The evolution of the old.
I don’t know how many times Taito and Square-Enix are planning to recreate Space Invaders, but if they keep it fresh enough, I doubt I’m going to mind buying what is essentially the same game over and over again.
[image1]Infinity Gene for the PSN and XBLA borrows heavily from the two Extreme games on Nintendo DS by offering a small handful of upgrades for your ship and filling the screen with a flood of invaders, from tiny to gigantic, that desperately need a good shooting. This time, however, you choose your one specialty gun before you start firing. It has to be done this way, because it would almost be impossible to tell what gun you would be picking up; with the exception of the rainbow-colored power-ups, the entire game has a vector-styled, black-and-while motif.
There are three modes to choose from: Normal, Challenge, and Music. The only one playable in the demo was Normal mode, which consists of stages pieced together to keep the action going with different foes attacking at all times. There is no timer to speak of, but you can refuse to shoot anything (including the mid-bosses) on the screen. I can only assume there is some kind of Achievement/Trophy like “Dot Eater” from Ikaruga.
[image2]There are even six different guns to choose right at the onset: Rapid, which was available for play and is just what you’d think it is… a rapid-fire, traditional firing gun, in addition to Round, Search, Wave, Lock-On, and Gravity. It’s hard to tell just how the other guns will function in actual play, so I don’t think I should speculate here. Still, if they all control differently, it could almost be a personalized SI experience. There is also something called a “Nagoya Attack” listed in the results of each stage, but I have no idea if that’s some sort of bonus round, or a super attack if enough power-ups are collected, or something else. It’s so vague, I honestly have no clue.
Space Invaders Infinity Gene comes out for PSN and XBLA on September 14th and 15th, so if you need a classic fix, it should hold your attention for a while. And how did those big invaders grow so large? What did they start feeding them? Humans? Probably…
