My first reaction upon being asked to cover Every Extend Extra Extreme was understandably one of moderate confusion. Namely because of the game’s odd title; at a quick glance, one finds it impossible to surmise exactly what the game is supposed to be, yet finds him or her-self irrevocably intrigued. I honestly had no idea what to expect from this game. As an aside, it wasn’t until later on that I realized this was part of a long-standing series originally starting with a 2004 freeware release, which has since been ported to a number of other platforms over the years.

As it stands, E4 (a more tangible moniker the game is known by) is a form of puzzle “shooter”, but with the unique twist in that there isn’t any actual ‘shooting’ per-say – at least, not in the default gameplay modes. Rather, the main goal is to guide your ship into a strategically superior position, and then self-detonate it to set off a series of chain reactions large enough to induce epilepsy into anybody who may be watching. This is because the actual graphical design is simple, yet pleasing and satisfying at the same time.

Here’s how it works: You guide a little star-shaped vessel across a black playing field, while an assortment of objects (be they snowflakes, flowers, or even tanks and planes) float across the screen. All the while a musical beat is playing in the background, with a “Beat” bar at the bottom rising and falling. The challenge is to position your ship in such a way so that when you hit the “A” button, the resulting explosion will serve as a catalyst for all other objects caught in the radius to also begin exploding, which will then cause anything in their range to explode. A nice benefit is that if you hit “A” when the Beat bar is at maximum, you’ll be rewarded with a larger source explosion and a bigger chance of starting a reaction that lasts for minutes on end.

Balancing out the gameplay are power-ups that appear as a result of your detonations, which add essential elements to the game to allow for a larger score (such as providing larger, faster chains of enemies to detonate). Power-ups are absolutely required to achieve the higher scores and multipliers in the game, but the challenge is that ramming any objects with your ship causes the session to ‘reset’ back to the slowest beats and multipliers. Any time your ship respawns, you get a three-second shield where you can fly around and pick up power-ups before being vulnerable; this can lead to hectic situations late-game, where there are hundreds of objects flying all over the screen, and you have to make the hard choice of either detonating early, or trying to squeeze in a few more seconds to get that last power-up. Note however there are occasional shield-extender power-ups that appear to give you a bit more breathing room to work with (if you can catch them).

Another important factor is that most of the game modes are time-limited, which means you need to keep collecting time extension power-ups in order to stand a chance of reaching the higher score echelons (especially as a decent chain reaction can suck up a good amount of remaining time; thankfully the game lets you terminate a detonation chain early simply by pushing the “B” button if you suddenly notice the clock getting low). Given how the core objective in the game is simply to achieve the highest point total possible, the amount of management and reflexive action required to maintain your multiplier going makes for a very satisfying experience.

There are four core gameplay modes; the first two are “time limited” and “time unlimited” variants of the main campaign’s four available levels (which determine the availability of time extension powerups), while the third called itself “The Revenge” and literally does turn the game into a uniquely-styled, crazed action shooter, with more powerful weapons rewarded through level progression. Probably the most novel option however is the fourth mode – “Wiz Ur Muzik” – which lets you import any kind of music track into the game from the Xbox drive or compatible portable device, have it analyzed and converted by the game, and then actually play said song in real-time, with the gameplay adjusted to react to the beats of the designated track. Toying with this a bit shows it to be a very cool novelty, although the gameplay changes aren’t quite as drastic as one would expect; it would be nice to have the game modify the graphics and gameplay pacing even further to match the “tone” of the music.

With its unquestionably unique gameplay style, simple (yet beautifully chaotic) graphical approach, and even a multiplayer component (which I unfortunately haven’t had a chance to test, owing to a lack of players at the moment), E4 is definitely worth the purchase for any Xbox Live Arcade fans who love a gratuitous puzzle challenge. The game’s obscure name also ensures that you can easily give it to a disliked epilepsy-impaired friend under the cruel guise of a ‘gift’, without them suspecting your ruse until it is too late, and the wide range of colors and explosions can even give it a place during drunken LAN parties. Even with its limited count of four main levels and a couple of secondary modes, expect Every Extend Extra Extreme to scoop up a great deal of time whenever it is played.