Incoming

Dear video game developers. While we certainly appreciate your efforts in bringing us the highest quality graphics that processors can process, we do politely request that you throw in some gameplay as well. Yes, blowing stuff up real good is fine and dandy...and even a little fun now and then. But a successful recipe for a game requires more than just the two ingredients of "pretty" and "ka-boom." It was thoughtful to include the use of multiple vehicles--we have to admit, the manned turret stages are cool. But when the choice of other rides includes slow-as-molasses tanks, hard-to-control helicopters and jets whose cannons are as useful as 3B guns, it's difficult to get too excited. Oh, thanks for the two-player mode, but no thanks. The excitement level there didn't raise our heartbeats one bit, and after five minutes, we desperately wanted to turn it off. No offense. Anyway, it's fairly obvious this game is nothing more than a technology demo, so in those regards, you have a runaway success. Personally, I'd give the game a "io" for visuals. Anyone who wants to show off what their DC can do should, without a doubt, use your product. But we're sorry to say, the overall, repetitive experience of going through unimaginative mission after unimaginative mission has left a bad taste in our mouths. Sorry.

Incoming reminds me of all those ho-hum games that hit the PC at the dawn of 3D acceleration. It's a nice-looking shooter with dull, supremely simple game-play. Sure, I like to blow stuff up as much as the next twitch gamer--and Incoming gives you plenty of targets. Its turret stages are satisfying in a primal kinda way But you'll find much better action games for the Dreamcast (Expendable, anyone?). Rent this for really cheap, really short-lived thrills.

You can really tell that this was developed when 3D caras were first emerging on the PC games scene--because Incoming is quite literally all style and no substance. Using every graphical trick the team at Rage could think of, the whole thing is just a mess of colored lighting and fancy effects. Underneath all this though is a repetitive old-school shooter that will keep you interested for about 30 seconds. Don't waste your money.

Incoming is in desperate need of an interesting plot or story line; It has everything but that. The graphics are beautiful, the frame-rate is fast and smooth, the explosions are incredible...It just has nothing to bring it together. It's a shame, it could've been great. On the other hand, as a mindless shooter it's not bad. Unfortunately even that gets boring. Like Shoe said, if nothing else. Incoming is a fine showcase of the Dreamcast's graphic power.