Child of Eden

Child of Eden is a rail-shooter. Meaning you travel in a straight line, which you can't deviate from, and you shoot everything that moves. You can play it with Kinect if you're so inclined, though I don't. Because I don't have a Kinect, because I don't want one. If I wanted to exercise, I would go do that, by walking, or running, or playing basketball, which I did yesterday and it was a bad idea according to my hip and now I sound old. Move on.

The story such as it is: Lumi was the first human born in space, and she lived her entire life there. She'd think a lot about being on Earth, and the songs she made she shared with Earth. When she died, they recorded all her memories into a digital file. We're a couple of centuries in the future, and all the knowledge of the human race is stored in archives on the Internet, and only there, including Lumi's memories. For some reason, they've decided to recreate her persona from said memories, and establish a place in the Internet for that persona to live. Naturally, some unleashes a virus to try and destroy it. There's always a turd in the punchbowl. So you're trying to save the Lumi persona from the virus basically.

I could have saved you some time and just said, "Save the princess, Mario!"

The game really isn't concerned with the details. As I said, you don't know why they've created this Lumi persona, why someone wants to destroy it, why you're trying to protect it. Could be your job, could be a personal matter. It doesn't matter particularly. There's no dialogue, other than Lumi singing occasionally. I'm not sure if she's singing to you as encouragement, or if you stumbled into a memory. It's left to you to make up your own answers, if you care to. I've mostly been troubled by the idea my character is traipsing through Lumi's memories, which is creepy. I'm trying to save her, but still, feels wrong. Less wrong than letting the virus win.

The story isn't the selling point, how's the gameplay? It's not bad. It's easy enough to target and shoot with a controller. If you want high scores, you need to use the lock on multiple targets, which is something I'm not good at, but that isn't the game's fault. I'm too impatient to wait for 4 to 8 enemies to appear, lock onto them, then blast them all at once. I just fire constantly. It works, but it's not optimal. The levels look pretty, varying over the course of each one. Level three starts out on a placid river, then dives through a series of underwater passages. Level 4 is more mechanical, gears opening gates or releasing enemies. Most of the enemies are luminescent creatures, and they're rendered to be vivid, each type with its own weak spots and movement patterns. The bosses have multiple forms, though the strategy still boils down to shooting them whenever you aren't shooting the missiles they launch at you. Still, one boss starts as a humpback whale, launches into space, and turns into a phoenix. Another starts as two stars, one purple, one orange, that later turn into to humans sprinting and leaping around you.

There are moments of real tension, mostly involving whether I can blast all the missiles quickly enough to get some hits in before the next wave. The missiles are only vulnerable to the Tracer, which doesn't have lock on capability.

It's a visually interesting game, but the part that might be of most interest is the music. The game has music going constantly in the background, but your attacks - the primary laser, the Tracer, and Euphoria (a limited use super-attack that comes in handy if you feel overwhelmed by missiles) - create their own sounds that add to the soundtrack. The Tracer is a rapid fire drumbeat, for example. That can add something to the game, assuming you can concentrate on it to notice while you're playing. I like to fire the Tracer during the quiet moments, just for the heck of it.

You can replay levels as much as you like, aiming for higher scores, and to unlock extras. The levels are the same each time, so unlike me, you might grow confident enough to use the Octo-Lock regularly and get some actual good scores. I'm not sure I've broken 300,000 points more than once, and there are things unlocked for breaking 800,000, which should give you some idea of the gap between a top-notch player and myself.