The Nintendo DS has quite a bit more in common with classic PC gaming than you might realize. There are the remakes of SimCity and Jagged Alliance, but it's also kind of the new home for first-person dungeon crawlers, which were once indigenous to that platform. Now we have Infinite Space, an RPG that in many ways hearkens back to great space combat simulators like Privateer, even if it's a trifle more linear than those sprawling, space adventure titles.
Designed by a Japanese developer, Infinite Space naturally pays respect to the great Japanese science fiction of the 1970s. It's a coming-of-age story starring a young captain named Yuri, who quickly grows to become part Commander Shepard and part Captain Kirk. Yuri's crew swells to more than a hundred recruitable characters as the game progresses, and the great majority of them are extremely likable. But unlike Mass Effect and other recent science fiction RPGs, the real stars of this game are the ships.
