Infinite Space puts you in the shoes of Yuri, a boy with a yearning to travel the stars and become a space adventurer or “Zero-G Dog” in the parlance of the game. As Yuri, you captain your own ship and fit it out with various nifty modules such as hangars, deflector units and even nature domes. You can arm your ship with a variety of weapons from lasers to missiles to torpedoes and more. You will get to add ships to your fleet and upgrade your gear as the sprawling story progresses. Along the way you will meet a huge cast of characters, some of whom you may hire. In standard RPG fashion, Yuri and his crew gain battle experience and level up, increasing their skills in useful areas, including Navigation, Artillery and Maintenance. All of these elements then play a part in the ship to ship combat which is the core of the game play.

While Infinite Space is a portable game, it’s not really one that you can just pick up and play. There is a very brief tutorial that explains the basics of ship combat, but apart from that you are on your own. The interface really does not give you many hints and it’s often unclear what certain figures or gauges represent or what effect a particular module might have. Add this to the punishing difficulty early on, and some players may toss this title out an airlock. This is one game where it really pays to read the manual. A more comprehensive “Zero-G Commander’s Guide” is available for download and is worth obtaining. This guide contains really useful information on each ship module and explains the various crew positions. This information should have been included in the printed manual, or better yet, provided as context sensitive information within the game. There is a Help area that can be accessed only from space ports in the game, but the information is buried under many different menu trees.

The meat of Infinite Space lies in its combat and the customisation of your ships and crew assignments prior to battle. An innovative ship customisation mini game allows you to install a vast array of ship modules with different bonuses and capabilities. The options available to you depend on blueprints you acquire throughout the game.

During the fleet battles you pick from a few rock-paper-scissor type attacks, each one draining a certain cost from your ‘Command Gauge’. The combat is all about anticipating your enemy. Once their attack starts, it’s too late to do anything. Your foes don’t always do what you expect and I found early battles very unforgiving. Lose your flagship and it is game over. Later on, once you have more ships, greater durability and increased firepower, mistakes are not so critical. The ability to launch fighter craft was particularly useful. Your ships are repaired whenever you dock, but sometimes the game throws you from one tough battle straight into the next. Factors such as range and position also need to be considered. Animated cut scenes showing your fleet firing their weapons and then damaging the enemy vessels are nice touch, but get boring after a while and just make combat take much longer. Thankfully these scenes can be skipped. It is satisfying watching your enemies ships explode though, and I didn’t skip those that often.

You will also occasionally partake in melee battles, which use a more rigid paper-rock-scissors mechanic. These aren’t as fun and the overriding factor seems to be your combat skill value, which is poorly displayed as a tiny number in the melee interface. This is not highlighted in the guide or manual.

Apart from battles a fair amount of your time will be spent plotting courses between various planets and warp gates using straightforward map interface. The game universe is huge, but you can’t view more than one system at time. It can get a bit frustrating when you need to go to planet in another system and can’t remember how to get there.

Without a doubt (in my mind anyway), the strongest aspects of Infinite Space are its story and characters. Not long after leaving his home planet, Yuri gets mixed up in a plot full of political twists and turns. There are also many personal stories that add a nice touch to the space opera that unfolds as you play. This really helps draw you in and makes you care about your crew. The story presents you with many choices which affect the outcome of the game and may deliver skill increases, new blueprints or recruitment opportunities. There are also optional jobs offered by bartenders. I really could have used a journal or mission log as I often forgot mission details between play sessions.

Most of the story is presented as text conversations, although there some neat little cut-scenes. Be prepared to tap your way through reams and reams of dialogue, and almost certainly encounter the same long conversation many times until you trigger an event that moves the narrative along. It can be quite maddening. Dialog can be a bit corny, but it’s fun. One of my favourite immortal lines occurred after a pirate destroyed a cargo ship I was after. Pirate: “You’re too late to get a single farthing!” I’ll bet!

You can save your game at most space stations, which is advisable, since there are several instant death scenarios in Infinite Space.

After completing the game you unlock the Extra and Game+ modes which give the game more longevity. Extra mode gives you your blueprints and crew from your unlock save and challenges you to progress through a number of systems, beating bosses as you go. Game+ is another go through the story with more goodies available.

Infinite Space is a mixed bag. The strong story and good RPG elements can get mired in the game’s unforgiving nature. There are definitely elements to enjoy here and if you take some time to read the manuals and do the tutorials you will save yourself a lot of frustration. With a bit of patience and perseverance, perhaps you might enjoy Infinite Space. As for me, my journey continues. Course heading? Second star to the right… and straight on till morning.*

*_{Captain James T Kirk, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, paraphrasing Peter Pan, Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barry}

Worst red eye reduction ever. Stupid camera.