Child of Eden

The Good
I can't say that I am familiar with Tetsuya Mizuguchi's other work, but just going by Child of Eden, the man and his team clearly have talent for making things look nice, complimenting the synth soundtrack nicely. Everything's clear, there's plenty of colour and the actual designs present are quite inventive.

The mechanics of the game are fine, as well. Aiming is as smooth as it needs to be without becoming slippery and the alternate weapons offer a balance that does work.

The Bad
As clean as it is, Child of Eden is a very visually busy game. Things fly across the screen either very quickly or in large groups so you can't hit them all at once, making it difficult to keep track of what you're looking at. On more than one occasion, one can expect to be firing at a large enemy in the distance and get hit by a little tiny purple guy you weren't looking at because you thought you'd got them all a few seconds ago.

Another gripe is the insistence that the player must collect a number of performance stars before they're allowed into the next level, forcing them to go through the same motions quite a lot.

The Bottom Line
Mizuguchi evidently has things to say about the impact of technology, but whatever that is, it's lost somewhere underneath an aesthetically pleasing and well enough designed but overbearing game that throws more than it needs to at the player.