Incubation Review

9.4

Format PC

Developer Blue Byte

Publisher Blue Byte

Genre Unknown

Atmospheric or what? Ten minutes after we gave Andrew Wright a copy of Incubation to review, we found him whimpering under the desk on the phone to his mum. And he hadn't even finished his first turn...

Incubation is hardly the catchiest name for a game, but if you want to convey the right mood and atmosphere, it's bang on. I don't know what the word does for you, but for me it conjures up pulsating, slime-green eggs lying in the dark, ready to hatch into loathsome slithering lifeforms. Something totally disgusting behind every corner and every door. Just me, my throbbing weapon and Sigourney Weaver between success and blood-spattered, intestine-ripping failure...

Take the thick, sweat-soaked atmosphere from the Alien films, flavour it with some Doomesque scenery and Warhammer 40K-style space marines and then pour the lot on top of a third-person perspective combat engine such as X-COM's and you've got the essence of the game. Serve it up late at night with the lights turned down and soak up the dark, brooding atmosphere to your heart's content. As a recipe it's as close to perfection as you'll get - but there's more. Incubation has some of the best 3D graphics in the history of the gaming universe - that's without a 3Dfx card.

Oh oh, a funny turn

Did I mention that it's a turn-based game? Now I know that if I use the words 'turn-based' and 'action' in the same sentence to describe a game, some of you will be rolling in the aisles. You might even laugh. Even the moniker 'turn-based' will be enough of a turn-off for a good percentage of frag-loving deathmatch psychos. If that's the case, it serves you right. You'll have missed out on one of the finest games in the known universe. So there.

That's easy to say, of course, but it's a little bit harder to explain. Part of the game's charm is its pseudo real-time views of the 3D-rendered polygonal world of Incubation. You've got a nice simple overhead view, a 45 degree third-person perspective view that can automatically pan around depending on what's happening, and a first-person view if you really want to get in there and see the action.

You can set the camera position to almost anywhere you want, zoom in and out, and even explore areas you haven't actually entered. You move the camera using the right-mouse button for simple in-out and side-to-side adjustments and both mouse buttons together for rotation on the spot and up-down movement. It takes a few minutes to manage, but you'll soon be getting angles you could only dream about in real life.

The only defence against the alien threat is you and your squad of marines. You move each unit one at a time on a square grid and fire at visible targets if you want to. In what the designers call 'free view' (and what you'll probably call motion sickness view), the game determines the viewpoint for any action that takes place and scrolls smoothly around to let you see it. You can even watch the alien's turn if you want to keep an eye on what they're up to. All self-respecting gamers can of course turn this option off.

The polygonal marines and aliens are superbly animated and even when they're not being moved, they're looking from side to side and generally waggling their weapons, adding to the real-time feel. When your men fire, they half crouch, swing the weapon into position and let rip with a wonderfully animated stream of tracers, bullets or whatever. Quick-firing guns even eject spent cases. Cool is hardly the word for it.

From a strategy lover's point of view, there aren't that many actions you can command your marine to take. For example, you can't lie down, crouch or swap equipment so in most cases, game turns are over in a matter of mere seconds. In short, it's as close to real-time as you can possibly get.

Gameplan

Right - I've told you it's gorgeous and I've also said it's atmospheric (actually I haven't, but you know now). So what's the story? Well, you've got all the options you'd expect in a strategy combat game - and more. First and foremost is the campaign game with cut-scenes and a somewhat linear storyline about the good old human race vanquishing the scum-sucking alien horde. Then comes the local straight-into-it game where you pick a squad of up to a dozen men (no Laras here, boys) and battle it out with the beasties until the last man's standing... or not. You've got six different scenarios to choose from, although I suspect we'll see a lot more soon.

Just as important as the solo campaign - and perhaps more so if you like to gauge a game's long-term appeal - is the multi-player option. You don't get to play the aliens but you can have up to four players each with a custom squad of marines playing either over a network, the Internet, serial link or just a plain old hot seat. There's even a play-by-mail option which is cool, especially for Play By E-Mail (PBEM) groups on the Internet.

The multi-player game is nothing short of fantastic and will certainly deliver hours of enjoyment once you've completed the campaign and local pitched-battle games. There are some 20 or so multi-player maps with different objectives for each side based on the troops selected and the number of players involved.

You have a certain amount of points to spend, so you can choose from around 20 different types of marine or recruit and equip them individually. For example, one option is a light infantry marine with basic weapons and light armour, while another is the more expensive 'heavy' with machine gun or whatever you want. On the other hand, if you want a lightly armoured, jump-pack-equipped medic with a mine thrower, what's to stop you?

The points system means you can have up to a dozen lightly-armed men or just a handful if they're staggering under the weight of armour and assorted hardware. Of course, there's nothing to stop you having a quick and easy game with just one or two marines each.

Isle be seeing you

Despite the cool head-to-head stuff, it's the campaign element that really makes Incubation, and it's here you find the somewhat tenuous link to Battle Isle 3.

But hang on a minute - what the hell has Battle Isle 3 got to do with it? Oops, let's retrace our steps a little. Incubation was touted in some quarters as Battle Isle 4, although it's clearly got naff all to do with it really. One of the campaigns in Battle Isle 3 takes place on the planet Scay-Hallwa and at the end of the game the humans colonised it and built a huge forcefield to keep out the undesirables. Incubation steps in with the collapse of the barrier and a horde of aliens rampaging through the city. Worse still, they've also mutated through contact with a human virus.

The campaign starts off with your squad leader and his two men clearing out a building and then progresses through gradually more complex levels and assignments. Squad members are picked up here and there - some are wounded, some need rescuing - and your squad improves from mission to mission, adding new weapons when their skills increase.

You'll be asked to help trapped scientists and civvies, repair or disable various things like power plants and eventually fight yourselves out of a really tight spot. Without giving too much away, the ending might well have something to do with a massive alien nest... To spice things up, many missions have to be completed in a certain number of moves and others, such as those with floating aerial platforms, will involve careful timing. You will also get jump-packs to help complete multi-level missions and face some nasty surprise weapons and traps. On the plus side, the weapons just get better and better, with some ultra-cool ones appearing towards the end.

It's all about tactics, innit?

More and more tactical options become available as things move on and you'll find yourself with 12 different aliens to destroy. You can't just simply blast your way through either, as each of the nasty little scumbags has some feature or other that demands you plan your tactics very carefully indeed. One particular specimen, the Gore'Ther, is almost completely immune to all of your weapons. It can only be killed from behind, which takes some pretty smart manoeuvring. And someone's got to act as the decoy...

Some look like spiders, some are almost invisible and there's one (I won't spoil it) that doesn't even bother to attack - it just explodes in your face, leaving a gas that kills anything in range along with itself. To deal with these critters you need to be able to hold them off at long range. It's when you're faced with three or four different types of alien at once that things can get a bit sticky, not to say difficult. Happily though, there's an undo button so you can quickly cancel a turn and start again rather than saving, quitting and reloading all the time.

Apart from the aliens, there's one other major inconvenience. The simplest alien is the Scay'ger, the kind of trash you can blow away in one shot - except you only have limited ammo in every mission. Blow away too many too soon and you'll find yourself having to resort to close combat - and that ain't too clever because a Scay'Ger can rip you apart if it gets to move first.

Another tactical problem is that some weapons will overheat. Go at it gung-ho and they can stop working or even inflict physical damage. The good news is you've got a temperature graph, so you can keep an eye on them.

Although the plot is fairly linear, there are one or two branches along the way. In most games you'll only have to complete 24 out of the full 30 missions to win, so providing you take different decisions each time there is a certain amount of replayability built in.

I can't think of anything bad to say about Incubation. Yes, it's slow on a bog-standard Pentium 120, but add a 3Dfx card (as I discovered only halfway through the review), and you'll be repeating 'Wow!' ad infinitum until everyone gets really bored and goes home. If you ever needed an excuse to fork out for a 3Dfx card, this is it.

Yes, it is turn-based, but believe me, it just doesn't matter. It's so fast-paced you'll find yourself hitting the control key and reaching for the mouse so many times it's almost embarrassing. If I could think of a more superlative word than brilliant, I'd stick it right here...