

"Mission critical craft: under attack!
Mission critical craft: shields down!
Mission critical craft: hull condition critical!
Mission critical craft: destroyed!
Abort mission. Mission a failure."

And they say video games can't be art.

This time around I have a new plan. I'm going to park right here on the ridge and hold down the shootin' button until either the artillery explodes, or I do. Anything to decrease the time I have to spend in this tank when I could be soaring gracefully through the air.

Now that I'm sitting here blasting away at tanks, it's got me thinking about how underwhelming the game's audio is. Well the music's fine, sounding much more orchestral and dramatic than the soundtrack to the first game (a little like something from a Dreamworks game... or maybe Final Fantasy XII), but these sound effects just aren't bringing the noise. There's no 'plink plink plink' to let me know I'm blasting through an enemy's shields, there's no Earth-shattering 'ka-boooom' when I bring down a heavy bomber and it slams into the ground, there's no drama to it at all. The sound effects just seem content to let the music do all the hard work.

Oh also there's been like five lines of voice acting in the game so far and the rest has been in alien-speak. Not a criticism, just an observation. Well okay maybe the fact that all my mission orders come in the form of subtitles is worth criticising.


SOON.

Huh, I don't remember this feature being in Incoming.

The first game had RTS interludes that interrupted gameplay and put me in command of a group of units for a moment from an overhead view. This, on the other hand, is a shot of me flying my plane directly into the ground like a the renegade I am, while issuing wingman orders to the fighters parked below. I've got a team following me now!

Alright lads, form up. We need to keep the human fighters busy and give our transports time to escape into space.


SOON.

No, don't shoot at our own transport! What are you doing? Man, look at the direction of my fighter and then look at the direction of my lasers, does this seem right to you?

See, this is what happens every time I try to manoeuvre and shoot at the same time: laser bolts going everywhere but where I want them. There are many joys to playing a 3D shooter like this, and one of the greatest of them is when you spin around, line up your crosshair with where you know a wounded enemy is going to be, and then blast him out of the sky with a single well aimed shot. But with lasers this slow I am really struggling to do that.

At least it seems that I'm distracting the enemy fighters from shooting at my transports as they break the atmosphere. The human pilots are probably staring at me in utter confusion wondering what I'm even trying to do here.

Our ships are away! I managed a mission first time for once!

Wow they really pack those planets in tight in this area of space, though I suppose they could just be moons (as if that makes any more sense). It would at least help explain why each colony only needs a tiny transport of supplies to keep them going. I'll get to visit them all later, but right now I'm still stuck here on planet Life for the time being.

I continued onto mission three, where I was tasked with stopping the humans from poisoning the lakes, releasing toxins into the air, bombing the biospheres, drugging our troops with hallucinogens... they just kept coming up with one scheme after another in a row. It got so ridiculous by the end that it could've been based on an average season of 24, but I think I've got enough screenshots already.

Oh, one thing I should mention while I'm still showing images, is that I don't like the alien's vehicle designs all that much. They all look like they're made out of tin foil covered cardboard. It's a bit of a trivial thing to mention for sure, but Incoming 1 had me choosing between things like F-22s, A-10s and MiG-29s, which are the exotic supercars of air combat. These alien things ain't nearly as sexy and there's little appeal to flying them beyond their practicality.

This thing sure looks a bit familiar though:

 

I guess there must have been a Last Starfighter fan on the staff.

Here's a pointless fact for you (because when am I ever going to have another excuse to mention it), this Gunstar fighter was the first realistic CGI spaceship in a movie ever, appearing way back in 1984. They rendered that thing on a Cray supercomputer back when the Commodore 64 was considered a powerful games machine. To put that into even more perspective, ILM was still filming physical spaceship models when they did VFX for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace fifteen years later.

Hey I started my Incoming post by rambling about Star Trek effects, so it's fitting that I should end article about the sequel by getting side-tracked talking about Star Wars. It's like poetry, or something.


CONCLUSION

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I can't say I was enthralled by Incoming Forces' story or enraptured by its gameplay, but it's pretty decent for a shallow shooter that appears to have been made on a budget. It just feels cheap somehow, maybe because every other cutscene seems to feature someone running from one place to another while looking grim (often from an explosion), and the dialogue is all in alienspeak to keep the voice acting to a bare minimum. Though on the other hand the graphics do look pretty nice for 2002. If I'd made explosions that looked this good, I'd show people running from them all the time in slow motion myself.

I've also got to give the developers credit for implementing fantastic mouse control, though they did cheat by making it like a first person shooter in the air. When jet fighters can reverse and strafe around enemies they're not really all that much like jet fighters anymore, though please don't consider that as I complaint as I really do love their absurd agility. I just wish I was able to fire while strafing and still have a hope of ever hitting anything... but I may have mentioned that already.

On the downside they've taken out split screen multiplayer! You could still link it up to another machine via the internet or whatever, but there's no way to get two people sharing the same monitor. No Star Fox 64/Lylat Wars nostalgia for me this time.

Well the game's no Hostile Waters that's for sure; I believe it was once supposed to have RTS features though there wasn't a trace of them left in what I played. But it's got nice simple shooty combat, and sometimes that's all you want. I wasn't looking for any excuse to turn the thing off like I was with Incoming, so it has that going for it at least. Yeah I can see myself playing this some more.

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This is just a friendly reminder that you can leave me a comment if you want, just in case the presence of a comment box below didn't tip you off. But yeah, you're totally welcome to share your thoughts. Encouraged, even.