|
Every Extend Extra isn't an easy game to classify. It's neither a shooter, a puzzle game, or anything else except for a shiny, trippy, colorful high score challenge about blowing things up in enormous chain reactions.
At the start of a game, the player is given a pile of bombs and dumped into the middle of the play field. "Enemies" drift in from all sides; little cubes in V formations, and the trick is to maneuver around and detonate your ship so that as many enemies as possible are obliterated. A quick tap on the Explode button creates a small blast radius, while holding it down and charging enables a much bigger blast while slowing down the speed the bomb can move. Each destroyed enemy also causes a small blast radius of its own, so proper positioning will cause a chain reaction that piles on the points as the score multiplier kicks in.
Every Extend Extra is an excellent piece of portable gaming, and its style fits the PSP perfectly.
|
The major scores won't come until later in the level, however. Each level (or "drive", as EEE calls them) starts off slow, and destroying the scarce pink enemies causes them to drop a gem that, when collected, speeds up enemy movement and appearance rate a bit. The bar on the upper right keeps track of how many have been collected, with eight being the maximum, but once the sixth has been collected they stop appearing. So, to maximize not just scoring opportunities but level difficulty, it becomes necessary to carefully manage the pink enemies so that gem #6 stays on screen long enough to harvest #7 and 8. In the mean time, fifth speed is happening all around, with enemy flocks coming in from all sides and quite happy to screw up all your clever plans. The initial simplicity of "make big chain reactions" quickly turns into an enjoyably challenging session of multi-tasking threats and opportunities to reap gigantic scores. And that doesn't even take into account the time limit.
Nope, fighting off the pressure of each detonated bomb costing a life and the need to maximize points to earn more just isn't enough, so there's a time limit before the level boss arrives. More time can be earned, in 10 second increments, by collecting the yellow gems dropped by the destruction of the larger enemies that rise up from the bottom of the field, and they only show up when a decent amount of the regular enemies are destroyed. So the flow of the game becomes one of destroying the regular guys while harvesting the pinks, grabbing the extra time drops as they become available to fight back the clock, aim for eighth speed so that larger chains equal more points for more lives and more chances for extra time. And don't get hit, because each accidental death knocks five seconds off the clock.
Time will be up eventually, though, and then it's boss fightin' time! The various bosses are all large and creative, and while they're laying down patterns of firepower the regular enemies are still swarming the screen. This is a good thing, however, because the only way to damage a boss is by a multi-hit chain of destruction. A successful attack on the boss also gets him to drop a time gem or two, which is for the best because no matter how well you're doing, when the clock hits zero it's "Game Over, Continue?" While there's nothing technically wrong with continuing to see the amazing effects and designs of the later levels, it kills any hopes of a high score by resetting it to zero.
Of course, sometimes you just want to see what's next rather than max out your score, and the Q Entertainment formula of making every level something different more than justifies abandoning a shot at the high score table. The initial cube enemies drifting over a background looking like the inside of a sphere gives way to insects flying in formation, then little blobby creatures skating over the surface of a pond, and a host of other styles. Meanwhile the music changes with each level, not to mention increasing in tempo as the gameplay speeds up. Like all of Q's output on the PSP, Every Extend Extra is one of the sleekest, most stylish games around, filled with lots of abstract prettiness and color while still keeping things so that it's clear where everything is and what it's doing.
While the main game has a good selection of levels available, there are also a handful of extra modes to round things out with. The single level and boss rush modes are fun enough to mess around with, but the Original mode, featuring the freeware PC game Every Extend Extra is an enhancement of, is as great for a quick blast of gaming as it ever was.
Every Extend Extra is an excellent piece of portable gaming, and its style fits the PSP perfectly. The sleek presentation and techno vibe go hand-in-hand with the abstract gameplay, which, while not the adrenaline-rush it looks on the surface, is still a lot of fun when the screen is turned into a giant field of explosions. Managing the dozens of potential threats, waiting for just the right moment, and letting off a major blast that chains through a few dozen enemies is always fun, and watching an average level's score go from a few hundred thousand into a few million with a bit of practice is incredibly satisfying. There aren't too many games out there that are totally unique, and Every Extend Extra shows why it's worth the trouble to seek them out on the rare occasions they come around.
|
