PixelJunk Eden review

August 7, 2008 at 1:30 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Tags: Arcade, fun, game, geometry wars, PixelJunk Eden, PS3, PSN, review, Viva Pinata

By: Chad Grischow

 

What is it about games involving ‘gardening’ that makes them work so well?  A couple of years after Rare’s excellent 360 offering, Viva Piñata, Q-Games gives Sony its own killer gardening game that is not really about gardening. 

You play as a ‘grimp’, which is about as descriptive as it sounds.  With the distant camera angle zooms in a bit, you look like a cross between a long-nosed gnome and a bug.  You must collect pollen in an effort to pollinate seeds.  To do so, you must destroy ‘pollen prowlers’, which are essentially round, randomly moving orbs.  Each time one breaks, it leaves behind a cloud of pollen for you to collect and send toward the nearest seed.  Landing on a fully pollinated seed causes it to grow into a plant, giving you the chance to scale it to get to further seeds, and eventually ‘spectra’.  The spectra are your treasure, which you must collect on each garden level.  Each garden has five spectra, with each of a garden’s levels asking you to gather increasing numbers of them before clearing it. 

 

If it all sounds a little odd, it is; but it is also addictive thanks to its slick physics and smartly simplistic controls.  You will use one button and the left stick handle ninety-five percent of the time in the game.  The same button is responsible for both swinging on your silk string and jumping.  One press shoots your grimp out on his silk string, with another press severing the string, sending you flying in the direction you are pressing.  The same button, when held, will make your grimp spin, to avoid sticking to oncoming plants; stop spinning, and your grimp sticks to the next plant he contacts.  It is an easy to learn, but difficult to master, control scheme that makes the game both accessible and frustrating. 

 

The physics that control how your grimp reacts to your controls and the environment are excellent.  Since hitting the X button once will send you shooting that direction connected to silk, and another hit will release the string, you will get an excellent sense of the game’s physics engine rather quickly.  Timing your button presses takes some getting used to, so you can fully expect some untimely falls from the top of the garden while you get the hang of it.  Thankfully, it does not kill you, only forces you to work your way back to where you were on the map before you fell.  Eden will send you into cuss-filled fits of gaming rage when things go wrong, but will have you constantly falling more in love with it with each new spectra you reach. 

 

Getting the most pollen from the pollen prowlers does take a little planning, since there is a multiplier system that resets each time you land.  While detached from a plant, via silk or jumping, each subsequent prowler you destroy leaves more pollen.  Unfortunately, your silk string only allows you three swings around before it will snap, and gravity sends you hurling toward the ground quickly, making it rather difficult to get more than five prowlers at a time.  Patience is typically rewarded with prowlers traveling in packs of three to four, but waiting too long can be dangerous. 

 

The timer in the lower right-hand corner stops you from getting too entranced in the easy-going ambient music, reminiscent of Lumines.  The timer adds another level of challenge to your exploration, as your turn on the garden ends when it runs out.  Thankfully, you can refill it with white ‘gems’ found scattered about.  While the pollen prowlers are seemingly infinite, the gems are not.  Since your timer resets each time you reach a new spectra, there is some strategy involved with how and where you use your gems. 

 

Rather than offering a typical menu for gamers to choose the garden to tackle next, the main title screen is a garden of its own.  Rather than housing spectra, seeds, and pollen prowlers, the screen has each of the ten available gardens, sprawled throughout.  Each spectra you collect in the game allows another plant to grow in the title screen, granting you access to other gardens.  It is a slick system that forces you to earn the right to play all the gardens.  You will want to get to them all, as the visual style is crisp and vibrant. 

 

Eden marks the first Playstation 3 title with the new ‘trophy’ system available at launch.  They do an admirable job of balancing the trophies for just playing through the game with those you will need to do something special to get.  It also marks another important first for the system, allowing gamers to record gameplay and upload it directly to YouTube for all to see.  The sound is identical to the console, but the video gets a little hazy on the transfer to the internet.  Still, you can see it clear enough to show off your skills to the whole world.  Sadly, there is no option to rewind and record video after you do something cool, forcing you to record your whole game in the hopes of pulling off something worth showing.  About all it is lacking is online co-op, which seems to be a running theme with Playstation Store titles.  At least you can play with three players on the same console in an effort to get through it all.

 

PixelJunk Eden is not for everyone, but those with an affinity for quirky, challenging games will fall in love with this atmospheric exploration gem. 

 

8/10