Retro remakes are all the rage right now, you've got Final Fantasy IV DS this week, Bionic Commando coming out soon, probably a dozen on Xbox Live Arcade that I can't be bothered to remember. Space Invaders is even older than those and has a really basic formula. You're a little ship made up of a few pixels that shoots tiny squares at other ships. It'd be really easy to screw up something as fun and addictive as Space Invaders by shoehorning in some bullshit story and changing up the gameplay. You'd think that was the gameplan, since they called it SPACE INVADERS EXTREME.

EXTREME SPACE INVADER

The game won points with me by coming out at the value price of $20. There's a few modes available. Arcade mode is the traditional play until you die kind of deal. It lets you continue at the last level you died at, which is pleasant if you only want to play for a few minutes. There's a ranking mode that has no save options, you can upload your scores online to show off your giant old-school gaming e-penis. There's also a stage mode that lets you pick which level you want to play, out of levels you've already beaten. I saw a multiplayer mode, but I'm not gonna lie, I didn't try it out.

The single player mode has the same style of gameplay as the old Space Invaders. You're a little ship, shooting at other little ships. However, they've now added in score multipliers for shooting ships in certain orders, tons more enemies, powerups, bonus stages, and bosses. The core gameplay is retained, while adding in a ton more stuff to make it pretty damn enjoyable. It even has branching paths to beat the game. On certain levels, if you have a high enough rank, you can choose to go on to easier or harder stages.

The main drawback is sometimes there's so much stuff going on, it can get a bit cluttered. The background is all the colours of the rainbow flying by in crazy patterns, your top screen is either filled with near useless info that you don't have time to look at, or enemies.

I still don't know what the drum/etc... do. Reading the manual is for suckers.

The game packs a decent challenge. The bosses require a bit of strategy, there's a wide variety of regular enemies, plus you can always go on to the harder levels with a bit of practice and really get your ass kicked. It's a simple style of gameplay, but it's not a simple game. Those that get frustrated at difficult games might want to steer clear.

4/5