Child Of Eden review

Child Of Eden is the product of an auteur at 
the height of his powers, with the free rein to realise a supremely ambitious project and the restraint to make it universal rather than self-serving. At its core are the on-rails shooter mechanics of Rez, but the experience is one that escapes further genre categorisation, creating a level of involvement beyond what its 2001 progenitor achieved.

Eden is as much an interactive sightseeing tour as it is a shooter, inviting you to both animate and liberate its world and devastate the enemies occupying it. Most of the creatures you encounter, from transparent whales swimming through space to a musical golden eagle, are not to be destroyed but purified of their infection, with your cursor and button presses allowing them to shimmer and shine once more. As outlandish as it may seem, it’s all tied to Eden’s threadbare narrative: the story of space-born girl Lumi, reconstructed by science in the virtual world and under threat from a virus you’re sent in to eradicate.

It’s a simple premise that allows the team to tell its story visually, through the game’s action rather than cutscenes, and it’s kept fresh by the pace and variety of the five main worlds. Rarely has a game managed to relay a tale of creation and destruction 
with so few words and so poetically. From the neon underworld of Evolution to the grinding cogs and speeding cars of Passion, it’s a breathtaking world to witness as a player or spectator. The extravagance of Eden, with its poetic celebration of nature and streaming, kaleidoscopic colours, could easily have slipped into the territory of elitist, artistic pretensions, but it never feels self-indulgent. The game isn’t a hollow exercise in visual and audio design, it empowers you to be central to its story through your interactions.

The sense of participation is affected drastically 
by your choice of control method. On first contact, nothing compares to the feeling of power granted by Kinect as you swipe over your targets before shoving them into extinction with a gentle push of your hand. The two modes of attack – rapid fire for incoming projectiles and lock-on for everything besides – are central to the gameplay. Swapping hands to toggle these fire modes is mandatory for survival, adding an Ikaruga-style strategy to the game. Achieving an eight-hit combo, or ‘Octa-Lock’, in time to the music racks up more points, while picking up health orbs along the way keeps you, often literally, on your toes. It’s not always 
a smooth ride, though, mostly due to a camera which 
(as in Rez) moves on its axis as you navigate the screen. When swapping hands, it’s often nudged from its position, and throwing your hands to the sky to effect 
a screen-clearing Euphoria special can be fatally disorienting. Your journey through Eden is too freeform, dense with twists and screen-flipping 
turns (in contrast to Rez’s more linear motion) to forgive such a technical issue, and your orientation troubles are only exaggerated as the pace ramps up.

When gunning for high scores, therefore, a standard controller is the way to go. The rhythmic rumble feedback is crucial for achieving hits in time to the music but, again, it’s not perfect. In both cases, trying to rein in your view of the action while battling the onscreen assault can prove overwhelming. Repeat playthroughs on hard difficulty are punishing, teeth-grinding affairs entirely at odds with the calm, colourful world around you.

The real incentive for persevering through the harshness of Eden’s world is the character of Lumi.
 An iconic, angelic figure, her floating presence in the menu screen and the echoes of her voice throughout 
the game are obscure 
and affecting. The use of an actress rather than CG 
adds further resonance. Bringing Lumi one step closer to freedom with the purification of each world is a strangely emotional experience; your simple hand motions are her only hope as she strobes into view, holding your gaze. Hearing her voice crackle through the layers of audio or glimpsing her face behind a 
wall adds a human payoff to your virtual crusade.

Though the five main worlds of Eden tell Lumi’s story and host some visually arresting ideas, it’s in unlockable challenge mode Hope that Mizuguchi’s 
skill with an audio landscape is fully demonstrated. A hyper-speed, spiritual and visual ancestor of Rez, Hope is as close to a direct sequel as fans could hope for. 
Rainbows of pixel stardust burst around you as the bassline morphs along with the colour palette, shifting from jazz riffs to drum’n’bass. Though the control-method quandary rears its head in the later stages, it’s less of an inconvenience due to the linear path through the level. There are further overtones of Rez in tutorial mode Matrix, which also devotes itself to a more straightforward route. In bookending Eden’s core worlds with these nods to the past, Tetsuya Mizuguchi is cementing both his status as auteur and his journey 
full circle from Rez’s debut. Eden encompasses so much of the producer-designer’s oeuvre – from the musical female lead of Space Channel 5 to the chain reactions 
of Every Extend Extra – that it’s as much a journey into his legacy as it is a rescue mission.

Child Of Eden is a convincing example of how 
motion control can breathe new life into a niche genre. 
More than that, it’s a masterclass in audio design and the emotive power of CG imagery. Where Rez was focused and relentless, in step with the rigidity of its basslines, Eden is organic and sentimental, a lover married to the mechanics of an on-rails fighter. 
It’s a delirious, intoxicating and sometimes cruel world that’s well worth the trip. [8]

Xbox 360 version tested. See our current issue, out now, for an in-depth interview Post Script with Tetsuya Mizuguchi in which he explains his vision for the game and the symbolism behind it.