Every Extend Extra

[1CCOSA]

One thing about this which has me excited EE fully supports 2P gamesharing, here is what the 2P mode is like from an old IGN preview:

Wireless multiplayer in Every Extend Extra plays really well at this point. You can play against one other person, in only one mode, but it's damn fun. The objective is simple: earn higher chains than your opponent. For every high level chain, you move a giant orb close to the second player. Once it gets into the middle of the screen, they're toast. It's possible to "hit" the orb back and forth for hours, depending on how you play.

And here are some detailed impressions of the import from a shmups member back in august:

So my import copies of Every Extend Extra and Ultimate Ghosts and Goblins arrived today from NCSX. I haven't had a chance to play GnG yet, but here's my thoughts on EEE.


I spent about 2 hours with Every Extend and its definately a winner. The core gameplay is essentially unchanged from the original PC version. Its a shooter/puzzle game where you don't shoot, you blow yourself up. Formations of enemies float across the screen and you try to explode yourself at the right moment to net you the largest chain. Every time an enemy is caught within your circular blast radius, they explode and inturn trigger their own blast radius and detonate any enemies within, and so on and so forth. The larger the chain, the bigger the score. Scoring is not optional in this game, it is essential. Every time you blow yourself up, you loose a life. You earn extra lives (extends) by scoring points via chains and gems.

Once you have survived the stage long enough, you get to fight a boss. They are all varied and creative, but the basic pattern for destroying them is the same. Hit them with a small chain, hit them with a larger chain, then hit them for x damage over any number of chains (each point in the chain is worth one point of damage). Once the boss is dead, its onto the next stage. Stages are like skins in Lumines, each has its own graphics and soundtrack.

There is a nifty player controlled in game difficulty as well. Picking up the pink gems that some enemies drop will increase the game speed. You speed up, the enemies speed up, the tempo of the music changes, everything. When your speed is maxxed out, picking up the pink gems will give you a 10k bonus

The game does a good job of escaping Lumines marathon playing sessions. Instead of facing all the stages in succession you travel on a branching path depending on how well you did. So unlocking new stages isn't a matter of playing the game for an hour long session, you just have to get better at scoring. In the coarse of a single game you will see 7-8 levels, each lasting 2-3 minutes.

Once you beat the game a single time caravan mode (basically a score attack mode on a single stage) and boss mode are unlocked. Boss mode will let you fight all the bosses in succession or just practice against a single boss. There is also a souped up port of the orignal PC game included.

I would say this is Mizuguchi's best use of sight and sound so far. Playing with headphones is near orgasmic if you are into his special brand of insanity. If think Synaesthesia is a gimmick, this game probably won't change your mind, but much like Lumines, the core gameplay is solid enough to still recommend it.


I'll try to put up some impressions of GnG later, but between this and the Dead Rising demo I haven't gotten any work done today.

Now someone needs to go start a high score thread!

I was just able to 'rank up' into the 3rd bracket of levels. I guess they aren't new skins, just more difficult versions of the existing skins, disappointing. The higher brackets are very hard, there are more enemies and new patterns of enemies. Every set of enemies destroyed also leaves behind suicide bullets. However, the biggest challenge is trying to hit the long initial chains on the boss before time runs out.

When you get an A rank on a level, you move up to the next bracket of levels. From the way the level grid is laid out, it looks like it is possible to level down as well if you aren't able to maintain your rank. If you die and get a crap score, your rank is Dot Eater, funny nod to ikaruga. Although the dot eater rank in ikaruga was a challenge in and of itself, here its used as a badge of shame.

It seems like the key to scoring and getting the A rank is filling up on purple gems as quickly as possible. This makes everything go faster, allowing more enemies to flood the screen for greater chain possibilities. Its a nice risk verses reward system. Also, grab the yellow power ups whenever you can, they give you an extra 10 seconds. Kill all the large shooting enemies as well, they drop yellow gems when they die. I think when the timer clicks down to about 55 seconds, that is when the boss is triggered.

[dog$]

It's on my Que.

"Queue".

Someone will keep correcting you until you get it right for once.

[ChaoofNee]

I'm guessing this is a 2.81 firmware game, ain't it?

[Tain]

The import version isn't, at the least. They might've changed it for this, but it's not like it's a text heavy game or anything.

[1CCOSA]

$29.99 @ EB.

http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=190296

LocoRoco has become my background game lately, and I've got all the MuiMui with about a third of the levels having all 20 LocoRoco collected. I wasn't planning on doing a perfect LocoRoco run, it's just kind of happening.

Agreed, getting a better score on Loco Roco adds a nice amount of challenge without being frustrating.

[Therum]

I have a single tip for anyone who plays this game. It applied to Every Extend, and I assume it applies to Every Extend Extra. Forgive me if I'm wrong.

Those "Purple Gems" are called Quickens. After you get 6 Quickens, you don't get any more for the rest of that level.

You want Quickens.

Thus, the optimal strategy is to gather five Quickens, and then either:

a.) Blow up the Pink ships in a way so that the Quickens stay on screen longer. (Easier)

b.) Chain three Pink ships together and gather the Quickens, well, quickly (Harder/Luckier)

You can get a maximum of Eight, and getting at least Seven was actually the key to getting to the Secret Boss in Every Extends Heavy level.

Just thought I'd throw this tip out there....

[bVork]

Man, the boxart for this game is amazing. Some of the best I have ever seen. It's also the first game where the bilingual Canadian packaging doesn't piss me off. Some games here are shrinkwrapped with an extra insert overlapping on top of the normal US one. Unfortunately, this cover tends to be too large to fit inside the case or under the plastic outside the case (where the US insert is). However, EEE has a full outer cardboard package that fits over the entire UMD case. Think VCR-style packaging and you're on the right track. This is great. I hope more companies follow this packaging setup.

This game rules. I've been pirat^H^H^H^H^H testing it since the Japanese release. Very little has changed. All the Japanese text is gone. There's a new male voice that announces time extends and complete sessions. Boss explosions seem a little different. The rankings have been reworded. But the gameplay is exactly as it was before.

Incidentally, the key to getting high scores is getting 7 or 8 Quickens (as mentioned above) and getting every single time extend that comes your way. If you do, you can get stages to last for really long (up to about 10 minutes). More quickens + more time = more enemies and more chances to get huge chains.

This is a must-have PSP game. Go try the freeware original. If you like it, definitely get EEE.

By the way, it uses firmware 2.71, so people into "homebrew" don't have to worry about updating.

Here's some badass EEE wallpaper: http://www.qanyu.com/music/update/20..._pspupdate.htm
I like the third image, which is what the NA cover uses.

[Tain]

I see this game compared to Lumines and Rez all over the place because it's trippy and coming out of Q. Really, don't buy this expecting something with a huge emphasis on presentation. I mean, it doesn't look or sound bad or anything, but if you don't like shooters (or the PC original), you might not like this.

Then again, if you like the PC original, this is so awesome.

[Cheebs]

But do we even care about shit on the PSP anymore?

Not really, no.

[Tain]

man shut yo mouth

Between this and RR2, I've been playing a ton.