Game Review: Every Extend Extra Extreme (Xbox Live Arcade)
There is no way in hell I can come even close to describing Every Extend Extra Extreme (or E4) as well as Tycho did today, but I will try my best. When I first tried Mizuguchi's Every Extend Extra for the PSP, I was a bit confused. Turned on to the game by its curious cover art (which features a minimalist style with the contours of a woman's face being traced by dripping rainbow strands) and pedigree (Q? Entertainment being the house behind Rez) I was eager to understand its strange, abstract concept. It was presented as a sort of top down space shooter would, like Asteroids or even Geometry Wars. I didn't seem to grasp the idea that there was a sort of rhythm game component, and its lack of a tutorial mode made things even worse. Instead of shooting at enemies, you destroy yourself, your explosive death cascading into passing baddies (I guess they aren't evil per sé, more neutral. Neuties?) which in turn explode and affect things around them. The goal is to get bonuses which extend the ever-counting down timer, and rack up a high chain score.
The Xbox Live Arcade version features the same style of game play, remixed, honed and perfected in gorgeous HD and eargasm inducing 5.1 surround. Remember the first time you played Geometry Wars? Yeah, it feels like that. The experience of the visuals matched with the thumping bass and rumbling controller, with the beat-based combo multipliers and trippy concept is so immersive it feels like a drug trip. One of the good ones. It feels like a game that a scientist would have subjects play while he was dosing a new form of MDMA, with tubes and nodules stick to their faces, their never-blinking eyes watering.
I still don't ultimately understand it. The game play relies on feelings and interpretation more than anything. I am beginning to understand why they avoided a tutorial, because so much of the experience feels like a learning process. It's intensely abstract but not boringly so. There is a classic arcade-style game beneath the artistic flair, one that I know is going to get a lot of play from me. E4 is available on XBLA now, and I highly recommend it. I was really looking forward to being able to play Rez for the first time when it comes out for XBLA, but now I can't wait.
Score: 5/5 Buy it!
What say you?!