A treat for shmup fans

Today i am going to review MonkeyMan's Infinity Squadron, is this ship has the fuel it needs to get back to its planet safely, or will it sink into the deep oblivion for all eternity?

DESIGN: First of all, the first thing you are going to notice with Infinity Squadron is that it is very simple. Destroy enemies without getting hit and the game gets harder, grab blue tokens droped from dead enemies and you will get a score multiplier. The idea is well balanced, because the more you kill, the more tokens you get, the more tokens you get, the higher your multiplier, and then you get tons of points just by shooting the enemies , but don't get too greedy, because the nemies put up a great fight with bullet patterns that sometimes have barely enough space for you to fit in. If you die, your multiplier drops back at 1. It's somewhat been done before in many ways, but still, this kind of formula still holds up to today's standards and is fun to play.

GAMEPLAY: Probably the best and worst Infinity Squadron has to offer. First of all, you control a ship which can shoot tons of bullets, if you hold the Z key, it will do a spread double kind of shot which is cool, but not accurate. If you keep tapping the Z key, you will always shoot straight forward. Just the way on how you press the fire button can defenitly change the outcome of if you kill everything or have to suffer getting through the bullet patterns. Its very fun to avoid things but the game's biggest problem IS the bullet patterns. Most of them are fine, except for a few enemies. Some enemies will have a high fire rate and their bullets will be nearly impossible to dodge if you stand at the wrong place. Also, if you are good enough you can face huge enemies that upon death, all their bullet on the screen AND their body will turn into tokens. Also, it seems that the biggest enemies have the most balanced bullet pattern as well. In other words, the smaller supose to be easier enemies, end up being harder.

SOUND: Infinity Squadron's sounds aren't great, but descent. Explosions are loud and rewarding, while collecting tokens, will feel oddly familiar...The music in the intro screen is simple yet it isn't great, its good, but not great, but it suits the game fine because you can recongnize that you are playing Infinity Squadron. The in-game music...is an other story. It is pretty cherry , and doesn't fit the in-game action bullet hell gameplay. Well, at least when there are ton of sound effects, you won't be hearing it, so be glad that the sound effects are loud.

PRESENTATION: The graphics of Infinity Squadron are pretty simple, and yet pretty good. Everyting looks like they've come from an NES game. Actualy, the graphics are pretty much 8-bit looking than 16 or 32-bit. Still, the graphics are solid, and for a computer like mine, this literaly means, NO SLOW DOWNS

CONCLUSION: Today, nostalgia is everywhere, sometimes you feel like you would want to play an oldschool game more than a new school game. Some game remakes are pretty good, but it never feels the same. Infinity Squadron really made me feel i was back in the 80's early 90'S(even though i was born in the early 90's only). It is simply old school, and shmup bullet hell fun. Its also hard, which will also remind players of the old days. Its not perfect, it'll never will be, and that's all there is to say. All i have to say now, is that Infinity Squadron, will sure be an infinite amount of fun for shmup fans.

DESIGN:8/10
GAMEPLAY:8/10
SOUND:6.5/10
PRESENTATION:8.5/10

OVERALL: 8 / 10 ( This game is a must for shmup fans )

Review by:
Patrice/Corad/Meffaliss/Dark Factory Co. ( all the same user )