This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on March 14th, 2020.
Welcome back to the PlayStation Basement, a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasize the review itself. Now, let’s go!
Today is Pi Day, a holiday first celebrated by Larry Shaw at the Exploratorium of San Francisco in 1988. Pi Day is celebrated every year on March 14th, as pi, a mathematical constant approximately equivalent to 3.14159 (with continuing digits of what appear to be random numbers). Pi, of course, is used to calculate the area and circumference of circles. Unfortunately, today is also another day in the rapidly chaotic pandemic of the COVID-19 coronavirus. I am sick today myself. Honestly, there is a chance that I may have the virus, as I am a type 1 diabetic. If you were thinking of going out today and cutting up a cold pie with the boys, now is not the time. Instead, you can stay at home and play video games; it’s basically a recommendation from doctors at this point.
For Pi Day, I have a game all about circles – Tall Infinity. This puzzle game, developed by Open Sesame, was originally published in Japan on December 22nd, 1999 by Techno Soleil as Tall Unlimited. A release in North America followed years later on August 20th, 2003 from Agetec. Sometimes this North American version is called Tall: Infinity or Tall Infinity: The Tower of Wisdom. The game was later released on the PlayStation Network in the two regions mentioned and Europe. Tall Infinity is a game where you play as one of several characters navigating the circumference of a tower. The goal is to match colored blocks to grow the tower, which may or may not be the Tower of Babel, to the heavens. Soon the tower will start to grow.
A beautiful image graces the cover of Tall Infinity. Showing the tower rising diagonally up from the lower left towards the moon in the upper left, the colors and textures are beautiful. I love the rich hues and the glows of the celestial bodies. The North American art is basically the same as the Japanese art features the bottom half of the tower covered by clouds. This version also smooths out the tower’s rough edges into something more like a creation from an oil pastel. The logo has also changed from blue to red with differences in font and other design elements as well. Either way, the art is mystical and drew me in to buy this game when I found it a few years ago.
The graphics within the game are not as nice, but they work fine enough. Tall Infinity features a combination of 3D and 2D graphics. The tower is composed of 3D cubes of various colors, while the player character is a 2D sprite. Neither looks particularly good or bad, though the player’s sprite could use some more details: some of the characters have blank faces, ball hands, etc and limited animation. One thing I really love are the backgrounds, which can feature either 2D or 3D graphics. They get especially great as you advance the tower higher and higher. We’ll see more and more as we work our way up.
I love the soundtrack to Tall Infinity. It reminds me of another great soundtrack – Brave Fencer Musashi. Tall Infinity features songs that sound a lot like the musick played at shops, towns, or during minigames in fantasy RPGs. One song even sounds like battle musick. The accompanying sound effects of rolling blocks, rising blocks, and the advancing borderline all sound good too. I also really like the sound used for chaining blocks together. Overall the selection of sounds is limited but curated. It’s a good set of things to hear.
Tall Infinity is a simple game. The player moves around the tower, left or right, and can also walk up the sides of blocks. Once on top of a block, the object can be moved with the player’s character on top of it in the same way people in cartoons move logs. Each space the block is moved causes it to roll to the next side and, therefore, the next color. Blocks can be moved up one block as well as dropped down into lower blocks. Some blocks can only be moved in one direction. Once a block is released, the game checks if the colored sides that are now adjacent to other colored blocks are matching. If the sides match, the tower raises up on those blocks. You can also chain blocks by matching more in quick succession to get bonus blocks to appear. The goal is to fill the entire circumference of the tower with blocks. That fills one step of the current stage. Ten steps are required to finish the stage.
Unfortunately, this is much more difficult to do than it sounds. Every so often the borderline, an area below the player that becomes filled in with a texture like the Tower of Pisa, rises up one step. The time limit is shown on the HUD, and it can be pretty fast to fill. Once the borderline fills entirely through the five default steps and the player’s already built steps, the game ends. While I was able to finish the game on Easy Mode, I could not even complete one stage on Normal Mode. Tall Infinity is a serious climb.
Overall I enjoyed Tall Infinity. The great musick, fast gameplay, color graphics, and fantastic backgrounds made it fun to play. I also just liked seeing how high the tower would go. There are also extra characters to unlock and extra modes to play. I do wish the game was a little easier or more even in its difficulty. I couldn’t believe how doable the Easy Mode was compared to the impossible Normal Mode. There’s a Hard Mode if you are an expert architect too. I hope you have a Master’s Degree at least. If you don’t, Tall Infinity is still fun for puzzle players of all types.
Tall Infinity receives a Good.
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