Child of Eden was released on Friday and I think I’ve put enough time into it over the last few days to talk about it a little.
If you don’t know about Child of Eden, it’s a rather abstract rail shooter produced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, creator of the outstanding Dreamcast/PS2 game, Rez to which this is a spiritual successor.
I’m a big fan of Rez so I found it hard to resist going out on Friday to pick this game up. For me to buy a game on day one is a bit of a rarity. The last time I did it was for Deathsmiles in February and before that you’d probably have to go all the way back to King of Fighters XI in 2007. This should give you a clue as to how much I was anticipating Child of Eden.
With the demand for increasingly artistic and cinematic games, some developers forget that they’re making a game. What made Rez so good was that although it pushed all sorts of creative boundaries and was a real spectacle to look at and listen to, it was a really solid game underneath. Mizuguchi hasn’t forgotten that with Child of Eden. For all the stunning visuals and the Genki Rockets soundtrack it’s still a real video game. It has a scoring system, it requires skill to play well and you can replay it over and over. It would have been very easy to turn Child of Eden into a vaguely interactive light-show but it’s stayed true to its rail shooter roots and that’s what makes it an absolute triumph.
If you didn’t play Rez and have only seen the E3 trailer for Child of Eden you still might not know what the hell this game is about. The video below has some sample gameplay which I will explain.
It’s not that clear what’s going on because whoever’s playing it isn’t very good but it’s actually very simple. You fly through a pre-determined level and face waves of enemies that you highlight with your targeter and shoot down, targeting more than one enemy at a time gives you a higher score. You can shoot a maximum of eight enemies at once with your main shot, and shooting them in time to the beat of the music gives you a score multiplier. You also have a secondary rapid fire weapon for destroying certain types of enemy and shooting down missiles. You can play the game with either a control pad or waggle your arms about like a prat with Kinect.
I didn’t think we’d ever see another game like Rez and I’m so glad to have been proven wrong. If you’re still not sold, try Rez HD on XBLA to get a taste of what you’ll find in Child of Eden at a fraction of the price.
