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| Source // Microsoft |
The puzzle shooter, as a genre, is a peculiar one. Not only do you require quick reactions to bob and weave through obstructions to get to where you need to be, but you think to think just as fast to take in everything important, process it, work out what it all means, and act upon it with those aforementioned quick reactions.
Every Extend Extra Extreme, or E4 for brevity, has both a peculiar premise and a peculiar name. In it, you are piloting a ship through a 2D space with one goal: To blow up. Again and again, triggering chain reactions amongst your foes to rack up high scores and task the Xbox 360 with rendering every single colour it's capable of.
Is that it?
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| Source // Microsoft |
Fun Times
Pretty much, yeah. The left stick moves your ship if we can call it that. It's the yellow cross near the left that has the blue bits on the ends. Not sure what those blue bits are, but you're definitely the yellow diamond cross thing. Trust me.
The A button causes you to blow up, hopefully in the vicinity of the white cloverleaf-looking things, which in turn blow up and cause more of them to blow up, which cause yet more to blow up - you know how chain reactions work.
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| Source // Microsoft |
This happens again and again until it stops. I don't know why it stops. Do you have only a certain amount of self-destructs available? No, I ran out time, I think. Eh, either way, the gameplay was that simple.
And it was boring.
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| Source // Microsoft |
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| Source // Microsoft |
From what I gather, you're supposed to trigger explosions to the beat of the music for maximum points. Or did I read that all these explosions play out like music, adding a pounding bass-line to whatever electronic noises are taking place on top?
I really don't know. My time with E4 was one of not having a clue what I was doing, then watching stuff happen, seeing the odd bit of text telling me I was doing good, then respawning and doing it again.
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| Source // Microsoft |
It was literally like pushing a button attached to a speaker that had children shouting "Yay!" as a party popper popped off. My reward for just pressing the A button was every colour imaginable, an awful lot of meaningless numbers, and the chance to do it again because that's fun, I guess?
The only fun thing about E4 was how bright and colourful it looked. It made Geometry Wars look bland, but at least that game had something for you to pay attention to in the gameplay department.
The demo I was playing does have a more traditional shoot 'em up mode that plays much like a generic 2D shooter set inside an RGB keyboard, but it was arguably worse than this explosion malarky. After fifteen minutes I was just left wondering what on Earth I was playing this for.
Final Word
I'm sure there's a game in here, and strategies regarding when to detonate, but why bother? You press A and the lights come on. That's it. If that's what you want, my goodness, you'll get your money's worth here.
I'm missing something, I must be. E4 is an Extreme version of Every Extend Extra for the PlayStation Portable, which is itself a version of PC title Every Extend, only with extra bits, I assume. E4 looks incredibly flashy when all the colours of going off, and with VR and 4K and whatnot, I can only imagine how the next instalment would look, should there ever be one.
But why play it for more than five minutes? I don't understand. I just can't explain to you why you'd want - or need - to play this game. Surely, it's not just for the visuals.
Maybe I'll check out the PSP version, but only because I adore the PSP. E4 isn't drawing me in itself.
Fun Facts
Other modes of the game use your own music collection to generate stages to play in. Is that a reason for you to jump in? Not for me, no.
Every Extend Extra Extreme, developed by Q Entertainment, first released in 2007.
Version played: Xbox 360, 2007.