Every Extend Extra Extreme is the newest arcade-shooter on the Xbox Live Arcade system, which in itself is a game that was previously available on the PSP. The first PSP game Xbox Live got was Lumines, which was a really fun game. Are we right to have higher than usual hopes for Every Extend Extra Extreme given the lineage so far? Oh well, it doesn't matter, because whether someone's hype standards are high or low, they are going to get one sweet pulse pounding game.

Every Extend Extra Extreme (E4 from here on) is an arcade shooter where no actual shooting takes place. Instead of shooting (if you're playing the default mode) you control a diamond shaped ship/creature that you float around the screen, and you actually earn points by blowing up your enemies…with yourself. Yes, that's right, in order to do well at the game you're going to have to go all kamikaze on yourself, blowing up whenever you're near an enemy and before your shield drops and an enemy just hits you, costing you a life. If you blow yourself up, however, you lose no lives and keep going on.

The fundamental idea is that you only have so much time in order to get as many points as you can. When you blow yourself up several little colored sparks will shoot from you and attack any nearby enemies, which often appear as white objects floating around. As you explode and then make them explode, they will then setup their own explosion, which will continue on and on until the explosions simply can't explode and leach on to any object to then make them explode. Going in to the game with no understanding of what to do it can be a tad confusing, but then soon you get the hang of it…just when your time runs out. Ahhh.

Now this is where the challenge comes in, because though you only have a handful of minutes to play, you can get powerups to extend your time, giving you longer and longer to play, though your timer keeps counting down. You can extend your time by blowing up specially colored yellow enemies, which will drop a time powerup. Besides the time powerup there are other colors flying across the screen, and when you blow them up you can make the game move faster so enemies come quicker, you can get shields to extend the amount of time you're able to gather powerups, and you can get bonuses to increase your score.

The ultimate strategy becomes blowing yourself up to get points, making your explosion chain so high the points really come rolling in, but not making the chain go on forever until you've run completely out of time and your game is over. Instead, you have to balance exploding yourself for chains and prematurely stopping so that you can float around and gather powerups (especially time powerups) that will give you more time than you would've had if you let your chain keep going without you stopping. It is challenging, as you can make a three minute game literally go for an hour or more when you really get in the groove and know what to do, and typically you'll only die when you try to stretch your powerup gathering just a little too long, lose your shield, and then hit an enemy.

The game gives you four different songs/levels to play through, as well as the ability to play your own tracks that you put into your system. Besides the unlimited mode there is also a timed mode, which only gives you so much time to make chains, and a two-player mode that acts like the single-player basically, where you get info on how your opposition is doing though you can't see their action.

The game has a heavy focus on music and rhythm, as you get bonus points for exploding on the beat of the song, which is represented by a pulsing bar that is on the beat when the meter reaches its peak. Another thing really cool is that many of the explosions explode to the main beat like a syncopated clap song, which gets your head popping and your feet tapping. It's amazing how into the game you'll get thanks to the music and gameplay merging perfectly.

Besides the standard mode there is also a more arcade-esque shooter where you control the same diamond shaped ship, moving around the board, having to destroy a set number of enemies with a constant barrage of bullets (no explosions in this mode) before you fight the boss of that level. The mode in general isn't as good as the standard explosive rhythm modes, but it's still pretty fast and frenetic, and it's also pretty fun too.

Much like Geometry Wars, the graphics aren't too good looking for a next-gen system, but the sheer amount of enemies on the screen at a time, all the explosions and bright colors zipping around, and the rainbow colored effects all help make E4 pure eye-candy for the system. Also, since the game is so built around the concept of music and rhythm, you can rest assured that the game sounds excellent in all its explosive beat majesty. Even if dance and trance music isn't your fave and you'll never be caught dead at a rave, E4 is still a great game and one certainly everyone should try for themselves.

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