Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Grows on you"

PLEASE NOTE:I only used a controller when I played through this game.

Child of Eden is one of my favorite shooters of all time.It's an on-rails shooter and what makes it stand out to me are it's beautiful visuals,interesting shooting mechanics and it's music which has an electronic sound that can sound spiritual or have an enjoyable beat.

The story of the game is set centuries in the future and mankind has travelled through the far reaches of space and humanity stores all it's knowledge in a system known as 'Eden'.Eden is under attack from a virus and you'll need to go into Eden's database and destroy the virus by shooting viral entities.Eden also contains the memories of the first girl born in space(her name is Lumi)and Lumi's memories are under threat from the virus and so is Lumi's personality program which Eden uses to recreate Lumi's personality.You'll see Lumi's memories and her personality traits(you'll see how Lumi likes to sing and dance(Lumi is part of a band named the 'Genki Rockets' )and you'll see how she is free spirited.Basically,the story uses Lumi's memories and free spirited nature as an emotional drive to get you to want to rid the virus from Eden and it works because Lumi's memories show breath taking environments represented by beautiful cinematography and the fact Lumi is a very pretty Eurasian girl and you can see her free spirited nature when she sings and dances during certain scenes.

The environments you'll travel through have bright colors and abstract objects and some environments are influenced by space,nature,under the ocean,in a futuristic city etc.I love the game's cinematics and they remind me of the cinematics from some of the Final Fantasy games or the beautiful cinematography from certain Asian movies.The scenes of Lumi singing and dancing with spiritual music playing is amazing.

The shooting mechanics allow you to use a rapid fire weapon and a lock-on weapon and some sort of super weapon(that you can only use a limited amount of times and only if you collect a certain item within that level).The lock-on system allows you to hold the lock-on button and drag the cursor across up to 8 enemies and if you press the lock-on button after you've locked onto enemies it will destroy/damage them.The rapid fire is a weaker weapon but it's needed for shooting enemy projectiles that are coming towards you because you cannot use the lock-on to shoot projectiles.The levels have no checkpoints and if you lose all of your health you'll need to restart the level from the beginning.Some of the levels can be hard on normal difficulty until you learn when are where the enemies will appear,what attacks they will use and until you get used to the moving the cursor in directional patterns to effectively destroy enemy projectiles.You can play the game on a difficulty that's lower than normal but if you do so you won't be able to progress through the game because you won't earn stars which are needed to unlock new levels.

Some enemies and obsticles won't shoot you but you'll need to shoot them in certain places or destroy them before they crash into you or before they can activate their weapon.

On hard difficulty,the game is very challenging,but adds replay value.

Travelling fast through environments is quite exciting because sometimes you'll need to shoot enemies before you collide into them and it's just fun travelling fast through beautiful environments with wonderful 3D effects.

The game is quite short(it has only 5 story levels)but you can attempt to beat the game on hard difficulty level(which becomes unlocked after you beat the game on normal difficulty)and you can try to collect all the items or destroy all the enemies or score lots of points in levels to earn more trophies.The game cost me only 13$ and I got a free Child of Eden Watch with it,so it's pretty decent value.

Like I've mentioned above,the music can be spiritual of have enjoyable electronic beats and I like how the music beats change when you fight certain bosses and how the music changes when you move to different environments in levels and I love the spiritual songs/music that plays during scenes that show Lumi singing and dancing.

Overall,I'm not a big fan of shooting games,but I loved playing through Child of Eden and it's one of my favorite shooting games of all time and it's one of the most visually breath taking games of all time and the game is a wonderful spiritual experience with fun shooting mechanics and amazing music.