The Pixeljunk series is already on it’s way to becoming the big franchise on the Playstation Network. While they’ve only released two games that didn’t stop the anticipation levels soar through the roof for the third. Racers and Monsters were pretty much safe in terms of originality and innovating but the third Pixeljunk title, appropriately named Eden, is anything but a safe bet.
You play as a Grimp who can jump between obstacles (plants and rocks) and attach on to them. You’ll then have the ability to rappel down and swing around allowing you to collect the games resource, pollen. Pollen is stored inside the Pollen Prowlers who are defeated by letting anything you control touch them. Once that happens pollen will explode everywhere with even larger amounts if you rack up a combo in one swing or jump. If you collect enough of the stuff you’ll be able to sprout growth from nearby seeds. The abstract flowers that form out of these seeds basically provide you with a platform for you to climb up the level.
This might sound complex but it’s quite simple when you sit down and play it and surprisingly all these elements come together to form a decent platformer. The overused term of ‘hidden depth’ will easily apply to Eden. On some of the later levels they even mix it up with teleports, jump pads, rocks and one especially good surprise I’ll allow you to experience the magic that is playing that level for the first time without knowing it.
Eden comes complete with a 3 Player local co-op mode. These modes can get crazy and produce great moments when someone falls but another player catches him or the first time you pull off trapeze like tricks. It’s fun but as it’s only local and not online you won’t find your self playing 3 Player co-op that much. The only online the game has comes in the form of online leaderboards (the friends ones aren’t working as I write this) and the ability to upload videos to YouTube. Videos are fun to mess around with but as Eden is an abstract game only people who have the game will know what’s going on in your videos and why would they want to watch someone else play it when they have it them selves? Seeing as there isn’t much in the way of secrets or hidden Spectra this seems like like ‘look what we can do’ instead of anything exciting.
Pixeljunk Eden is backed up by some great art direction. The very minimalist trance soundtrack provides a calming backdrop that is only confirmed with the simply brilliant visuals. Despite looking like a Photoshop brush pack the abstractness of the plants and backgrounds give an overall sense of calm. With that in mind Eden could be easily thrown into the artsy fartsy category along with fl0w or Echochrome, but luckily there is a great game to back it up.
Unfortunately Eden is let down by some unnecessary repetitiveness. Each of the 10 levels has a total of 5 spectra to acquire but the game forces you to get just one more Spectra than you did last time. For example if you get one spectra you’ll get kicked out of the level and have to start again when you get two spectra. Meaning there is a lot of backtracking and repeating old goals. On the earlier levels when the spectra is easy to obtain this is fine as it adds a lot of life and replayability to the game but on the later levels when it gets frustratingly difficult you’ll find your self wanting to turn the game off as sometimes you’ll collect the odd Spectra simply by luck.
Talk of frustrating, the game also has a timer that really takes away from the overall calm sense the game has. You refill your ’synchronization meter’ by collecting time crystals that are scattered around the levels. Timed levels isn’t really a terrible thing but it would be nice if you could turn it off and have a chill out mode because the game is perfectly set up for that.
Despite it’s shortcomings and sometimes downright stupid design decisions the PixelJunk team have easily topped the energetic Racers or Strategic Monsters. Eden offers it’s own brand of unique organic platforming combined with a brilliant art style to leave you with an overall great audiovisual experiance. Although take note Pixeljunk Eden has to be tried before as it’s unique gameplay and style won’t appeal to everyone.
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