Infinite Space

If you like two-dimensional characters, sexist cliches, and unimaginative Japanese faire, then this is the game for you. It's a game that bluntly hammers in its theme with some unastounding and unmotivated characters from Yuri "I NEED to get off this planet" Maincharacter to Misogynist "Men! A few quick shots and they're gone!" Stereotype. Stuttering English dialogue is further drilled into your ear by a lack of captioning, making it take even longer and more difficult to ignore the useless technobabble.

Other plot holes include not just flying AROUND the gate, a bunch of Zero G Dawgs yo, but at least "NUDE MAKER" (yeesh) remembered that the DS can use...gasp...3D graphics! Seriously, in an era of video gaming where the next Kingdom Hearts game is being relegated to a SONY device (PlayAsia, official firmware blocking older games, plagiarizing Nintendo at every turn, etc), it's a FEATURE for a game to be recalling the built-in 3D capabilities that the DS has had since Super Mario 64 DS (which crammed a whole N64 game into a DS cartridge and then some, and was practically the first game to be released for the DS, but nobody seems to remember this).

Don't look for any innovative character designs. Japan's still stuck to its "slap some crazy hair, goofy shoulder garments, and bizarre neck ornaments onto a pink posedoll"phase it's been in since the 80s, so don't expect any aliens in this outer space game apart from monsters you'll have to kill in the typical Japanese xenophobia that was apparent in Sands of Destruction as well.

Did I mention the dubbing? And the lack of subtitles, infringing upon any saving undubbing abilities? It's this kind of blatant incompetence and denial of one's surroundings that plagues developers today. Battles attempt to be unique, but ultimately fall back to the unimaginative, luck-based "rock paper scissors" game that has kept Japan going for over two decades now. And if you were prone to whining about lengthy summon animations back in the PSX days, you'll be happy to know there's more complaining for you to do just in basic attack animations for this game. Actually, you can just tap through them, but still, it's damn confusing to know what's going on in battle with all the jarring jump cuts and cluttered camera angles that don't really provide an accurate view of the scene.

It's all very Battlestar Galactica meets a vaguely interactive slideshow, which seems really sad, because I bet "Nude Maker" (seriously, that's actually the production team's name) had high hopes about a generic JRPG that takes place in outer space as opposed to feudal Europe. Overall, space travel games seem really inappropriate when our own planet can't get over such infantile behaviors as blocking website content for other countries. If you can't act like a planet, don't bother pretending to think as one.

Japaneseness: Enh.
Gameplay: Huh?
Story: Meh.