Child of Eden (Xbox 360, 2011)

Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Rez is one of my favourite games ever. The combination of rail-based shooter action, excellent production design and kickass tunes just does it for me. Plus being able to play through the whole thing in about an hour means revisiting it is very easy.

So you’d think Child of Eden would be a home run for me. It’s a spiritual sequel to Rez, with extremely similar gameplay, level design and some explicit references to it. But… I think it sucks. Here’s why.

I was hyped when I first picked up Child of Eden in 2011. I’d played a bit of it on Kinect and thought it was alright, but really wanted to try it on a controller. But a few levels in I got disheartened and moved onto Arkham City (according to my PlayStation trophies). Recently I saw it used for the princely sum of 50p and figured it was time for another go.

Turns out I was right the first time. Even better, pinning down why Child of Eden is a bit crap isn’t even that hard.

First, I am not a fan of the way you have to replay levels to earn stars to progress in the game. With Rez you simply had to ‘analyse’ each level to progress to the ending. It may be fun in Child of Eden to blast barnacles of a space whale once, but doing it over and over drains it of wonder. Repetition breeds contempt and kills the flow of the game.

Second, there is such a thing as too many particle effects (see pic above). This ties into the graphic style as a whole. The Rez aesthetic is a low polygon Tron kinda thing, which is minimalist chic and has aged beautifully. Child of Eden goes for a more organic neon saturated approach that reminds me of hippyish psytrance art. The overall effect is way too busy and purely in terms of colour palette it gets very garish.

Third, the soundtrack is terrible. Whereas Rez had a variety of electronica and dance artists, Child of Eden‘s entire soundtrack is composed of J-Pop songs by Mizuguchi’s band Genki Rockets. It sounds like the cheesy music you might hear at a rave for pre-teens and, unlike Rez, there is little sense of progression as the songs build through the levels.

Fourth, it simply doesn’t play as well. Child of Eden switches from Rez‘s two button control scheme to a three button one, with the extra button giving you ‘purple’ rapid fire to shoot down missiles. Also, you now cannot see your player avatar, making it difficult to know when you’re about to be hit by something.

Fifth and finally, the final level is very anticlimactic. Where Area 5 of Rez took you through the evolution of life on Earth to Adam Freeland’s Fear, the final level of Child of Eden is a boss rush against a flickering particle swarm that quickly gets tiring on the eyes and is just kinda boring.

Mizuguchi hit a home run with Rez and more recently with Tetris Effect and here he’s working with the same basic tools. But with just a couple of bad decisions and some deeply crappy music the whole thing collapses like an ill-made souffle.

Child of Eden is best left forgotten and should be considered a rare misstep in Mizuguchi’s otherwise stellar career. Avoid.