[Mechanical R]

Every Extend Extra Extreme (E4)

Developed by: Q Entertainment
Genre: Shooter
Number of Players: 1-2
Release Date:
US: October 17, 2007
Japan: December 31, 2007
Europe: October 17, 2007
Australia: TBA 2007
Features: 720p Support, Xbox Live, Downloadable Content




Apologies in advance for what I’d consider a short review, but this could be used as a good metaphor to show how short the time is I recommend you to play this game if you enjoy having your eyesight.

Prepare for Q Entertainments blinder of an Arcade game, an action packed explosive game in which you must blow up your ship in order to destroy surrounding enemies. The idea being the explosion blast radius taking out surrounding enemies to the beat of Dance/Techno music. But how long can you keep your chain reaction going before the time runs out?

Immediately from the title screen your hit with a barrage of colourful backgrounds. The main selection screen is quite small considering all the screen there is to have to its disposal so reading what your clicking on may be hard for small TV users.

There isn’t much to choose from game wise. You have the standard game which starts with 3 minutes of play which can be added on with the power-ups gained from the combos you create. There’s the timed game which has no time power-ups these can last for around 5 to 20 minutes depending on how long you want to play for.

A different game mode is ‘R4 The Revenge’ which is based and plays heavily like Geometry Wars, where you have to take a certain number of enemies out, before fighting a ‘Stage boss’. Its defeat takes you to the next stage and pretty much stays the same forever until you lose all your lives. Entertaining, but only for short periods of time.

A feature that some people may be interested in is you can play the game to your own music. The way to do this may come across a little confusing to some people, where you have to record your track whilst playing it through your Xbox Guide, and then listening to however much of the song you want before playing along with it.

Playing the main game can be fun at first, but as you slowly begin to progress within the level and the beat gets faster, more enemies start coming at you faster. This, obviously means more crazy combos. Great right? Well kinda. The main problem being once you blow up your ship, you have no control whatsoever of what happens. So the combo could die out quickly and you get ready to set another one off. Or…the combo keeps going on and on and on. And you find yourself just sitting and watching all these explosions constantly going off but what can you do? Nothing. Just sit and wait, or close your eyes because the flashing on the screen is giving you a headache its been going on so long.

The graphics are very clear and bright and the game does have an arcadey feel to it, a lot like the theme Geometry Wars has. The beats of the music often falls on deaf ears due to the explosions and other sounds and the only way you can tell the beat speed is by the vibrations of your pad.

Overall, this game is nothing but an arcade game, something that is good but for only short amounts of time, on a HDTV this game can look beautiful and rich with all the colours and sparks jumping from your TV, but for a standard TV user, you may wanna sit quite far back, with lights on. For its price, it’s a nice game, but mainly for testing your HD settings.

Overall – 5.9