Developer: Q Entertainment | Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment || Overall: 8.5/10
(This review is more just a compilation of my notes on the game as I never got around to making a full review 10 years ago when I was playing it.)
Every Extend Extra is a fleshed out remake of the freeware PC game. It is more like a “musical shooter.”
The loading is fine, but only prominent waiting time is during the beginning of starting a new game mode. Retries are thankfully almost instantaneous with no loading. There are several gameplay modes: Arcade (normal, go through a series of stages), Boss Attack (boss rush to take on one or all bosses you’ve beaten so far), Caravan (play through a single stage), Original (contains the Light and Heavy levels from the freeware version). It is not very clear on how to unlock levels for the Caravan mode. I beat Arcade mode but only three are availablee. Also, I have no idea how to access the Omega and Alpha levels or bosses. There is autosave. VS Mode – 1 on 1 over Ad Hoc. Game Sharing shares a demo of EEE, which also contains a Lumines II demo. Training Mode gives you the basics on mechanics but does little to teach you about what the game is all about and how to unlock levels and do better.
To play, you explode your bomb to create as many chain reactions as possible. You collect the green diamonds for points, and more points extend your “Stock” allowing you to continue playing. Red diamonds, called Quickens, give you more speed to move your bombs around. You can change your bomb for a large blast radius. Mini-bosses come along and try to kill you. Yellow diamonds add more time and appear after defeating a mini-boss. Bosses appear when you have around a minute left on the timer. Bosses require a series of chain attacks before ultimately needing a certain amount of hits to be defeated.
The game can be hard to excel at. you can trudge through with low scores, but getting “A’s” would unlock more levels… I think.
Music is very nice, speeds up with more Quickens you have. Menu screen is a little less than exciting, including its music. Graphics are great colors and eye candy that show off the PSP’s screen. A pretty short game compared to Q’s other puzzle game offerings. It is still worth having.