Wow, finally Rez gets a sequel. Why has it taken this long?
Could it be because the first one wasn’t the massive hit it deserved to be?
I mean, Activision wouldn’t leave a decade between iterations of Call of Duty or Tony Hawk’s would it?
Like many other beautiful and brilliant games (Ico and Katamari spring to mind), it was critically acclaimed in the press and thoroughly enjoyed by the players.
But also, mostly ignored by the general public.
I think now is the best time for a game like Eden.
Thanks to the huge rise of casual PC gamers on browser games and downloads playing everything from Bejewelled to Farmville, the amount of people playing games that weren’t before is huge.
Nintendo has put more consoles in family homes than ever. it’s also ensured there’s an eclectic range of games that everyone can play.
It’s also given us a generation of kids glued to DS’s.
TV ads of games that these days really do look good enough for anyone to be impressed by.
So, these days, a lot more people are aware of games. This is reflected in the press, especially the posh press. The target market for Microsoft has to be the middle class Guardian reader with enough money to buy a Kinect and a room big enough to use it.
Coming off the back of LA Noire which was high profile enough to not just just be a hot topic in print, but also feature in South Park.
Games at the moment are really, well, fashionable.
Another factor that really works in Eden’s favour is the fact that everyone these days (well, everyone with an Xbox 360 at least), has a big-ass TV.
Eden needs a big-ass TV.
It also needs complete darkness. Honestly, turn all the lights off. All you need to see is Eden.
It also has to be played multi-player.
Contrary to anything you may have read, it’s not a single player game.
Sure, only one player is in control, but you need to have at least one other person sitting down to just stare blankly at the screen with their mouth open.
You also need nother person as a co-pilot. Those moments where the player gets complete blindness and needs Goose to snap them out of it:
“Purple, purple, shoot the purple!!”
See, a great thing about Eden, for me anyway, is that it’s actually really hard.
You can play it with damage turned off, but you can’t unlock anything.
Someone has to finish the levels on the normal difficulty to progress.
I’m currently stuck on level 3!
I think I’ve been spoilt in the last few years. The games I’ve been playing have been too easy.
LA Noir for instance, is absolutely brilliant but deliberately designed so all players, male and female, will finish it without too much trouble.
That’s why it never asks you to park the car.
But Eden, it’s tough. It doesn’t ever feel unfair. In fact, at any point in the game, it never feels anything but awesome.
I do mean actually awesome of course- That’s what the second player on the sofa is for- to just soak up some of the awe.
Now and again, the second player will look away from the screen, just to appreciate the performance of the conductor.
Yeah, you have to play it on Kinect. The grasp and splay with the right hand, and a graceful sweep of the left to wipe out the purple- You feel like a frickin’ wizard!
I can see why other people have described it as an “experience”. It’s not. It’s a game. The basic mechanics are pretty easy to understand because it’s a game. But it is a game that you have to experience nonetheless. There’s a point in a level where you just become totally absorbed and everything just flows. Obviously, the better you get, the more frequent these moments become, and the game just comes alive.
So, you get out what you put in.
It has to make you replay the levels. You can’t begin to take everything in the first time. Coming back to the first level after the third makes it seem brand new.
In fact, it’s watching somebody else play a level that is the biggest education. You notice loads of incidental things that the player has filtered out because they are focusing on staying alive.
I really hope Child of Eden gets the commercial success it deserves. It will undoubtedly win a ton of awards. It will totally deserve them. But I want to see millions of people playing it and wanting more.
I want publishers inspired to release a wave of poorly designed, substantially indequate but also substantially psychadelic “experiences” that are really good fun for a couple of hours but have no depth.
Then they will all be on sale for a fiver on e-bay and be a decent evenings entertainment!
But more importantly, Mizuguchi will be encouraged to continue doing what he does best- really trippy shit!
I’d love to play a sequel to Space Channel 5. Surely that has to be next?
Ah, Ulala- She must be getting on a bit now. I bet she’s still hot though!
