PC REVIEW; Incoming (Rage) cd-rom

In the beginning was Space Invaders, then came Star Wars, and more recently, Battlezone. Can Incoming, by Rage, take a place alongside its illustrious predecessors in the alien-destruction field?

The premise of Incoming is that aliens have been visiting our planet, peacefully, for centuries... until now. In 2008, however, UFOs attack the International Space Station, and it is your job to get into any available vehicle and drive them back.

The game adopts the same style as Battlezone. You have a first-person perspective in the fields, although here the player only controls a single unit rather than an entire army. You have the choice of several vehicles - from an Apache helicopter to an intergalactic fighter - and several modes of play. Firstly, there is the main game option: the scenarios. In this, you start off in Africa and have to complete three set phases. Once you have done so, you can move on to other countries in need of your help. Other modes include the arcade game, where you choose which vehicle you want and wander around with a licence to kill. And finally, there is the traditional multi-player option, but with the choice of split- screen, which is unusual for a PC game.

Graphically, the game is very pretty, but the sounds are not as smooth as they should be, especially when the engines sound more like a hairdryer than an advanced fighter jet.

While the game is very intriguing, and it is a lot of fun seeing your enemies drop like flies, Battlezone looks likely to remain on top of this mountain of games for some time to come.

On release, pounds 39.99