That's a Loooong Way Down!

So I’ve been playing Pixeljunk Eden off and on since it was released last summer. I love the ambient techno and the art style. The games mechanics are simple yet require a bit of mastery and exploring the gardens can almost put you into a strange pollinating trance. Many have described the game as a great way to relax and chill out.

I agree to an extent, but I find it hard to relax in the later gardens when I’m constantly on the verge of running out of time or getting batted off my carefully aimed trajectory by some asshole circle thing that is a pain to kill and will be replaced within 10 seconds if I do manage too. I thought this game was all about the exploration of the pretty gardens, and making plants grows and what not, you know, hippie crap. I can’t really blame the game for getting harder, it’s what games tend to do, though I think the early gardens are a bit misleading.

I know I can’t be in this boat by myself. Q recently released a mandatory patch that actually made the game easier; it reduced the time constraint and some other things. Did all these other people just get tired of the game before getting to the hard gardens? I know it took me the better part of a year to get to them.

The worst part is some of the coolest gardens I’ve seen yet are also some of the hardest. One has this awesome rain effect, turns out that awesome effect is used to indicate the direction of gravity. Do you know how hard it is to wrap your head around swinging when you are being pulled to the left instead of down? It gets better too, the gravity only seems to switch when you get close to your goal.

My latest unlocked garden has an awesome song and a sweet grayscale color scheme. It starts off by shooting you a good ten seconds into the air, I know that’s not a unit of length, but I have no idea how to gauge distance in this game and ten seconds is a long time to float upwards without seeing anything. Anyway, its not a huge deal, but it just makes every mistake take a good minute longer to retrace. Don’t forget there’s a time limit. Also, the first spectra I came across in that garden is encased in rock, how the hell do I get that one?

Well I didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant, I do love the game, but I’m calling everyone that said Eden is relaxing out. You never got to garden 7!