Child of Eden (Xbox 360)

A while back, my sister was looking through my game collection and Child of Eden managed to catch her interest. Having never really looked into the game myself, we decided to look up a video of how it played… and were instantly baffled by what we saw. Creatures made of neon light exploded across the screen like fireworks, and suddenly a real life actress began appearing in flashes across the screen to dreamily dance to the techno music. To play this game would ruin the seemingly incomprehensible mystery of what we saw, but that strangeness was also what made it so enticing. Eventually, after many requests from my sister, I decided to sit down and see just what is going on in this surreal Xbox 360 title.

The actress we saw dancing around in that video plays the role of a character named Lumi, the first human born in space who, despite her love for Earth and desire to see it, passes away before she can ever set foot on it. However, by this point technology had advanced far enough that her mind can be stored in the new form the internet has taken, and as humanity moves out further into the stars, the advanced internet is rechristened Eden and serves as a connecting point to all of Earth’s collected knowledge and the memories of people who lived on it. In an attempt to create a living being within Eden, scientists use Lumi’s stored memories, but just as she begins to take shape, the system is infected by a strange virus that locks Lumi and the archive of human knowledge away, the player taking up the role of the savior of this technological tie to Earth’s history. Despite being a destructive and ultimately malicious virus, the way it manifests in the game is absolutely stunning, with the enemies it infects built from light, making them seem almost like neon ghosts of the creatures and objects they mimic. The opposition in Eden takes on shapes both familiar and unrecognizable, with inspiration drawn from real animals like whales and jellyfish, objects like gears and satellites, and original constructs pulling from the unusual designs of microbial organisms or building on shapes of light to make something resembling life in this digital world.

The illuminated worlds and flowing colors work together with the electronic music to make a game that could be deeply relaxing, and there is even a difficulty called Feel Eden where the focus is on taking in the visuals and the synced up music rather than having to face these foes as legit threats. If you do shoot them down though, you’ll find the damage they take on their defeat plays sounds meant to enhance the music, with the boss fights in particular having some amazing swells as you reach the end of the battle. The strange visuals that left an impression on me hold up even in context, with many beautiful uses of outline-focused design that allows the background to still show through, often taking the form of star fields or other areas teeming with their own visual appeal. There are some solid designs to grasp onto so you aren’t just swimming in pure surrealism, with some levels even having a pronounced theme to their area design. The Beauty level begins with an unexpected stretch of water that blossoms into a flowery field still built from the light of the game rather than realistic imagery, but then Passion deliberately includes multiple moments of human innovation presented as footage of real events. Besides the insertion of reality at key moments, Lumi herself making appearances during the boss battles, the game does mostly rely on experimenting with its light-based style for its impressive images, and combined with the music, Child of Eden’s main draw is certainly its accomplishments there.

Luckily, while the gameplay isn’t as captivating as the images, it does do a good job of involving the player in the game world, with the visuals acting as game elements as well as interesting sights. The player can choose to play Child of Eden with the body-sensing Kinect, but the gameplay seems to favor the controller, especially since it requires moments of precision and quick action that imprecise motion reading might flub through no fault of the player’s.  In one of the small selection of levels in Child of Eden, the player moves a crosshair around the screen to shoot down the virus’s creations, the player packing two shot types for the task. The simpler one is a rapid fire shot that is mostly meant for specially indicated enemies or shoot down incoming attacks as it doesn’t earn many points or kill as quickly as your other option, a lock-on attack that can target up to eight points in the play field. When you release the lock-on, it will fire homing lasers at anything it had attached itself to, but the lock-on has a unique feature that manages to tie the music into the gameplay. Child of Eden is, surprisingly, a bit of a rhythm game despite seeming like just a rail shooter at first. If you release your lock-on attack with a full set of eight targets in time with the beat, you can earn score multipliers, the number going up for each consecutive volley done in rhythm with the song. Your multiplier chain will end if you release an eight shot out of time with the music, but Child of Eden is pretty smart about making sure you don’t lose it for things outside your control. If you lock on to fewer than eight targets, your current multiplier chain will not be impacted, allowing the game to throw mixes of enemies at you that aren’t just multiples of eight. The shooting never really feels complex no matter what kind of foe you face, partially because of the focus on the lock-on attack’s homing lasers that make aiming less of a concern, and while you can beat a level without engaging with the rhythmic means of upping your score, it won’t be quite as engaging or challenging. The score system also rewards stars at the end of the level that go into unlocking the next one, so playing just to win rather than playing to earn high scores means you won’t earn many stars for that purpose. Thankfully, you can replay levels to earn more stars, so even someone just aiming to shoot down enemies can play the game to the end. Replaying a level also earns you unlocks for something called Lumi’s Garden, where each playthrough of a level will give you some options of which light-based creature or object to add to the level select screen. It’s a nice touch to avoid trips back to a stage just being about collecting stars, even if Lumi’s Garden isn’t too substantial.

Levels in Child of Eden are pretty long though, and there are stages that will ask the player to be smart and quick with their crosshair movement. You start off with an incomplete health gauge and can collect more in the stage, but if you die, you need to restart the level from the very beginning. The final level hits this issue hardest, as it throws some hard to avoid damage in the final boss of an already fairly long level. You can get bomb-like attacks called Euphoria to clear the screen of trouble as a way of avoiding being overwhelmed, but sometimes it’s more about learning what’s coming than reacting in the moment. The fact enemy attacks are often glowing purple orbs in a world of glowing light shapes can even lead to some moments of visual noise making you take a hit that was a bit too well camouflaged. These issues don’t fully detract from how impressive the boss designs are, and even the easier ones manage to stay interesting through the visual splendor of their design and the desire to earn more points by releasing your shots in time with the beat rather than taking every opportunity you can to strike. There are only five levels to tackle in the game as well as an unlockable challenge level, but Child of Eden tries to gain some longevity by adding extra objectives beyond high scores like purifying all enemies, collecting all items, or playing Hard mode where you need to be more careful since you take double damage. Your movement is controlled by the game in all modes, but shooting down incoming attacks becomes more important in hard mode as you can’t weather mistakes quite so easily. More levels would have been the more interesting option though, since that would come with more wonderful mixes of images and music, but the stages given have plenty of care put into making them stand out, with mixes of clearly digital landscapes, environments inspired by nature, and industrial designs found between the few levels that are on offer.

THE VERDICT: Child of Eden is a beautiful mixture of color, music, and light, with the focus on a glowing world in sync with the music certainly paying off towards the feel of the title. The laser shooting attached to it works pretty well too and even latches onto the rhythm of the beat to make it not just about shooting, but about enhancing the song that you’re playing along with. The few levels available are a little long though and some enemies prioritize their visual design over being interesting enemies with easily read attacks, but replaying stages can still be interesting thanks to the little rewards you can earn and the strength of the aesthetics. It’s not a very involved shooter, but the sounds and sights are there to make you keep playing despite that.

And so, I give Child of Eden for Xbox 360…

A GOOD rating. Child of Eden puts the feel of the game first, hence why it has the Kinect integration to try and involve touch and motion in the game as well, but the controller is still the wiser choice if you are going for the pretty demanding high score and collection goals. Even with the controller though, the decent shooting is improved quite a bit by the creative enemy and environment design and the synchronicity with the music, and if you do want to just bask in the glowing worlds, the game has a mellower option available where death no longer threatens to push you back to start. Getting into the groove of firing at foes to increase the multipliers feels great, and the atmosphere can easily suck you in and make the small flaws fade away.

Child of Eden is a wonderful artistic construction that doesn’t leave its gameplay behind to get there. In fact, they wouldn’t work quite as well separate, so that does mean Child of Eden’s aesthetics don’t hit the heights they’re reaching for since that means it has to carry the weight of a few gameplay flaws. However, that does make its relationship with the interactivity more meaningful through their close ties and can still build itself up into a special video game experience.