#ps move

Rez’s aggressive, immediate club beats give way to a more layered pop soundscape provided by Genki Rockets, Mizuguchi’s own musical project. Genki Rockets itself ties into the story, with the frontwoman being a fictional 17-year old from the future, and the first child born in space, making Child of Eden’s Lumi an AI based on her. 

Genki Rockets’ music leans much heavier into the electronic pop elements, with heavily processed lyrics, guitars and samples. It’s a much more upbeat soundscape, leaning into themes of optimism and imagination. Rachel Rhodes reprises her role as Lumi here, seen in the opening video as well as in glimpses throughout the game. It’s a more human, and organic aesthetic compared to its predecessor, even when it leans into similar synthetic thematic material. 

Child of Eden largely follows the syncopated rail shooter format of its predecessor, with a focus on lock on attacks, with enemies coming in waves of 4 or some multiple of it, timed to line up with the beat of the music. Both locking on and releasing  are signalled with percussion, and timing your release as you reach maximum lock on will result in a score bonus for staying on beat. 

Supplementing the lock on is the rapid fire attack, which does less damage but can defend against attacks and break down armor on certain enemies. Attacks often follow a circular, or spiral pattern, requiring you to smoothly trace them in order to intercept them. A screen clearing bomb rounds out the arsenal, as your panic button when the odds get too overwhelming. 

The game was promoted for its use of motion controls, supporting both the Kinect and PS Move controller, leading to some people mistaking it to be a motion control only game. The game does support using separate controllers as Mizuguchi’s famous “trance vibrator”, so you can even get the force feedback while using them. 

As for the controls themselves, I can only speak to the Kinect version, but they work well, with each hand acting as a different shot type, and tracking generally being good, though there might be some unintentional overlap when switching hands. Raising both hands activates the bomb function, which has a short buffer to prevent accidental bombing, meaning you’ll have to anticipate using it a little earlier. The feeling is not unlike Fantasia’s conductor-like hand motions, though instead of swipes here there’s a great focus on tracing shapes across the screen. 

Child of Eden’s stages flow between transitory tunnels with more focused encounters, to open spaces with a large number of popcorn enemies to occupy yourself with as you take in setpieces. It never reaches the frantic pace of contemporary rail shooters, but synced up with the layered electronica of the soundtrack, there’s a dense visual and auditory soundscape that demands attention. 

Each stage--or Archive, in the game’s terms--focuses on one particular theme. Matrix depicts the initial dive into cyberspace, dense with tunnels, and focused on an abstract geometric theme that calls back to Rez, incorporating some of its gate designs. 

Evolution calls to mind Rez’s final stage, chronicling the evolution of life, starting from the player performing cellular division, evolving into sea life and finally traveling into space to meet more fantastical creatures. 

Beauty begins in a garden with blooming flowers, before diving into their root network and ascending to face off against massive, sentient clusters of them. 

Passion builds on the humanoid encounter from Rez’s Area 4, this time pitting two figures clashing and racing each other, as you get caught in the crossfire. As they clash footage of humanity’s technological evolution appears, chronicling our eventual ascent into space. 

Journey is the final stage, incorporating imagery from all the previous stages, culminating in the final encounter where you free Lumi and restore her memories. 

Each stage is host to a variety of surreal imagery, both abstract and interpretational, with creatures and viruses depicted as living neon beings, calling to mind the bioluminescent deep sea creatures. Eden itself appears as a collective unconscious, a digital representation of the history and hopes of humanity. It’s an optimistic, New Age type vibe, that sees humanity reaching far into the cosmos.

It’s an opposite interpretation of Rez. Instead of the weight of all our connections and knowledge leading to an existential crisis, it’s what connects and lifts us up. It’s up to us to weave it all together and give hope to the future. 

And that’s why it doesn’t work as well for me. While that cosmic, spiritual viewpoint is appealing, and supported by tons of evocative imagery, it ends up feeling too limited to achieve its more ambitious message. The narrative aims for something larger in scale than its environments and run time support. Stages are strangely small, and aside from a few standout moments, don’t evoke the feeling of a connected journey. 

Genki Rockets’ music also provides a more consistent soundscape than Rez, but ironically that results in less contrast in mood, making each stage’s track harder to differentiate, with a lack of threat or stakes. The denser soundscapes also draw emphasis away from the accompanying percussive effects, resulting in a weaker connection between your actions and music. 

The largest problem by far is the game’s structure. It’s relatively short, coming in at about the length of an album, but it drags it out by forcing you to replay stages until you meet an arbitrary medal requirement. Finishing a stage earns you between 1-3 stars, and stages can be played again to earn more, with a certain amount required to unlock the next stage. Even if you somehow manage to earn a 3-star ranking on the first try, you’ll need to grind older stages by level 2, stopping your initial momentum dead in its tracks and giving you very few songs before you start repeating them. 

Rez did require a certain rank in each stage before accessing the final stage, but you’d seen most of the game by then, and would have much more variety to return to when attempting to unlock the final stage. As if afraid players would finish it too fast and leave unsatisfied, Child of Eden drags out what’s here, dramatically halting its pace, and really only earning another hour and a half or so. Each run does earn you another lifeform to add to the fish tank that is Lumi’s Garden (the level hub you pan around before selecting a level), but it doesn’t come close to justifying the repetition baked into the first run. 

Child of Eden doesn’t come close to the emotional highs (and lows) of Rez, but even with this repetition built into it, it’s a relatively short journey that is worth experiencing, if only to see its beautiful visuals and connections to the rest of Mizuguchi’s catalog. It’s an optimist interpretation of his own work, and while it can often come off as a bit corny, it’s still encouraging to immerse yourself in an optimistic, humanist worldview to fend off the torrential cynicism that seems to blanket everything today. 

Child of Eden never received a modern release, but is playable via backwards compatibility on the Xbox, minus the Kinect features.