First released in June for Xbox 360, Q? Entertainment’s Child of Eden, the psychedelic, multi-sensory rail shooter successor to Rez, makes its long-awaited debut on PS3 this week. It’s a spectacular game. This is how I succinctly described it in my previous review of the Xbox 360 edition:

“Imagine tripping out on a hallucinogenic drug while listening to pulsing techno music, staring into a kaleidoscope, and experiencing the most intense orgasm of your entire life, all at the same time. That’s what playing Child of Eden is like.”

Nothing has changed in the jump to PS3 (except that the PS3 version supports stereoscopic 3D for even crazier visuals, if you have a compatible TV), so consult my original review for more basic details about the game and why I believe it’s totally worth buying, regardless of platform or control method. However, since I wasn’t able to test the optional Kinect control scheme the first time around, I would like to take a moment to tell you about how the game functions as a motion control experience.

Armed with an early PS3 copy, I spent Friday night through the weekend revisiting Child of Eden’s trippy archives, this time with PlayStation Move in hand. First let me be clear: Move controls are entirely optional. The game can be played with a stock DualShock 3 – you aim with the analog stick, hold the Cross button to lock onto targets and release to fire, and slam on the Square button to pop off Tracer rounds. This method works great.

Things are a little different with a Move controller plugged in. As you would do in any light gun style shooter, you aim simply by pointing at the screen and engage the T trigger to fire the Tracer. Unleashing a screen-clearing Euphoria bomb takes only a quick tap of the Move button. Conversely, firing the lock-on laser requires no buttons whatsoever. Lock-on is achieved automatically as you paint the cursor over up to eight targets at once. Then, with a firm forward flick or thrust of the wrist a swarm of lasers bursts across the screen, each one homing in on its respective target.

I wouldn’t say playing Child of Eden with Move enhances immersion in any particular way. By that I mean you don’t necessarily feel like you are directly touching and interacting with the game on a virtual reality level, as seems to be the intention. But the game flat out plays better with a Move controller versus a DualShock.

I typically choose analog sticks and face buttons as my preferred method of video game control when given the option, so I was skeptical at first. But after working through the tutorial and forgetting the joystick controls I was used to from the many hours I spent with the Xbox 360 version, I didn’t want to fight for Lumi and Eden’s survival without a Move firmly in my grasp, the neon glow of the wand’s orb matching the cascade of sparks and lights displayed on the screen.

When switching back to a DualShock, I felt like I was playing at a slight disadvantage. With the Move, aiming, targeting, and firing are performed collectively with one quick, fluid hand movement. In this instance, motion control feels so natural, so effortless; not forced and ‘waggly’. While effective on its on, aiming with an analog stick isn’t nearly as zippy or as accurate by comparison. A wave of the arm allows you to instantly sweep the entire screen and quickly paint eight targets for an Octa-Lock, something that requires greater skill and thumb stick dexterity with a traditional controller.

One negative I will say against this game’s Move implementation, though, is that the calibration process can be annoyingly finicky, particularly when attempting to play from a seated position. I am rarely able to get an accurate calibration without going through the process a few times, as the cursor always seems to track a few inches lower than where I’m actually aiming on the first try. Standing up further back from the PlayStation Eye, the calibration does sync up quicker. But it’s still a slower process than most Move games I’ve played, and far from the desired plug and play operability.

It has taken some time, but over the course of the year the PlayStation Move has shaken off its slow, gimmicky start to establish a lead position as gaming’s top motion controller. A high quantity of great and diverse games is the main reason why, and Child of Eden is one more Move-enabled standout to add to the growing list.

Imagine tripping out on a hallucinogenic drug while listening to pulsing techno music, staring into a kaleidoscope, and experiencing the most intense orgasm of your entire life, all at the same time. That’s what playing Child of Eden is like.

Child of Eden, the latest creation from game development mastermind, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, is an on-rails shooter built for standard control pads and Kinect motion controls, complete with–in typical Mizuguchi fashion–a rhythmic flair. In all ways but the title, it is Rez’s successor.

In the game, you are pulled along on a mesmerizing journey through five stages (known as Archives), blasting away at a virus that has corrupted the artificial intelligence known as Eden. This virus manifests itself as a wide variety of exotic objects and creatures, such as plants, sea life, aliens and microorganisms, which you must eradicate while hastily zipping across clockwork dreamscapes, blossoming flower gardens, star-filled galaxies and deep sea worlds that are like taking a submarine ride through a funky, psychedelic aquarium. Needless to say, Child of Eden is one gorgeous game.

The gameplay is incredibly easy to grasp too, but at the same time presents a stiff enough challenge to keep you coming back for more, time and time again. Enemies fly across the screen. You shoot at them by aiming a cursor with the left analog stick. You earn points and stars based on your performance. And that’s pretty much it. This is a ‘top your high score’ arcade style shooter all the way, so don’t expect a whole lot of complexity.

To shoot, you either pull on the right trigger to fire a rapid-fire Tracer beam or hold down the A button and paint up to eight targets simultaneously with a lock-on homing laser. Incoming fire and enemies marked by glowing purple indicators can only be defeated with the Tracer, while enemies with a red target must be taken down with the lock-on laser, so there is definitely more to the game than brainlessly blasting. You can also pick up screen-clearing Euphoria bombs, but they are rare, so use them wisely.

I still haven’t hopped aboard the Kinect train, so I can’t call upon any personal experiences to tell you how these actions work using motion controls. But I will tell you that this is the first game to come along that has at least tempted me to buy one. Fortunately, though, Kinect is not a requirement, and the game plays like a dream with a standard Xbox 360 controller in hand. So if you too are without a Kinect, you shouldn’t fear that you are somehow getting less of a game. Child of Eden was made with the added sense of touch in mind (the forthcoming PS3 version will also support Move), but the developers did make sure to offer unique and equally immersive experiences for both control schemes.

Regardless of your choice of control method, every shot you take and every virus deleted generates a drum or snare beat or another sound effect that essentially creates the game’s soundtrack on the fly based on your actions, and by homing in on eight targets at once you can create what’s known as an Octa-Lock. This rewards you with bonus points if you let the laser swarm fly in proper rhythm with the frenetic electronic tunes thumping in the background, performed by the Genki Rockets. Other than that, though, the synchronization between the gameplay and music is really more style than substance. By the end of my time with the game, I did crave more opportunities to be able to score points based on shooting to the beat.

As you might expect from a rail shoot ‘em up, Child of Eden isn’t an overly long game, but it doesn’t need to be, and in fact it’s better that it doesn’t drag on for hours on end. Each archive generally lasts for 10-15 minutes, but to unlock the advanced stages you must first obtain a certain number of stars. So depending on how many times you fail and how many archives you have to replay to increase your star count, you’re looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of two to four hours on the first trip through.

And that is really the whole fun of the game – to constantly revisit levels and attempt to improve your high scores for personal bragging rights, or so you can post them to the online leaderboards and see how your skills stack up against other players. A good amount of bonus content also helps to extend the game’s shelf life even further. Once you’ve completed the five stages, a sixth archive unlocks and provides you with an endless survival challenge mode. A hard difficulty setting, concept artwork, alternate visualizer skins, and a sound effect modifier are other unlockable rewards to be discovered.

While many rail shooters are prone to petering out in a short period of time, Child of Eden sinks into your brain like a drug and doesn’t let go, blowing away your senses and sending you into an eternal state of bliss with its fast-paced gameplay and its invigorating blend of stunning graphics and hypnotic beats. I simply cannot recommend it enough.

Pros:
+ Thrilling, sensory-overloading rail shooter gameplay
+ Easy to pick up and play, but still puts up a tough fight
+ Euphoric convergence of graphics and sound
+ Addictive ‘just one more game’ replayability

Cons:
– Connection between gameplay and music could have gone further

Affiliate Links:
Buy from Amazon (See all Xbox 360 Games) or eStarland

Game Info:
Platform: Xbox 360 (also coming to PS3 later this year)
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Q? Entertainment
Release Date: 6/14/2011
Genre: Arcade Rail Shooting
ESRB Rating: E10+
Players: 1
Source: Review copy provided by publisher

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After hours and hours of Peggling it up on my DS, I can certainly see why it has become such a sensation. Peggle is essentially an amalgamation of pinball, pachinko, Arkanoid and Plinko from ‘The Price is Right’ – four of the greatest games known to man. That may sound like a complicated mishmash of ideas there, but the game really couldn’t be any simpler (or more addictive).

At the top of the screen is a ball launcher which you must use to shoot marbles at orange pegs mixed in with a bunch of board-clogging blue pegs arranged in various patterns in the colorful field of play below. The objective is to clear out all of these orange pegs with only a set number of marbles available to you at the start of each puzzle – though you can earn additional free balls by achieving high scores and/or if the bucket that scrolls across the bottom of the screen happens to catch your marble upon its descent. So in a nutshell, you aim and shoot your marble with the stylus (or D-pad and face buttons if you so choose) and cross your fingers as you watch it ping around amongst all the pegs, hopefully taking out a bunch of orange pegs as it gradually works its way to the bottom.

Throughout the Adventure mode you are tutored by the great Peggle Masters, cute animal creatures who provide special magical powers to aid in your Peggle quest. These powers, which include things like a fireball that plows straight through all pegs in its path, pinball flippers you can use to help keep marbles in play longer than normal, and bombs that blow up all nearby pegs, manifest themselves as two green pegs in each puzzle. Purple pegs pop up in random places at the start of every turn as well, and by hitting five you enter a new DS-exclusive bonus room called the Bonus Underground. In this area there are gems floating around a series of bumpers, and by tapping the screen you’re able to make the bumpers vibrate and launch the marble around the screen to collect as many gems as possible. More gems equals more points, and more points equals more free balls.

Reliance on catching lucky bounces to complete puzzles, especially as they become more challenging, can become a bit too prevalent at times — at least for my tastes — but for the most part becoming a successful Peggle-meister requires learning how to visualize trajectory before launching your marble into play. So overall I’d say the balance between skill and luck is pretty good. Casual gamers can enjoy lobbing their marbles around at random hoping to get lucky, while more seasoned gamers can spend time mastering the physics and continuously striving to top their high scores.

Now, I’ve read quite a bit of petty whining around the Net about Dual Shot’s price. At $30 it is indeed the priciest version of Peggle, but before skimming past the game based on its price you need to remember that you’re getting two games in one here. If you were to go buy Peggle and Peggle Nights separately on PC or Mac you’d be paying the same price. And with Dual Shot you’re getting all the same content plus an additional 10 exclusive levels designed by Lumines and Meteos developer Q Entertainment. So tallying it all up, this game packs over 200 puzzle levels, a turn-based Duel mode you can play with a friend or against the CPU, and the option to send a trial version to another local DS, not to mention the fresh and addictive gameplay you get to enjoy in all of these levels and modes. I’d say that’s more than enough content to justify the price.

Pros:
+ Very simple yet very addictive gameplay
+ Charming graphics and sound effects
+ Two game’s worth of content equates to high replay value
+ Breath of fresh air for the genre; it’s not just another match-three puzzler

Cons:
– Seems a bit too luck-based at times

Game Info:
Platform: DS
Publisher: PopCap Games
Developer: Q Entertainment
Release Date: 2/27/09
Genre: Puzzle
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Players: 1-2