Child of Eden

If it wasn’t the Kate & Milo demonstration that peaked your interest in Kinect it was Child of Eden. Both hinted at a futuristic other worldliness that maybe only Kinect could provide, with its total lack of any peripheral requirement you would be free to be the game. In reality Kinect has been used, thus far, to encourage your kids to jump around the living room until they inevitably smack their head off the coffee table or for you to get drunk and flail your arms about in an attempt at dancing in front of your friends… until you inevitably smack your head off the coffee table. Although fun, it has not been a considerable step forward from what we’ve been doing with our Wiis for years. While Kate & Milo disappeared into the ether just about the time you were handing over over a ton for your shiny new Kinect, Child of Eden has actually come to fruition and, for a short time anyway, actually fulfills your best hopes for Kinect.

It makes about as much sense story wise as its decade old predecessor, Rez. It’s all about saving a virtual girl and the internet in the future by destroying a virus infecting the virtual world of Eden. The pseudo science hippy bollocks backdrop doesn’t detract from the experience though. Nor is it something to simply ignore, in fact even the most hardened cynic will likely find themselves caring about the girl in the floaty dress that appears on screen as you reach the conclusion of each level. You really hope that her digital memories or whatever the fuck it is are restored and that you’ve done a good enough job of shooting at space whales and butterflies to save Eden or whatever it’s called. It could be something to do with just how engulfed you feel by the game when playing with Kinect that you do actually feel quite moved by it.

You put out your right arm and lock on to targets and then flick out your hand to fire. Your left arm acts as a constantly shooting cannon and when you throw your arms in the air in despair, as the screen becomes too full of enemies to possibly survive, you let off a smart bomb that clears the path. The explosion of colours, patterns and lights on screen may look like nonsense in a screenshot but as with all games made by the great Tetsuya Mizuguchi there is a tight structure and set of rules in place for what you must do to make it through the levels. With Kinect the controls feel a little too loose but despite the gnawing sensation that you’d be doing better in a level if you had a controller, the sense of wonder and awe when you play just using your arms is quite extraordinary. It truly is the unique Kinect experience you were hoping for.

Switch to a controller and Child of Eden is a different game. The levels, difficulty and every single element of gameplay are identical but it just plays totally differently with a controller. It becomes a fast paced, bullet hell hardcore game, where reaching a good highscore is your motivation. As classic bullet hell gameplay, Child of Eden is up there with the best of them. It’s only the game’s short length with just a few levels that disappoints. We expect there will be DLC to build on the game but really there should have been more content on the disk.