PixelJunk Eden
Posted By: James on Sep 21 2008

You are a grimp. Through jumping and swinging you bring life to a garden, collecting pollen with your silk and sprouting seeds with your touch. Each Spectra that you collect completes a goal. With one wrong move you will ruin your progress and that of your fellow players. PixelJunk Eden is one of the most relaxingly frustrating games you will ever play.

PixelJunk Eden presents itself with the pretension of trip-hop club. It is tragically hip first, with a soundtrack consisting of a mellow techno that all too inviting. Just as it helps to put you into a trance like state, it quickly grates nerves with some ever annoying and persistent sounds. It is difficult to figure out if these sounds are the part of the actual soundtrack, which makes it amateur and unexplored. In any case they seem to show up just to keep the games smooth groove from completely enveloping you.

The pretension of PixelJunk Eden continues with a purposely abstract art style that consists of bright simple colors that paint a very clear picture. Everything about the visual presentation manages to communicate all of the intricacies of play with a minimal palette. That is except for where the camera is choosing to have its attention focused. While the surrounds are a beautiful playground, the camera seems to arbitrarily select a player as the focus, suddenly turning hard earned progress into a quick trip to the bottom of the stage only to begin anew.

The theme of relaxation turned to frustration is most apparent only after playing PixelJunk Eden. Controlling your grimp is easy enough, moving the left stick shows your trajectory when jumping (which is the only method of mobility). When stuck to a plant you can jump, while keeping a bungie-like silk attached to your feet that will allow you to swing in circles and aid the collection of pollen. Both of these modes of transport are impeded by a severe lack of aerial control and a silk that will break all to quickly, even without the help of an enemy. While uninterrupted traversing of the gardens can become a wonderful experience, once you get numerous plants growing and have the proper environment to play off of you are rewarded by being forced out immediately upon finding one of the goal pieces known as Spectra. This is a real killer of fun that simply forces extended play time on a game that does not require it. Thanks to this forced exiting of a stage you must reenter each stage five times, once again completing all the work you had previously done before.

The idea of whiling away a late night with a friend swinging through the gardens of PixelJunk Eden is quickly shattered once the plagues of co-op play become all too apparent. Instead of the added benefit of another player, you are instead crippled by a camera that I mentioned earlier. A camera that once looses sight of another player gives them two seconds to return or lose half of all pollen collected and respawn next to the player that the camera favored. The remaining piece of this confounding puzzle is of course a timer that will end the mission and throw you out of the garden. Co-op is local only, PixelJunk Eden only utilizes online for score ranking and video sharing (a surprising feature).

PixelJunk Eden ultimately seems like a creation of two teams that had no communication. One team had a plan for a relaxing game that would wrap you in a visual and auditory blanket allowing you to zone out while swing through abstract gardens. The other team was of a mindset of edge of the seat jumps and frustratingly practiced physics understanding with the speed run always in mind. What resulted is a game that can happily entertain for a short game session, but finds a way to scrape nails across the chalkboard for those who stay too long.