Review: Infinity Runner

Posted by Collin on April 26th, 2015 | 0 Comments | Tags: Infinity Runner , Wales Interactive

As the name implies, Infinity Runner has you running through endless hallways and rooms while trying to get to the next sector. At first glance, it looks like a mobile game that has been upscaled and put on console, but this is not the case. Infinity Runner is actually a PC game that released last year and is now on the PS4.

Infinity Runner actually has a story, and it follows a mysterious person aboard a massive spaceship called the Infinity, who awakes after a slumber of 30 years. A mysterious woman talks to you through the DualShock 4’s speaker and tells you to run as fast as you can. Each section is broken up into two sectors. After each sector, the mysterious woman compliments you on how far you’ve gotten and then sends you to another section of the ship to do it all over again. It’s a very bare bones story and the end game leaves a lot to be desired, culminating in a frustrating, quick-time event heavy encounter.

Gameplay is similar to what you would find in any runner-type of game. The character is constantly moving and you use both analog sticks to weave past obstacles and turn sharp corners. Both triggers on the controller are used for sliding or jumping past obstacles. The controls are confusing at first, as the character is moving so fast. You can’t remember which trigger is slide and which is jump, leading to many deaths and restarts of the sector you were on. Over time, the controls become natural and you’ll be dodging and jumping past obstacles; that is, of course, if you can see them. Deaths can be cheap. Explosions and other obstacles can come into view of the player at the last minute, leading to quick deaths. At the worst times, I found myself not sure what to do or how to avoid the oncoming obstacles, as everything I tried didn’t work. This lead me to restart sectors over and over again. This constant trial and error is when the game is at its worst. Occasionally, enemies will be present in some rooms, leading you to dispatch them with a quick-time event. They are fairly straightforward and you are given enough time to press the correct buttons to proceed on. It’s so infuriating because as the encounter drags on, you are given less time to press each correct button. The final sequence of the encounter has you press L1 and R1 as fast as you can, but no matter how fast you press, you always seem to fail. I had to replay the final level over and over again before I could finally complete it. Another struggle with the game is the audio and visual cues that are given to you when an obstacle you haven’t seen before is upcoming. It’s the game’s way of teaching you, but the cues happen so early, I jumped when it said to jump, only to find out I jumped 5 seconds early and in turn lead to my death. Many hallways are blocked by doors so you can’t see what is in front of you most of the time.

The presentation of the game is lackluster. It’s hard to notice that this used to be a PC game, as it looks like a dated PS3 game or a mobile title. Each sector of the game ends in a cutscene, but on more than one occasion the game glitched and I wasn’t able to view the cutscene, leading to an untold story point. Another frustrating point of the game is that the framerate stutters. In a game where you need to make quick decisions, it’s hard to do so. When you are about to make a jump, the game stutters and your timing is thrown off, often leading to death.

Infinity Runner offers a short Story Mode, with three difficulty settings, and an Arcade Mode. The Arcade Mode is somewhat interesting as you can set the rules for how long you want to play, how far you want to run, or how many points you want to score. The Infinity Challenge is most likely what you’ll want to play as it tasks you with how far you can run before you lose all of your lives. On two straight occasions, I played Infinity Challenge for about nine minutes, ran into an obstacle during a quick-time event, and the game glitched each time leaving my past nine minutes irrelevant.

Overall, Infinity Runner shows some bright spots of enjoyment, but occasional glitches and a broken Infinity mode puts a sour taste in any purchaser’s mouth. Framerate drops, and deaths that don’t really feel like they were your fault, doesn’t help much either. The story isn’t there to hold your interest, even if you can watch the cutscenes. The game can be improved with a patch, but there is a lot here to clean up.

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here.