If I had been given a quid for every time one of my friends nagged me into letting them borrow my cherished copy of Lumines, I’d have £4 by now. Out of the entire library of PSP games I have littered across my personal space (hey, at least Sony now know someone is buying PSP software!), expansive adventures like the two Grand Theft Auto games and Tales Of Eternia always lose out to the simple music and puzzle fusion of Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s block-building classic when it comes to being the game I invariably end up loaning out for depressingly long periods of time.

It was with much anticipation then that I picked up my copy of Every Extend Extra – hereafter EEE as I’m in a slightly lazy Monday morning mood – from the happy fellows at my local video game store one Friday not too long ago. The weekend stretched in front of me like a juicy bit of bacon gently frying under a grill, giving me the perfect opportunity to sit down and have some quality time with a new puzzler without the constant hassle of people wanting to know if they could purloin it for a while.

Explaining EEE should be quite easy, but to anyone who hasn’t sat down with it for a few minutes it usually ends up sounding a complete mystery. If you were to take classic Asteroids action, strip away the ability for your ship to fire and instead replace it with the ability to cause catastrophic explosions, you’d probably end up fairly close to the main aim of EEE. Enemies float across the screen from all sorts of angles, with the player being tasked with exploding his ship in the midst of as many of them as possible to set off a chain reaction of explosions.

Following me so far? Good job. The game is split into levels, with the player being given a certain stock of ships at the beginning. Causing big chain explosions builds up the points total, and once the player goes past a set score they’re given an Extend, which is an extra ship. Thus, careful plotting of explosions can actually mean the most cunning of you will gain ships rather than lose them, and doing so will keep you going for longer each level. Oh, and to make things all the more tricky, it’s one hit kills, so if you crash into an enemy of a bullet spat out by a boss then you’ll lose a ship.

Levels are set to a time limit, with the boss character appearing at a set moment each and every time. However, players can delay the appearance of the boss by exploding certain types of enemy that leave behind sparkly yellow crystals which give the player an added ten seconds to dash about causing chaos. Whilst ten seconds might not sound like much, to the seasoned EEE player it is a lifetime and offers plenty of chances to build up combos and tot up those crucial Extends.

This is especially the case when enemies are flying across the screen at a huge pace, which is something the player also controls. Occasionally a pink enemy will float across the screen and leave a similarly coloured crystal floating about named a ‘Quicken’. Rather than accelerate the rate that time ticks down it boosts the speed in which enemies float across the screen, and as I am sure most of you have worked out for yourselves, more enemies means more points, and more points means more Extends. Hurrah!

The one problem with Every Extend Extra is that the learning curve is pretty much as close to vertical as you can get, with you being thrown right in at the deep end from the very first level. Whilst a simple tutorial mode does help gather the skills necessary through a series of watch, learn and try chapters, doing it all in the heat of the moment is something that will take a good few hours and a number of slightly frustrating failures to achieve properly.

Possibly the hardest thing to get a grip on is preparing yourself properly for the boss battles, and chances are you’ll end up reaching the end-of-level enemies with a minimal stock of ships left to do any damage. Delaying their appearance and using pink and yellow crystals to grab as many points as you possibly can before time ticks down is crucial, and no matter how much you initially doubt it, you will find the skills and tactics needed seeping into your brain and becoming second nature.

As you’d expect from a Mizuguchi game, visually EEE is simplistic, colourful and slightly hypnotic. Each level you come across is themed slightly differently, with the first bunch of three offering classic cross shaped enemies in a space setting, a bunch of coloured bug enemies in a nature setting and a selection of fuzzed enemies in a retro disco setting. Music plays a lot less of an important part when compared with Lumines, but the tracks are the same pounding techno stuff that fits the frantic nature of the game perfectly.

Every Extend Extra is certainly a novel take on gaming, and as such is hard to categorise. Puzzler? Shooter? Somewhere in between to tell the truth. The fact that the game immediately becomes brutally addictive is no surprise given Mizuguchi’s track record, and despite what seems initially to be a practically insurmountable learning curve practice will indeed make perfect, or close to it. With the game being available at a budget price it has to go down as something every PSP owner should at least give a chance. One word of advice though; if you find yourself with a whole weekend to spend with the game like I did, it’d be safe to say that you should cancel any other arrangements you might have had.