Child Of Eden Review (360)

Become conductor to an electronic wonderland

There are very few games which make me rethink my entertainment set-up. Usually a 24-inch telly does the job, but Child Of Eden seems to have been designed to tempt me with TV’s that reach across the entirety of my feature wall and surround sound systems that penetrate the attic. A multi-sensory (bar taste) experience and spiritual successor to beat pulsing shoot-’em-up Rez, creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi has a new toy to pull us into his strange music fuelled world; the Kinect. It’s the 23rd century, and it seems the internet has become ‘MEGAWIKIPEDIA’, with archives spanning the ages on near enough anything and everything, making plagiarism all the easier. A fountain of knowledge that’s a remarkable feat for the human race, these archives span throughout the entirety of space, renaming the internet ‘Eden’. On the brink of a scientific discovery, experts are using the memories of a space-born child to create human life within ‘Eden’ called ‘Lumi’. But as a virus spreads throughout Eden, the existence of Lumi is severely threatened, and so you’re forced to blast through viruses and firewalls using nothing but your hands. It’s certainly…a tale…of sorts. One you most likely won’t be following with absolute awe in its obscurity, but will be shunned in your face on occasion by a cheesy woman over miming lyrics to the song you’re building with your own two hands. Nevertheless, it doesn’t crop up every 5 seconds with tenuous cut-scenes and arrogant narrative, as the game is left to speak for itself with its gameplay, and it certainly doesn’t disappoint. An on-rails shooter at heart, Child Of Eden thankfully doesn’t fall into a horridly average spike-trap which so many in the genre do. Using your right hand, you can scan enemies and cast homing missiles upon the suckers, whereas your left hand guns down protective shields and projectiles coming your way. Other control schemes consist of you switching weapons by clapping, but either way, use of the Kinect makes gameplay brilliantly fluent and complements the ever increasing difficulty incredibly well. The minimal and enjoyable control system of simply switching hands around also won’t leave you in a sweating heap demoralised by your own age but putting on a smile for the enjoyment of those around you, which is always a plus.

It offers up something which I haven’t been treated with for a long, long time

The game can also be played with a standard controller, but although the controls have been mapped out well enough, it just doesn’t feel as brilliant. It’s a shame, seeing as those left Kinectless will have to shell out if they really want to get the most out of this game. Sinking into the sofa and drifting a recitle around tears away the focus from everything that surrounds you, and although is not a game killer, it certainly obscures all the beauty Child Of Eden stands for. The worlds of Eden is vibrant to behold, yet only show faint signs of life when you first grace them. Plagued by horrid little organisms, it’s a bland and even dull locale at first, yet once you blast enemies out of the way, you’re allowed to take shape with the land. Firing projectiles into even the most generic looking landscapes allow them to take shape, where even a plateau of squares can become a neon flashing, mechanical wonder. There are many great moments in Child Of Eden that stretch the imagination and are too easy to spoil with basic words, and all take place on a brilliantly constructed soundtrack that builds to each levels’ end to make you look like the happiest and greatest psychedelic composer in all electronically designed havens. Child Of Eden is such a great experience, and yet, it doesn’t seem to want to take advantage of how exceptional it is. It took me little more than an hour to reach the end credits, and this was on a standard setting. Replaying and completing levels give you more items to unlock that will scour the main menu and make choosing game modes more of a treat to behold, and certain filters will unlock to give more of a psychedelic effect to your journey. However, after being treated with such brilliant splendour throughout the game, it’s very hard to believe that there wasn’t more areas lurking in the imaginations of the designers, and so much more adventures in Eden that are residing behind the scenes that I so badly want to delve into. And yet, despite Child Of Eden’s lack of longevity, it offers up something which I haven’t been treated with for a long, long time. Its lifespan of just over an hour saw it dangling over a trade-in counter straight after completion, and yet it still sits with pride on my shelf with something of a smug, albeit quite pretty grin. It’s not the extras, story or unlockables which keep it firmly in place, it’s the experience as a whole. It’s something of a joy to drift through these worlds that have been created and as soon as the credits finished rolling, I dove straight back in. Casting achievements, scoreboards and all conventional gaming credibilities aside, it’s an absolute blast gliding through these worlds and transforming them with nothing but your hands, and one you can definitely play again and again. The Child Of Eden experience is certainly accelerated should you be using the Kinect rather than a bog standard controller, and warrants that little purple ribbon on the box that declares its greatness as ‘Better with Kinect’. Its bizarre plot can be incredibly cheesy at times, but get past that and you have something of an exceptionally unique experience entirely in your hands, and one title that you’d be proud to show off your Kinect with.