(Every Extend Extra Extreme in all its rainbow-colored glory, before the sheer extremity of the game itself hits you full force.)

So there have been two games released in the past two years for the PSP (which was roughly the time I decided to trade mine in) that I've been genuinely interested in playing: the remake of Final Fantasy Tactics game, and Every Extend Extra. And since the original Playstation version of FFT is safe collecting dust in my game cabinet, E3 was left as the only game I was upset about not getting my grubby little paws on.

But Q Entertainment has heard my wishes - that or they decided their PSP version wasn't netting them the sales they felt they were entitled to - and tacked on another "ex" word to create a XBLA port: Every Extend Extra EXTREME. Now I've obviously never played the handheld version, but I think the flattering final word comes from the massive score you can get in a thirty minute playthrough of the game, which is what it took to net me this score. Observe.

And I'm not even technically all that good at this game. There are people out there that can rake in hundreds of millions of points in a matter of minutes. There are people who can score into the quadrillions, easily.

Now I was, at best, okay at Rez, and I sucked so badly at Geometry Wars that Xbox purged the game from my hard drive when I brought the disk over to my second system (true story). But E4 makes me feel like a freaking rock star with its generous scoring system. But I guess they have to give the players something when all you do, in essence, is move a pulsating cross around on a black screen and make it explode in front of other cross-hatched objects. Believe me when I say it, folks. Extreme.

So then why is this game so much fun? I tried to explain its appeal in my review, but I'll be honest: the addictiveness of E4 is beyond my frame of comprehension. Still, I'd strongly suggest people download the trial game and try it out for themselves.

Hmm, let's observe the facts. It's 4:36 in the morning. I'm still awake, and have only a few hours separating me from the coma-inducing happy times that work promises. Perfect time for a blog entry.

The Orange Box still impresses me, though I find myself hitting frustrating patches in everything but Portal, which, being a puzzle game, should at leastgive meone throw-the-controller-against-the-wall moment. It's an unwritten rule of gaming. But I'm playing the last of the advanced puzzles, and the worst the game has made me do was release an annoyed hiss every now and then (see: replay of the turret gun level), which is really quite impressive when you think about it. Half-Life 2, I've since discovered, enjoys erecting invisible walls once you pass key areas, a problem that I never encountered when I first laid eyes on the game three years ago, but then again, that was three years ago and I didn't waste my time doing stupid things like exploring in excess. Or more aptly named, the "exploring without the necessary equipment, you loser" syndrome that I've recently caught. I don't know. But I do know that I was playing through "Water Hazard" today and after abandoning my airboat, I waded through the canal and boom - toxic water tunnel. So I backtracked and then... nothing. I was stuck on an invisible box that even my trusty crowbar couldn't penetrate. Jumping did nothing, crawling did nothing, and I knew I had traveled through that passage because the hunter-chopper (which was facing the same invisible box dilemma in a far-off corner) had kindly marked the tunnel with a splattering of my blood the first time around.

Eh, it's not a big deal, I know. But it's 4:57 right now, the sun will be peeking through my window shortly, and I need something to channel my insomnia through. So I picked Gordon Freeman.