Child of Eden

A wing and a prayer, hope takes flight.

A fall through nature both sublime and transcendent, a celebration of life that is gripping and sweet. It was a bit difficult to get through it all with the mist in my eyes, but I come out the other end happy.

Happier than I feel I’ve been. The month I played this was awful for me, and from there I just look forward to the next day positively. Hope you all are having a wonderful day

Rez is a game that I personally adore, and is one of the most visually fantastic games that I've ever played. Even if it's almost 15 years old, it manages to impress me much more than current graphical powerhouses like Star Wars Battlefront or Grand Theft Auto V (which, while I'll admit are impressive from a technical standpoint, will most likely be bettered in that regard in a few years anyway). Granted, the visuals aren't the only reason why I like the game (even if they're one of the main reasons). It's soundtrack is equally impressive and the rhythm-based rail shooter mechanics simply work. It's easily one of my favorite games of all-time.

Then almost a decade later, a sequel comes in the form of this game and somehow one-ups it in pretty much every regard.

To condense all of my praise, this game is absolutely gorgeous. The visuals are incredibly lush with an amazing surreal edge to them, and they might very well be my favorite set of visuals in any game ever. The soundtrack is comprised of a variety of tracks from Genki Rockets, which might very well imply that this could be a platform to advertise their music (hell, their vocalist, 安田レイ, is the one who portays the only character in this game, Lumi), but it makes more sense that their music is present in the game since the game's director, Tetsuya Mizuguchi [水口哲也], is one of the main members of the group. Mechanically, it's pretty much the same as Rez, which is a good thing.

This game is just simply sublime in my opinion. I really hope that this won't be the last amazing thing that Tetsuya Mizuguchi works on, despite him moving away from game production at the moment.