Further PixelJunk Eden Impressions

    Not a liveblog, but I just thought I'd jot down some thoughts I've been having about Eden. So far, I'm enjoying it, but I've been having some mixed feelings about a lot of the design choices:

The Pros

• It's definitely fun and relaxing. The presentation is excellent, the environments look interesting, and the music is awesome.
• When everything is working just right and you're swinging through the gardens and getting huge combos, it's so satisfying.
• At no point have I thought about whether or not this game was worth my money. When you aren't thinking about that, you know something's very right.
• It's just...it's just fun.

The Cons

• Falling from the top of a garden to the bottom because you just barely missed a jump is one of the most demoralizing actions in any videogame, ever. I joked in the liveblog about being able to web-sling like Spider-Man, but that really should've been in there.
• The time limit/life bar is the worst idea known to man. As I said in the liveblog, it didn't work in echochrome, and it doesn't work here. I don't like to be pressured in a game like this. There's just no reason for it. What if in flOw, you had to keep eating a certain amount of other organisms to refill a depleting time bar? It would've completely broken the vibe of the game.
• I'm really debating at this point whether enemies were really necessary at all in this game. Platforming is fun enough on its own, and the enemies are just kind of annoying. They just don't seem to be adding a lot, but then again, I've only seen like two types thus far (I'm on like Garden 04).
• Being forced to replay these gardens over and over is getting on my nerves. Even if the target is to get, say, three Spectras (or is it three Spectra? oh well), I should be able to go for more without being kicked back out to the level select. The target should be a minimum, not a maximum.

    I'll probably post more impressions as I continue to go through it. I'm pretty sure there's supposed to be 10 gardens, so I'm not even halfway completed with this game yet. Posting my impressions as I go along is probably better than just not posting anything at all about it until a week or two later and then have a huge review, right? (I may discuss this kind of "extended game coverage" thing again later.)