Riding the wave of popularity established a little less than a year ago with XBLA title Pac-Man Championship Edition, Space Invaders Extreme has brought together not only an updated look, but some fancy on screen colors and a pretty fantastic soundtrack in an effort to breathe life into a more or less extinct franchise. Just like in Pac-Man CE, the focus here is on building up a huge score using a variety of power-ups and combinations, and then tossing your score up on an online leaderboard to see how you rank against the best of the best.

The main game is played primarily in either Arcade Mode (no leaderboard) or Ranking Mode (leaderboard enabled). There's even a multiplayer vs. mode that can be played thru a local connection or online via wi-fi.

The basics of the original Space Invaders is still intact here, where you use your single cannon to blast away at rows of downward advancing space creatures, dodging return fire and attempting to obliterate all of the Invaders before they reach the bottom of your screen. The concept is easy enough, but as you advance you'll encounter a variety of enemy types, including bombs, multiplying invaders, shielded aliens, and a few other variations. Space Invaders Extreme also incorporates boss battles at the end of every round (5 rounds total), which aren't particularly challenging but end up being a nice variation from the hordes you typically encounter.

As I said before, the main goal is to rack up the highest score possible, and you'll do that in a variety of ways. The most basic is simply chaining together kills without missing, but in Extreme you can also build up an experience meter for you cannon, allowing you to make your cannon stronger the longer you go without dying. You can also obtain 4 different power-ups from the various colors of invaders, as long as you take them out in combos of 4. At the top of the screen you'll come across UFO's to shoot, some of which will enter you into a small bonus round that gives you a limited amount of time to achieve certain goals. If you're successful in the bonus round you'll enter Fever Mode, which basically superpowers your cannon and implements a large bonus modifier for every invader you shoot down.

There are a few other score multipliers in play that can be activated in different ways, but trust me when I say that the game is definitely deeper than you think. It's simple enough to jump into, but once you get familiar with the system you'll find that mindlessly tapping the fire button won't be the best way to get your score to the top of the leaderboards. Instead you'll want to plan your shots out a bit more carefully, and really focus on trying to build up your multiplier thru either the Fever rounds or by not missing a single shot. If you max out your point multiplier at X5, you can then enter a mode called Break mode, which bumps your multiplier up to X10 for a limited time. Learning to not waste these modes is major part of the game, and you'll want to plan ahead accordingly.

That said if you don't care too much about the leaderboard aspect, Space Invaders Extreme is still a blast to just sit down and play thru in small bursts. The added feature of multiplayer works really well too, and you shouldn't have too much trouble finding a game online via the Wi-Fi connection.

The music is a real treat, with every shot and hit you make adding a little beat to the background music, and there are plenty of tracks available, all with a techno style flavor to them. The screen can appear a bit busy at first, and its hard to keep track of the top screen stats in between rounds of invaders, due to how fast the action tends to be on the bottom screen, but once you realize that a lot of it is just there for visual flair you won't have to worry about missing anything.

At a $20 price point, Space Invaders Extreme is an absolute steal for DS/PSP owners out there. There's a lot of hidden depth to the single player experience, and you'll get a decent amount of use from the multiplayer aspect as well. I highly suggest picking this one up, even if you were never a big Invaders fan to begin with. It's a great game that just about anyone can pick up and play without feeling intimidated in the least bit.