By Gary Kearney

Xbox Live Arcade games are getting to hit their stride and gamers are starting to figure out what to expect from them. Sure some of them are just old games released but others get the idea that an Arcade game should be easy to learn, fun to play, and doesn't necessarily take 40 hours to play. Every Extend Extra Extreme is just that type of a game.

Every Extend Extra Extreme (E4, so I don't get a cramp just writing the game’s title), besides being a fairly difficult name to remember, is a hard game to classify. Best I can say it that it's a psychedelic-musical-fireworks show. Yea, something like that. You control a funky little diamond shaped ship on-screen. As you move around the screen different geometric shapes come floating in from all sides of the screen, generally in big groups. Your goal is to destroy these shapes and have their explosions cause other ships to explode, thus creating a huge chain reaction of things going boom on the screen. But your ship doesn't have traditional weapons like a gun or laser; no instead you detonate yourself to get the chain reaction started. Creating these huge chain reactions for big time points is basically what the game is all about. After the chain is over your ship shows back up in the middle again ready to start the chaos all over again.

So how does one go about getting these chain reactions? Simple, go with the rhythm and collect a lot of power up icons. You see, music is important to E4 and if you time your self destruction with the beat you'll get more points. Explode yourself with the beat several times in a row and you'll receive a 5x score multiplier. The music is of the techno variety and fits the game perfectly.

E4 allows for very high scores, so much that scores of a trillion or more are not uncommon. Getting scores that high involve huge chain reactions, great timing with the music, and the previously mentioned power up icons. These icons show up randomly during the explosions. There are several different types including shields, quickens, extra time among others. What is cool is that you can stop a explosion chain when you see a bunch of power ups that you'd like to have and go snag them.

There are a couple of game modes, one with a set time and another that you can keep playing just as long as you keep gathering up extra time icons. The graphics are very entertaining. Once a few chains start going off they create a very intense display of color and flashes. You know the warning that video games have about their being a possibility of epileptic seizure? Well if any game is going to do that to you this is the one. Once the music, lights, and colors all start going you can very easily get in a zone and before you know it an hour of more has past. Any game that can cause me to lose track of time is a good game in my book.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 83%. Every Extend Extra Extreme is a colorful and noisy waste of time. And I mean that in a very good way.