Each stage lasts about five to fifteen minutes, with bosses taking another few minutes, so Space Invaders Extreme is short but sweet. It does offer online multiplayer, but I’ve found myself completely unable to play it on Xbox Live. This is not the developer’s fault, but rather the online play for this title appears to be a virtual ghost town; I tried repeatedly throughout the day and found literally nobody to play with. This is a shame, because I love the core gameplay of Extreme and would love to try out the versus and co-op play the online modes appear to offer.

But even without anyone to play with online, I found the single-player experience to be very enjoyable. It’s easy to learn but rewards good aim and quick thinking, and the music and visuals really hook you into the game. While it is a short game, I think the ’score attack’ mentality it encourages will be enough to bring you back a few times, and it’s with that in mind that Space Invaders Extreme turns out to be a worthy update to a classic game.

DLC pack mini-review: 240 points is a fair price for what you get here. I don’t approve of the odd price point (but I’m sure Microsoft did that on purpose to sell more Points) nor that it’s a mere 108kb ’unlock key’ download which means the content was here all along, but it does justify its price tag. You get three new stages, plus Space Invaders 1 and 2. Considering Space Invaders Extreme comes with only ten stages or so to begin with, this is competitively priced with the main game... so if you liked that, you’ll get your money’s worth here, I think.