The prequel to beloved cult classic Rez, Child of Eden had a lot to live up to. Does it? In many ways, yes, in a few (important) ways, no.
The visuals 10/10. The graphics are stunning. Absolutely jaw-dropping visuals for the whole game, even games like El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron have a hard time competing.
The music 4.5/10. This is one of my main complaints for the game.The prequel to beloved cult classic Rez, Child of Eden had a lot to live up to. Does it? In many ways, yes, in a few (important) ways, no.
The visuals 10/10. The graphics are stunning. Absolutely jaw-dropping visuals for the whole game, even games like El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron have a hard time competing.
The music 4.5/10. This is one of my main complaints for the game. Aside from the bonus level that calls back to level 4 of Rez and the level Passion (using the song Maker by Genki Rockets, one of their best) the songs don't really sound different enough to stand out from each other. They're all minimalistic electronica with random Genki Rockets samples. It sounds orgasmic when you reach the first boss but there's just no variety. The original Rez had a variety of different music all from different artists. Add in the fact that Rez's creator and Child of Eden's director created the group and it starts to feel like he's on an ego trip.
The story 3/10. I know it sounds dumb to judge Rez OR Child of Eden by their story, but what I'm judging here is the emotional impact. Rez's final level is truly an experience that every gamer should know. Can I really say the same for this game? Tetsuya Mizguchi's attempt to connect his music project The Genki Rockets to the canon of Rez just makes Child of Eden feel like a vanity project. Combine that with the ridiculous difficulty level and that seriously harms what emotional impact this game could have had.
The gameplay 6.5/10. I will sound like a huge hypocrite for this, but the game is just too difficult, and not for good reasons either. Maybe the experience is better when played with Kinect (or they tone down the difficulty), but with a controller, even the normal difficulty is a difficult task. First off, the camera is disorienting. It moves with you to quite a degree (you can pretty much look entirely to your left and right, almost behind you) but between all the action and the camera autocentering itself (and boy is that awkward) it just doesn't work and often gets you hit. It's a rail shooter like Rez, but you can no longer use the lock-on laser to destroy bullets, only a purple machine gun. It sounds easy, but you have to be extremely precise with the purple gun (unlike the lock-on laser), and with all the movement and visuals and the worse camera, it's hard to tell where bullets are coming from at all let alone aim at them and hit them. And oh boy the bullets. The enemies on normal on the first level send out about as many bullets as the final bosses in Rez on the higher difficulties. Only they're harder to see and shoot down. You know where this is going. This makes the whole game a frustrating experience where you're fighting to barely stay alive. It's hard to enjoy the beautiful visuals and soundscapes when you're ALWAYS stressed out. This game is STRESSFUL. And the lock-on Perfect mechanic. If you chain full lock-ons (8 as in the original Rez) you're supposed to get a score multiplier. Only this seems to work only when it wants to. Sometimes you'll chain up to 8x, sometimes it'll just say 'good' 3 times and keep dropping. It never seemed consistent or predictable enough to make high score runs a viable option. And this game DESPERATELY wants to be a score attack game like its predecessor Rez, but it's not. The unpredictable scoring mechanic, the poor camera, and the constant fight to stay alive prevent this from being a game that's more about the experience like Rez was. Rez was easy, but if you WANTED to score attack you could challenge yourself. In this? The difficulty and randomness make score attacking impossible. Oh, and players of Rez know the frustration that is Rez boss battles, where you're fighting so hard to keep bullets off of you that you can barely attack the boss. That's made worse tenfold in this game.
It sounds like I hate this game but I really don't. I would recommend this to anyone, at this point it's cheap and well worth the experience. I just think it has a lot of flaws and it wants to be things that it isn't.… Expand
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