INFINITY IS A LONG NUMBER COMING
TRASHSTORM IS NOT A REAL STORY.
IS NOT EVEN GOOD FICTION.
IS TRASH GAME REVIEWS.
ALL OF THE GAMES FEATURED WOULD CAUSE A PERSON DISAPPOINTMENT,
ANGER, FRUSTRATION, DEPRESSION, MONEY LOSS INCLUDED.
TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.
I know I promised to review Galagi Shooter Ultimate Blast, but there's plenty of games that get in the way.
Well, time to go back to the Indie shmup scenery on XBOX. This time is the turn of Space War Infinity by Rising Moon Games and Moraes Games (Space Elite Force series).
Originally released in 2019 for the PC, it made its way to the XBOX Series X and S this 2025. So, let's check it out.
Bordering into shovelware quality.
Space War Infinity's gameplay is very typical and basic in terms of overall shooting. Just hold the fire button and never let go. The main idea of this game is to survive as long as possible since this is one of those Semi-Procedural games where "Random" is definitely in play an in absolute control of the game since each play session will be different, making things unpredictable. Fortunately, your basic weapon while simple as a full frontal fire, has an average firing rate and the enemies go down in 1 or 2 shots, and you're given power ups for extend your survival. However, this is just a temporary solution since they have limited ammo just like the weapons in Metal Slug, but you still have other capabilities at your disposal. First one is the Bomb which can be used by pressing the X button, but there's one that will give you an upper hand.
Buy 1 Level 2 or Buy 2 Level 1 upgrades?
The classic dilemma of Upgrade points.
When you kill an enemy, it drops a few green orbs which are the "Experience" points to fill the bar and get an Upgrade point. You can access to the Upgrade screen by pressing Y. You can increase the amount of energy, bomb capacity, item drops and slowing the enemy fire a bit, this last one really comes in handy since the game pulls some basic Psikyo-styled bullet hell patterns and that can kill you if you're careless due to the ship's speed.
You'll always be zigzagging the thin line between life and death.
While most roguelike shmups are the die-and-start over, this game decides to be a little more tolerant with players by giving them the chance of retrying the stage they were killed, but resetting the experience bar at the beginning of the level they've died, I guess that's from preventing any "Experience Milking" trick like the "Credit burning in Stage 1" from Super E.D.F. and the SNES U.N. Squadron where the player committed suicide after reaching the boss. After clearing a stage, leveling up and dying, it unlocks new weapons so you can pick them on the next continue. Strangefully, the basic weapon gets very powerful when its maxed out. Too powerful it makes the limited ammo weapons useless in comparison as the defaul weapon will address the width and strength and adding side-pods to the ship. Thus, the only purpose for the side-weapons is to unlock achievements by unlocking then and pick them up.
Another thing to mention is the damage tolerance of your ship. While you can increase it with upgrades after leveling up, if you take a hit, you have a brief moment of invincibility, the only thing that causes great damages are the laser beams which can result on instant death, but the fact is that they only take 2HP out of your gauge, so if you have from 3 to 8, you still have a chance to recover.
Believe it or not, that enemy ship is a boss.
As you keep progressing in the game, you'll be facing bosses which features some quite interesting bullet patterns, combined with homing missiles and sometimes laser attacks. While most games display a life bar for the boss or an RPG style numbered indicator, Space War Infinity displays the boss health in a very unusual manner: By depleting the color in the red skulls printed in the boss airframe.
Killing the last boss isn't the end.
Death is not the end...
After killing the last boss, you'll notice that the game doesn't give you an ending or a staf roll. Instead you'll still be in the game. ¿Why? Because the true objective of this game is attempting to break the top score of the leaderboards. But with the gameplay offering zero challenge with an overpowered ship, the fun factor drops to zero after killing the last boss, making you to commit deliberate suicide and get all the unlockables, including the achievements.
Space, space and more space.
In terms of graphics, the game feels dull and generic, and that was before the AI-shovelware that plagues both XBOX and Nintendo nowadays. The scenery is just space. All the time is outer space. Although there's some nicely made planets occasionally, it doesn't manage to kill the repetivity of the game. ¿Does a few in-planet levels would be too much to ask?
The low-budget, multi-level vertical scroll shooter.
Despite its simplicity, the game manages to pull some nice visual effects like a simple parallax scroll effect for the multi-layered platforms in the background, being the best part of the whole graphic department of this game.
The "Smiley Faces" Kindergarten Death Armada
The bosses are laughable, even for an 8-bit shmup. They look like simple blocks that try to resemble the bosses of Star Force, but even crappier since they lack of depth or shadow to make them look detailed.
The music while good at first, it becames boring since the game only has two songs to offer: Title Screen and "In-game", which is very "The Matrix Action" influenced on the techno-thrill inspired soundtrack. Seems like Moraes Games borrows things from movies in terms of music. Space Elite Force has a variation of the Star Wars theme, now this.
SPACE FACTS INFINITY
- The Switch version was included with Space Smash as part of the Arcade Space Shooter 2 in 1 bundle.
The sooner the better.
It is hard to believe that a game that was developed after the impressive Space Elite Force series can be mediocre. Space War Infinity feels more like Shovelware than a commercial game. If you want to support Brazilian shmup developers, then pick the SEF series instead of this.
I wouldn't be surprised if Space Smash appears later, but only time will tell.
Space War Infinity gets 5 R-9s out of 10 because at least makes a little effort on not stinking too much.
One of the very, very few minor offenders in the never-ending sea of dung of trash gaming:
Unconvinced with the result of this game.