Every Extend Extra Has Made an Impact

E4: Every Extend Extra Extreme is available on XBLA for 800 points in North America.  I gave the demo a quick look this morning.  I found it much simpler to succeed than the PSP version.  There was just tons more on the screen than on E3.  The object of the game is to position your marker in a strategic location and blow it up!  Ironically, if something hits your marker, it blows up without taking out the other things on screen.  You must be very careful to collect more "extends" before blowing them all up, or the game is over.  It becomes a game of careful resource management, with a "BOOM!"

But I say in the title that E3/E4 has made its mark, you need look no further than Blast Factor on the PS3 from the Playstation Network.  Blast Factor is a simple shooter, but to get the tough levels, quickest times, and higher scores, you must employ the E3/E4 tactics of chain-reaction explosions.  For example, a large creature takes 50 hits to kill, but if something else explodes nearby, it will explode in just one shot.  Many times, this will take out the entire wave of enemies in Blast Factor.

E4 also reminds me of something that is becoming quite common in games.  The funny thing is that it is the rewards system that used to be the only incentive to play some of the earliest videogames.  E4 rewards your skills with score, pretty graphics, and mesmerizing sounds.  In this day-and-age of gaming, score is a measure of both skill endurance, but not much else.  You won't hear people brag about scores much, unless it is a special gathering or contest.  So you get to the next level, you get trancier music, new animations, new "themes" and "skins" for your gameplay.

Even though getting to that next level is now revived in gameplay, they do it so much better now.  If you have ever played Pitfall on the Atari 2600, every level was exactly the same.  Now they change the graphics and sounds completely and transition smoothly.  It's these "discovery" awards that make some games popular.  I doubt Lumines would have been very popular without the graphics and sounds enchancements.

The primary reason score isn't as big of a deal anymore is that we no longer have to wait six months for a new game to come out.  Why bother getting really good at one thing instead of just experience a bunch of games?  Xbox Live Arcade and Live Leaderboards is helping bring it back.

The old-school rewards of sights and sounds will be out in full force when Rez is made available for XBLA.  And no game does it better.  But Every Extend Extra has really boiled a game into one mechanic that will be re-used for a long time.