I recently imported Every Extend Extra on the PSP, the latest game developed by Q Entertainment. It’s sort of hard to describe what genre it is in – I’d say it’s a cross between a shooter and a puzzle game. You dodge bullets and enemies while trying to blow up your own ship at the best possible moment to cause as much collateral damage to the enemy ships as possible. The game is set to a pulsing electronic beat by various artists, a hallmark of all Q Entertainment products, and has a variety of levels with a good variety of background and enemy designs. (As a side note, it’s great to see this game turn into a full retail product; it started its life out as a independent free game developed by one guy, “Omega”. You can check out the original here.)
So what makes Every Extend Extra a good game? The gameplay is enjoyable as it stands and I’ve always enjoyed Q’s game’s aesthetics but for me that isn’t the biggest part of it. If you look at Q’s previous PSP effort, Lumines, as well as well known game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s (one of Q’s founders) last product at SEGA, Rez, they all share a strong integration of music into the product. I’m not just talking about trendy techno background music either – in all three games, the player’s actions translate to sounds which are designed to integrate into the specific background music track of the level. Here’s an image of Rez:
I think it’s pretty damn cool. The player has the opportunity to add rhythms or melodies to the background music based how they control their in game avatar. It’s not like a normal rhythm game where your ability to perform the required action determines whether or not any music is played at all. No, it’s up to you to add layers to the music that is already playing based on your actions. This is helped along by what I believe is realtime quantizing of the sound play back as a result of your actions to ensure that the sound effects played are in time with the music. You’re unlikely to hit a note right on a beat that matches the song so Qs quantizing tech delays the sound from playing until the next 1/16th note or 1/8th note. It’s imperceptible in terms of feedback – the sounds still appear to be playing immediately – but it aligns them to the beat.
All in all it works well and often times is my favorite part of their games. Getting a great sounding groove going in Rez or Lumines that I’m in control of is an empowering feeling. If nothing else, it’s certainly unique! I definitely recommend if you get the chance to check out any of the three games mentioned above.