Space Invaders Infinity Gene: An iPhone Game Hits XBLA with Style

For those of us who prefer to play our bullet-hell shooters on HD televisions with actual controllers, Taito's decision to release Infinity Gene on PSN and XBLA is something of a godsend. In case you already played the game on the iPhone, you should know that this is a very similar game to the one you downloaded last year, with a couple of tweaks (one minor, one major). Obviously playing the game on a large HD screen makes Infinity Gene's trickier moments much more manageable, but the kicker is that the developers created an entirely new gameplay dynamic for this console release.

The game starts out like the arcade original, with a simple black-and-white screen of classic Invaders gameplay; but like the title implies, an evolutionary motif is evident both in the game's mechanics as well as its aesthetic. You still shoot down alien attackers, but before long you're moving around the screen in all directions, and soon after that your perspective shifts from 2D to 3D -- a new aspect of the console edition. The result is one of the most effective blends of retro and contemporary game art styles I've seen since Aksys' Bit.Trip series.

That said, Infinity Gene's core color scheme rarely moves beyond the simplistic two or three-tone palette of the earliest arcade games, and even the most visually advanced enemies are still Atari-grade vector drawings. Effects and backgrounds are handled the same way; explosions and other on-screen actions are made with simple geometric shapes rather than animation, while stages themselves vary from flat, scrolling grids (think Atari's Star Wars arcade game) to 3D wireframe perspective planes. Visual evolution is just as important as the mechanical type, and Infinity Gene's retro, minimalist results are pretty impressive.

But the odds are stacked against you in a different way than most other shooters. In most bullet hell titles, if you're engulfed it's usually with the complex, overlapping patterns of bullets, not with endless legions of enemies. Not so with Infinity Gene. Shooting a path through a wide, constant flurry of ships (which would kill you instantly if you let off the fire button for a second) is not an uncommon occurrence. Infinity Gene is still hard, it just takes a slightly different approach than you might expect.

Click the image above to check out all Space Invaders Infinity Gene screens.

If you haven't played Infinity Gene already, or even if you have, it's a worthwhile purchase at $10. If you can get past the short stages, repeating bosses and, for some of you, buying the game again, the superb design, extra modes and inventive use of retro style seen here is well worth the price of admission.