Project Eden (PC, PS2) (2001)
Developer: Core
Review by Faididi and Co.
Action adventure paradise
Story: Excellent
In a future where the earth is turned to waste, Langian metropolises are constructed upward over the ruins of old cities, and maintenance crews are regularly sent down to the lower levels to shore up the iffy foundations. When one such crew fails to report back, a team of operatives is sent to the rescue. The story starts off simple enough, but it gradually develops into a creepy mystery that involves terrifying monsters and implications whose horrors are only fully realized over time. The myriad tiny details fit perfectly into the setting, reflecting the care spent in crafting the game's world and its complex relationships between technology and society.
Gameplay: Excellent
Core's Project Eden brings together deep cooperative elements and topnotch level and puzzle designs to deliver the ultimate 4-Player action adventure experience. One may think of this game as Artificial Mind and Motion's Time Busters or Koei's Nanatsu no Hikan: Senritsu no Bishou, but with double the Players and with far more creative challenges. (If there aren't enough Players, you can always switch to the uncontrolled heroes to manually move them.)
Having everyone running around on their own won't work here; Carter and his friends must coordinate their special abilities as a group to find detours past the obstacles in their way. Carter, the leader, can open certain locked doors. Andre, the engineer, knows how to fix broken machinery. Minoko, the computer tech, gets to tap into networks to access data and to control equipment. Amber, the hazardous environment specialist, possesses a bulky cybernetic body that insulates her from dangers such as fire and electricity. This focus on teamwork extends into the item system as well. At any time, a hero can place a remote-controlled device at one spot and then let a second hero control it from afar, freeing up the first hero to proceed elsewhere. This connectivity among the characters and their gear is outright awesome.
Project Eden's world pushes interactivity and variety to the limit. Its 11 massive chapters may be set at the ruins of familiar city locations, including construction zones, shopping malls, transit stations, and so forth, but each chapter presents its own set of challenges and terrain layout. For instance, at the hospital, the heroes need to explore the rooms to collect the components required to repair a machine, making the entire scene feel like a scavenger hunt, but with lots of blood and violence. Or, at the subway system, they can ride trains back and forth through an expansive group of interconnected tunnels, shooting anything that jumps at them from the shadows.
In a rare display of game-designing skill, the puzzles are kept consistently clever from beginning to end. Never involving a block-pushing chore, the solutions range from outwitting automated turrets to climbing along gigantic fan blades, and from playing with heavy-duty laser cutters to operating construction equipment in literally building paths across chasms. None of the puzzles are abstract or bizarre, and to make their presence within the chapters more believable, they don't come in a linear fashion. Many of the puzzles overlap with one another, so the heroes often find themselves tackling two or more puzzles simultaneously. This immersive, real-world manner in which the areas and their obstacles are assembled doesn't only allow them to flow together seamlessly, but it also gives the level design in Project Eden a natural, multilayered quality not found in the abstract environments of other adventures.
To be fair, the combat is less interesting. There's absolutely no worry about the monsters and other enemies becoming frustrating nuisances, because the heroes can never die. If the good guys run out of shield energy, they simply warp back to a checkpoint, from where they can resume pecking away at the bad guys, who can't recover their stamina like the heroes can. This game clearly emphasizes thinking over raw reflexes.
However, none of that stops the cooperative story mode from being coupled with a versus mode, which offers more things to do than the competitive junk found in typical multiplayer games. In the maps for death matches and capture-the-flag matches, the characters can operate remote-controlled guns, open trap doors, and attempt to outrun moving walls that will squish anyone caught between them. There's even a nifty racing minigame, where the characters drive tracked vehicles (copies of an item from the story mode) through an obstacle course filled with speed boosters, moving ramps, buzz saws, swinging bridges, and other toys. For such a small part of the game, it still shares the brilliant interactivity that makes Project Eden so damn fun.
Controls: Excellent
The controls are very responsive and intuitive, and they go out of their way to be Player-friendly, too. In addition to being fully customizable, they come with several cool options, like letting you switch between a third person view and a first person view at any time.
Graphics: Excellent (PC), Above Average (PS2)
Project Eden looks impressive enough with its heavily detailed characters and its richly decorated environments. The transformations of the mutating monsters appear smooth, while the game's capacity to handle multiple variable time dilation fields at once must be seen to be believed. Better yet, after the initial loading periods, everything within a chapter occurs without any disruptive cutscenes or other forms of interruption, giving the Players full control over their characters at all times.
In the PS2 version, the lighting effects can use a little more work, though. The heroes' flashlights there don't illuminate dark areas as well. The framerate in this version also drops when too many objects appear at a time during certain splitscreen multiplayer sessions. At least saving and loading in the game is surprisingly fast, regardless of its version.
Audio: Excellent
The game sounds no less amazing, and the voice acting can't be done any better. The gunfire is extremely loud, the explosions boom out forcefully, the footsteps thump out differently across various types of surfaces, and you can even hear the motors whirring noisily inside Amber with every movement she makes. The background is completed with more ambience effects than actual tunes, but where there is music, it does a great job at building suspense.
Overall: Excellent
Project Eden is the quintessential 4-Player action adventure. Its extraordinary level and puzzle designs, delightful team connectivity, fantastic controls, and wonderful visual and audio effects all pull together to leave the rest of its genre resembling child's play by comparison. Congratulations to the folks at Core; they have created a multiplayer action adventure classic that no other game, not even a future one from themselves, can ever hope to match.