Subdivision Infinity review
:: INFINITELY REPETITIVEPrice: $2.99
Version: 1.03
App Reviewed on: iPad Air 2
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Subdivison Infinity is a nice looking space game, but that's about the nicest thing I can say about it. Other than that, it's a grindy game that acts mostly as a treadmill to upgrade and purchase new ships. Unless you are way into mindless shooting or repetitive mission design, I doubt there will be much for you to enjoy here.
Blast off
As far as space games go, Subdivision Infinity's story is pretty par for the course. You are a hot shot pilot that has found himself stranded out in space when some unexpected enemies show up and things go wrong. To solve your problems and advance the story, you'll have to blast your way through these enemies and find your way to new systems to find out exactly what is going on.
This story is doled out in Subdivision Infinity's story missions, which mostly are structured around fighting enemies, but there are other side quests present in the game as well. These are things like mining for resources, and a mode called Free Hunt, where you just shoot enemies for a couple minutes to try and grind out specific resources. Between these mission types, not one of them is particularly riveting, with the mining mode taking the cake for being particularly mind-numbing.
Dueling galaxies
Completing any given mission in Subdivision Infinity involves piloting your spaceship, which is a pretty simple affair. The game has a virtual joystick to control your ship on one side of the screen and buttons on the other side to shoot and use boosters. That's it.
Because of this, a lot of Subdivision Infinity's action doesn't feel as involved or satisfying as a lot of other space games. Most combat boils down to boosting to avoid shots, turning around, and blasting your opponent to pieces. There isn't any throttle control or other form of navigational nuance, making the game feel like it doesn't really even need to be set in space.
Subdividing space
On top of all this, Subdivision Infinity breaks the vastness of space up into little self-contained missions. While its visual presentation may look impressive, the lack of an open-world renders the game devoid of exploration or discovery. Every mission has a distinct purpose, and carrying out those purposes isn't exactly satisfying.
The entire game revolves around gathering resources to use to upgrade your ship, purchase new ships or weapons, or unlock new ships to buy. The narrative of Subdivision Infinity isn't strong enough to make this upgrade system feel worthwhile, and the complete lack of open-endedness in the universe makes it so you don't really have much to do with your new ships except work toward the next one.
The bottom line
Subdivision Infinity looks great in screenshots, but its presentation of space is very one-dimensional. The game revolves completely around repetitive missions to upgrade ships, which leaves a lot to be desired. For the same price (or less) than Subdivision Infinity, you can get a much better space game experience on mobile.