Child of Eden has been released on 360 Kinect and been provided for us to preview/review by the publisher.

Believe it or not we are still playing it. Here are some extracts of what we made of it in chronological order:

"Child of Eden turns Rez's nightmare into a dream. Everything, from the Kinect controls to the visuals and music is designed to transport you to another place. However, the question is whether Child of Eden can find the audience it rightly deserves..."
- Perpetual Gamer (Thu, 23 Jun 2011)

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Child of Eden 360 Kinect Release

27/01/2011 12:51

Child of Eden takes Rez into the motion controlled era. Rhythm, visuals and audio pummel the senses in one of the first truly hardcore Move and Kinect experiences.

Child of Eden, from Tetsuya Mizuguchi at Q? Entertainment, follows his seminal rhythm action experiences Rez and Lumines. In similar form, Child of Eden is an on-rails shooter which is said to be part of study of Synaesthesia, a condition that blends touch, vision and sound in to a single experience.

Child of Eden is every bit the spiritual successor to Rez. It takes place in Eden (the AI inside which Rez took place) as you defend Project Lumi from attack by computer viruses. Like its predecessor you guide the action down a set path simply aiming one of two weapons.

Available on both PS3 and 360 (noticeably absent from the Wii), you can choose between Kinect or Move controls. The game seems a good fit to both, although Kinect benefits from full body motion and hand claps switch back and forth between weapons.

As with all of Q? Entertainment titles Child of Eden places a large focus on its graphical and acoustic styling. Each of the five stages has a distinct style and while the game is on rails, replaying levels will offer different experiences as new areas open depending on your actions.

The holistic approach to the overall aesthetic also sees a focus on sensory feedback to actions, even going a far as offering an option to connect extra controllers to produce haptic stimulation to enhance the audio and visual experience (ed: the revenge of the much maligned Rez vibration pack?).

It remains to be seen if the hardcore gamers it is aimed at will side with this method over the traditional controller. Indeed, it may speak to Q? Entertainment's uncertainty about motion controls that they are keeping the joypad option open to players.

Published by Ubisoft, Child of Eden is set for release at the end of February for both PS3 (Move) and 360 (Kinect).