Playing Child of Eden may foster feelings of inadequacy. Not because it's a serious test of gaming reflexes – though it absolutely is – but because no matter how colossal the TV or how expensive the surround-sound setup, it doesn't feel sufficient to do this extraordinary game justice. Tetsuya Mizuguchi has crafted a spiritual successor to Dreamcast favourite Rez that provides such a spectacular audiovisual experience that standing before it in jeans and a T-shirt makes you feel rather unworthy.
The shift from Rez's third-person viewpoint to first person adds to the immersion and the life bar and score meter can be removed to further enhance the sensation of floating in its beautiful world. The task is to zoom through five enormous internet archives of the future, purifying corrupted data in order to recompile the persona of Lumi, the first child born in space. As outre as that might sound, the game follows the rules of a standard on-rails shooter: sweep your gunsight across enemies and fire.
Any dissection of the game's mechanics cannot do the experience justice. The foes you face aren't faceless soldiers but butterflies, lotus flowers and gigantic disco balls. Two enormous, glowing runners jostle against a background of swirling nebulae, clashing and barging in a never-ending race. A humpback whale swims in a tranquil space ocean before suddenly and joyously transforming into a shimmering phoenix with fibre-optic wings. Meanwhile, the soundtrack thuds and pulses, bursting into euphoric life as you time shots to the beat of the music.
Mesmerising with a control pad, it becomes something truly astounding with Kinect, the responsive motion controls bringing you closer to this ethereal cavalcade of imagery. Sweeps of the hand target multiple viruses, with a forward push eliminating them in one fell swoop. Clapping your hands switches to the Tracer, the only defence against projectiles, while raising both hands activates Euphoria, an explosion of light particles that clears the screen when things get hectic.
Meanwhile, Lumi's sporadic visual – and vocal – presence is a reminder of the human element in the midst of this kaleidoscopic chaos. As you surf through Earth's collated memories, including images contributed to Mizuguchi by fans, there's a sense of poignancy that much of our communication these days is virtual, the yearning for that physical connection oddly exemplified by the Kinect controls. It's a rare game that can make you think quite so deeply about the human condition and it speaks volumes for how affecting this genuinely transcendental game can be if you surrender to its otherworldly brilliance.
