Child of Eden

Microsoft has been slapping the “Better with Kinect” tag line across all Kinect-enabled titles with reckless abandon since day one. But, if we’re brutally honest, how many of these games have been genuinely enhanced by the use of motion control beyond what is possible with a standard controller? We’ve flailed our arms wildly to (unsuccessfully) drive a car; we’ve flapped around like enthusiastic seagulls to play virtual beach volleyball - fun for the moment, but hardly the ‘Minority Report’ moments we all wished for. The underlying perception that many gamers are left with after a Kinect session is that we are dealing with a gimmick, not an essential addition to the gaming experience. Now, with Kinect’s first birthday a few months away, we may just have our first ‘killer app’ for Microsoft’s beloved peripheral: Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Child of Eden, a game which, more than almost any other, truly deserves to be called “Better with Kinect”.

Since gamers demand a story to explain why we are shooting things, Child of Eden revolves around Lumi, a human personality born into a self aware artificial intelligence mainframe called Eden, virtual home to all of human memory. When a host of viruses infiltrate this future vision of the internet, Lumi and all of Eden are at risk and it falls to the gamer to enter the interwebs, purify the corrupted data and disinfect the archives. Dazed and confused yet? You need not be, because the actual details of the storyline are of little importance in the grand scheme of things. You are still trying to save the damsel in distress, as you have done countless times before, but your personal involvement is definitely amplified by the way the game plays, drawing you deeper into the gameworld than you could imagine possible.

In execution, Child of Eden is a rhythm action game, but that just sounds so trite, such a one dimensional description of a truly exceptional gaming experience. Drawing much inspiration from Mizugushi’s own cult classic Rez, Eden is a world of turbulent neons and pulsating beats, a swirling river of sound and colour, leaving the player to swim in these magical currents. I know it sounds pretentious, but you really have to let this game wash over you to experience it properly. And while it is perfectly acceptable to play through Child of Eden with a standard controller, it’s with Kinect that all the pieces fall into place.

Gesture-based controls can be a tricky affair, but right away from Child of Eden’s menu screens you can tell that this game was made for motion gaming. Hand movements are fluidly tracked without a nanosecond’s lag. This follows from the menus into the game itself. Thanks to the accurate tracking and top notch Kinect implementation, there is no mental adjustment required to calibrate your hand positions to the cursor’s movements on-screen - your screen cursor moves like an extension of yourself. Never before have I felt so in tune with the Kinect sensor.

An aspect of Kinect gaming that has proven tricky for game developers so far is the shooting mechanic - it’s easy enough to work out how to aim a gun, but how does one implement the actual firing action? Q Entertainment has scored a direct hit in that respect with Child of Eden. Hold your left hand up to fire a constant stream of weak tracer lasers, or hold your right hand up for a lock-on missile-type weapon that can target up to eight enemies at once. Got all eight lined up for purification? A smooth and simple push forward with the right hand releases the missiles. It’s an almost flawless solution to the Kinect weapon firing problem (if you don’t think this has been a problem in the past, just try the Paintball section of Sports Island: Freedom to see how drastically wrong some developers can get it).

I’ll admit that the shooting mechanic took at least a few minutes to sink in, but once I had it under control I was slicing and dicing my way through the five Archives of Eden with style and precision. Gliding through the dreamlike gameworlds while you disinfect thousands of brightly coloured viruses becomes a completely hypnotic experience. Track them with the left hand, quickly pull up the right hand for an eight-hit Octa-Lock, push forward in a “Force Push” motion to blast the glowing cyber-creatures into the netherworld, and then throw both arms up in the air to release the dazzling screen-clearing Euphoria smartbomb - it’s all genuinely mesmerizing. Much of this is lost when playing with a standard controller, though - it’s still instantly playable, but without the motion controls you could just be playing any other sparkly, trippy space shooter.

The levels themselves are absolutely breathtaking too. Each Archive offers a totally different atmosphere, from the pulsating hard-edged Matrix archive, to the lush, organic Beauty stage - these are places that one could easily get lost in. I don’t think I’ve ever floated alongside a semi-transparent space whale, shooting glowing gemstones off its back as an exploded star simmers in the distance. Excellent use of lighting and geometry create extremely vivid worlds to explore, making for a dramatic visual masterpiece. I would seriously suggest that you don’t play this game while on any kind of hallucinogenic drugs, though. Seriously. You may never come back to earth.

The smooth-as-silk controls together with the astounding visuals would be enough to captivate even the most ADD-riddled gamer, but it’s once you add the music to the mix that the whole symbiosis is complete. The soundtrack doesn’t compliment the gameplay, in some respects it is the gameplay. Different enemies and surfaces add new beats and synth layers as you fire on them, while the tracer elicits a different tone from its targets than the lock-on weapon does, creating an ever-evolving soundscape that ebbs and flows along with you. Fire your weapons in time to the pounding beat to score massive bonus multipliers, and sculpt the soundtrack as you move along - it’s rare to feel so involved, like your actions are shaping the gameworld in some way. I usually have no affection for trance music, or the Japanese electro that thuds away throughout this game, but in the context of Child of Eden I think I may have been converted.

With Child of Eden, Tetsuya Mizugushi has created something truly special, a solar flare that burns furiously in the dark - but burns out just as quickly as it burst into life. Yes, sadly with just five worlds to explore, the whole magical experience can be over in just one session. There is an extra bonus mode - basically score attack - as well as Xbox LIVE leaderboards to add that competitive edge, and a few other extras to unlock that will keep gamers occupied a little longer, but the main section of this wildly creative joyride is over long before you grow tired of its charms.

Ultimately though, it’s not really the story progression or completion that gives this game its sparkle. What makes Child of Eden truly special is that it feels like you are plugging yourself into a different world, a neon parallel universe with you as the conductor in an entrancing space orchestra. And in all honesty, there is nothing else quite like it. In a sea of motion controlled mediocrity, Child of Eden stands out like a shining, pulsating beacon. If you’ve been waiting for a worthy reason to take Kinect seriously, this is it.

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