Posted on: November 2, 2021
eddee
Verified ownerGames: 516 Reviews: 51
Underrespresented genre
Gunmetal, Battle Engine Aquila, and Scorched Planet. The first two on on GOG, but all three are the only vehicular combat games I know of where you can morph (aside from Transformers games, but... eh. This discussion will largely be ignoring those games.) Gunmetal is the only game where you transition from third person shooter (on foot) to third person flight sim. It had EVERYTHING I wanted as a kid: transforming, giant stomping robots, fighter jets, nuke cannons, swarm lasers, homing missiles, and lots of stuff to shoot in open world level environments. The only letdowns are the short campaign (less than a dozen levels IIRC) and no endless arcade mode, for which I dock 1 star because I was actually quite upset as a kid when I reached the end of the game. "What, that's it!?" Battle Engine Aquila has a longer campaign and more missions, but fewer weapons and it's not as pretty or engrossing to me (though it does have self-aiming turrets in walker mode). Scorched Planet can be had for free, but it can also be a bear to set up as it was released for DOS then mishmashed into accepting Windows and 3DFX Glide/Voodoo in various versions. Scorched Planet had similar-yet-slightly-worse graphics to Incoming. Overall Gunmetal is the best of the bunch for older games, and the later Transformers games released ~10 years later had very linear levels and pathetic transforming (for the most part). Oh, and if you're a Macross fan: GET THIS GAME NOW!!! See the video above, you even get missile massacres and homing lasers... without GunBuster's drama. Weapon sets depend on what form you're in (ground/air). Ground tends towards overwhelming firepower, aerial tends towards multitarget homing attacks. You can also transform in midair, fire a nuke, and turn back into a jet again if you want. Pure arcade action, interspersed with walking/flying between enemy hoard locations.
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