Homebreviews - part 36

Video Game Reviews

Entry posted by Nathan Strum June 24, 2010

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I had one more game that came in after the last batch...

Incoming!
4/5

Incoming! is a 2600 port of the classic computer game Artillery. You and another tank face off against each other across a variety of terrains. Factoring in wind, the angle of your shot, and how much power to use, you take turns firing at each other. The first one to hit the other tank a given number of times, wins.

While there's already a similar 2600 game called Artillery Duel (by Xonox), Incoming! literally blows that one away. Incoming! has superior graphics, better sound, faster gameplay (Artillery Duel is agonizingly slow), and most critically - more varied and destructible terrain. Incoming! also features both one and two player options, two skill levels, and you can change the number of hits needed to win. The controls for adjusting your angle and power are a bit too responsive, and it can take a fair amount of fussy joystick-tapping to set the values you want. There's also an odd quirk where your tank can hang out in space - suspended by only a single pixel, and the game lacks any sort of congratulatory tune or message when you win, but those are relatively minor complaints.

Incoming! uses a tried and true game formula, and there's a good reason Artillery has been ported to so many systems - it's addictive! The random nature of Incoming! means no two games will ever be the same, and it makes for a perfect quick game against the computer, or for an entire afternoon spent firing salvo after salvo at a friend. Really good two-player competitive games are pretty rare on the 2600, and rarer still are the ones that will also put up a good fight in single player mode. The computer AI is deadly accurate on normal difficulty, but once you get a feel for the game, you can give it a good run for its money. Incoming! is a great adaptation of a classic game, and well worth having in any 2600 game library.

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