SpecialEffect's accessible GameBase

I am probably going to have a hard time trying to describe Child of Eden but here I go...

C of E comes from Tetsuya Mizaguchi the designer behind Sega Rally and Rez. The game-play is similar to that of Rez, if you haven’t played Rez before the free trial game is on Xbox Live. This game is a first person, on-rails shooter. You control the aiming reticule and have the ability to move the screen about, but the game always takes you in the direction it wants you to go.

You have three ways to deal with enemies- rapid fire, a bomb and lock-on.  

The rapid fire weapon is as you would expect.

The bomb is your standard type of clear-the-screen-of-all-enemies bomb and come in short supply.

The lock-on weapon allows you to highlight up to eight enemies at a time by touching them with your aiming reticule, then when you release the weapon it shoots all the enemies that you highlighted at once.

The different methods of attack prove useful in different situations. The lock on is good for enemies that quickly fly by or dart around but it can’t destroy enemy fire, only the rapid fire can do that.

The enemies in this game are bright, organic/mechanical shapes. Objects resembling butterflies and plants spawning seeds are the types of thing you will see. Do be careful though if you have an aversion to flashing images, a-lot of the time there is a-lot happening on screen.

The soundtrack is, I guess (don’t judge me if I get this wrong, I am getting old!) euphoric dance music. The weapons you use feed into the soundtrack too with them producing various rhythmic audio effects when fired. This is a nice touch but the results vary. Sometimes you feel your actions are in time with the music and you really are a part of it. Sometimes you feel like a young child hitting a load of old pots and pans.

This game can be played with the standard controller or Kinect. With the standard controller you have four button configurations but you can’t re-map the controls to your liking, which is a shame.

I think the majority of people who will buy this game will be buying it to play with Kinect and this method of play does have a certain immersive feel. The rapid fire is mapped to your left hand, the lock-on to your right. To release the lock-on weapon you push your hand forward, at first I found myself really pushing forward, which I am not afraid to admit led to slight fatigue. But after a while I got the hang of it, and was able to trace my hand across the screen, lock on to a group of enemies then release the fire all with very little effort. The fact that kinect recognises the depth of this hand movement really impressed me.

It does feel a little futuristic interacting with on-screen objects like this, not completely futuristic maybe an 80’s/90’s or Tomorrows World version of the futuristic, but futuristic nun-the-less. There is a part of the game where there are hundreds of little cubes on screen that you can push around and this felt great, almost tactile.

At first I tried playing this game with Kinect sitting on my sofa and the control was good but did dart around a-bit when I was aiming towards the bottom of the screen. Then I had a go sitting on my kitchen chair and I was really impressed on how accurate the controls are when I sat in a smaller chair. I honestly feel there is no real difference between playing this way and standing. They have done a really good job.

This game clocks in at a little over an hour and if you have the skills you can hammer straight through, but I couldn’t and had to replay levels several times. That’s something that needs to be mentioned too, when you die no matter how far you are you get sent back to the beginning of the level. Old school design or silly design? You decide.

A nice touch is the inclusion of ‘Feel Eden Mode’ which means you can play and not take any damage.

Despite its length and some shortcomings I would recommend you play Child of Eden.  I had been looking forward to playing this game for a while and often when you do this you are setting yourself up for a fall, but luckily I wasn’t disappointed. This game is good, it’s not industry changing good but it certainly is an experience.