Child of Eden

[Chux]

So I played through this last night, 3 levels on Kinect, the full game on controller, medium difficulty. The story is paper thin, but nobody is buying this game for story. That being said it’s the 23rd century and the first child born in space has had her memories and experiences archived in Eden(the internet, also the end of Rez), and of course there is a virus corrupting the memories. You’re sent in to purify and uncorrupt the memories so that future generations that haven’t been to Earth can know where they came from. Pretty standard stuff, and almost a carbon copy of the “story” presented in Rez.

Gameplay is also just an evolution of Rez, by that I mean you can lock onto 8 targets, have a smartbomb that will clear all enemies/projectiles, and the new tracer which is the only way to shoot down certain enemies and all projectiles. Locking on to 8 enemies and releasing the shot with the beat will give you a multiplier up to 8x and is the way to climb up the leaderboards, which are separated by controller and Kinect. Which brings me to the elephant in the room, Kinect, or “Do I really need to stand up like a jerk and flail my arms to get the best experience?”. The good news is that the Kinect works pretty well for this game, and I think with more practice I could do better with it than on the controller, if only because I can certainly move my hands faster than I could target something with the analog stick. Your right hand is used for the octo-lock, pass over enemies to target and then flick your fingers as if you were shaking water off after washing them and you release your shot. The left hand is the tracer, your means of defense, think of it as a purple machine gun used to attack purple enemies and protect yourself from shots. Raising your hands up as if you were hopeless unleashes the bomb and will let you get right back into the game. I found it easier for me to use sweeping motions with my hand as the tracer to shoot down projectiles than I did with the analog stick to target the bullets coming at me, but that was the extent of what I did better with Kinect. At the end of each stage you are given a star rank, to unlock more levels you need more stars. I averaged 4 stars on the 3 levels I played with Kinect and 3 with controller, that said I needed to play two levels again in order to unlock the fourth.

As you progress through the stages (5 total and a 6th challenge stage) you watch the evolution of humans and our accomplishments. The first stage is a call back to Rez complete with wireframe enemies and a boss that is reminiscent of the first boss in Rez. After that you get into single cell organisms, up to a crazy space whale and a phoenix, followed by the evolution of mankind’s accomplishment from a single gear to spaceflight. Like Rez, they are stylized and not crazy detailed, however the game makes up for it by having so many of items on screen without any stutters, screen tearing or any such ailment.

While Rez had different types of electronic music for each stage, Child of Eden stays in an almost vocal trance range with songs carrying elements from the previous stage into the next, and it all comes together in the end. That being said, everybody who has played Rez would immediately recognize Fear is the Mindkiller as stage 5, but if you put a gun to my head, played a track from CoE, and asked what level it was from, there would be brains on the wall. Maybe with more playthroughs I’ll place music with different levels, as it is the only one that really sticks out is the industrial sounding song from stage 4.


Child of Eden is the spiritual successor to Rez that fans have been waiting for. The style is much more bright, the music is great(even if I don’t remember all of it), and the gameplay is simple. When I turned the game off last night I had played for about 110 minutes, beat the game on normal(controller),made it to the 5th stage of the challenge level, unlocked somewhere around 47% of the pieces of art, a handful of items for Lumi’s garden and 17 out of 49 achievements. I definitely see myself playing through this several times to unlock more items in the garden and upping my score for the leaderboards.

[kingoffighters]

Thanks Chux. I love Rez so it sounds like a worthy sequel. I don't have Kinect (and don't plan to buy one), I think TRU has it for $39.99 so I might pick it up!

[Hero]

Game journalism is entertainment

Something's amiss in this statement. You get to be one or the other, not both.

[Yoshi]

I'm going to go with neither in most cases.

[Doc Holliday]

So, Rez 2 is better than Duke 4?

[Mzo]

Wait, Chux didn't cry?

Maybe CoE came with a promotional peeled onion.

[Yoshi]

Chux is a monster.

[B-Ri]

I want this, but Id want to get it for PS3 because Move support, but i dont wanna wait.

Also this isnt XBLA and $50?! Whaat.

[Chux]

Wait, Chux didn't cry?

Maybe CoE came with a promotional peeled onion.

Chux is a monster.

Figures gamestop lost my preorder bonus.

[Frogacuda]

Something's amiss in this statement. You get to be one or the other, not both.

Maybe I should have put it this way: People read game journalism for two reasons: Information and entertainment value, ideally both. My basic point is that people read it because they enjoy reading it for one reason or another. It's justified by its effect on its audience not its subject matter.