Joseph Luster
October 25, 2007 Publisher: Q Entertainment
Developer: Q Entertainment
System: Xbox 360
Available: Now
Rating: NR
Tetsuya Mizuguchi is one wild son of a gun. Best known as the virtual king of music-themed videogame escapades, the hotshot designer is behind such beat-thumping classics as Sega’s Space Channel 5 and the unbelievably psychedelic shooter Rez (which is now geared up to hit Xbox Live Arcade in full HD glory). Under his own Q Entertainment label, he’s piloted critical darlings Meteos, Lumines and its follow-ups, and the very unique game of the hour, Every Extend Extra Extreme.
Appearing first on the PSP without the Extreme, E4 is another bizarre title with gameplay that’s heavily tied to music, and now it’s available for 800 points (about 10 bucks) on Xbox Live Arcade. In it, you control a small ship let loose in a sea of attackers, most of which look like multi-colored clovers floating by in the wind. At first glance it comes across like Asteroids mixed with some kind of strange Lucky Charms commercial tie-in, but then the thumping techno kicks in and there’s no time to think of more absurd combinations.
So you shoot the ships, simple as that, right? Nope, there aren’t any massive bullet waves to be found here. In “E4: The Game Unlimited” mode, your goal is to blow up your own ship and set off the biggest chain reaction of explosions possible. You get bonuses for direct hits on larger attacking vessels, and certain enemies release helpful items upon their obliteration. While the obvious pick-up is a yellow one that briefly extends your constantly dwindling time limit, there are also quickens (purple forward icons that speed up the tempo) among a couple others. If you run into an enemy without blowing up then it’s back to the slowest tempo, and it’ll be a while before your score really starts to build up again.
The catch, and this is where the newly dubbed Extreme comes in, is that your score is multiplied whenever you manage to explode your ship on time with the song’s beat. Factoring this in with your 3-second shielding (just enough time to swoop up some items without getting hit) upon coming back from your latest chain reaction and you have a pretty frantic hook that can keep a single game alive for hours and hours.
Before too long, the relentless bump and grind of the beat melds with the visualizer-like aesthetic to create a disturbingly hypnotic experience. Your toes will tap involuntarily, and you’ll get in the groove of hitting that beat perfectly each time without even thinking about it. The only problem with this is that the Unlimited mode is a total test of endurance more than anything else. The game doesn’t really get much harder past a certain point, so scoring high and landing in the “Trillionaire’s Club” leaderboard becomes a game of whose brain will melt first from sitting in front of the game listening to the same song for so long. There are four very different levels to choose from, though, so it’s a good idea to mix it up before your eyes explode.
Luckily, there’s also a Time Limited mode that doesn’t provide you with any clock extenders. Each of the four levels has a time limit of five more than the previous, so level four gives you a solid 20 minutes to rock the score as high as you can. Considering the fact that my longest game of E4 in the Unlimited mode lasted a whopping 3.5 hours, this seems like a very reasonable commitment.
Rounding out this solid addition to the XBLA lineup, there’s an online versus mode that’s kind of throwaway in comparison to the other offerings, and one called “R4: The Revenge.” Remember those bullets I was talking about earlier? Well, this is your chance to get back at those dirty attackers with your own arsenal of space spray. Spread out over a hundred or so stages-each of which is capped off with a rotation of bosses that get progressively more difficult-R4 is a nice if short lived, break from the tiring tests unleashed by the other modes. I thought I had it licked at about level 70, only to be completely trounced by an unforgiving boss with a volley of lasers that practically filled the entire screen.
At such a nice price, it’s hard to go wrong with Every Extend Extra Extreme. The demographic for this game is kind of difficult to pinpoint, but it’s a wide one that will certainly include anyone willing to sit down and really figure out the perfect way to play. I personally think Mizuguchi is one of the most exciting developers currently working in the industry, and I’ll gladly support any future endeavors, no matter how head-scratchingly obscure, that come from Q Entertainment.
