It's a rare thing to be able to talk about a game and say that there is nothing quite like it, without it being some kind of hyperbolic statement, and few words are as abused and misused in the world of gaming as "unique". Not so for Project EDEN, Core Design's escape plan from EIDOS' Tomb Raider mines, before being dragged back in kicking and screaming for Angel of Darkness, which sank the studio.
All you need to know about Project EDEN is that it's a 3D action adventure version of Blizzard's The Lost Vikings and Sierra's Gobliiins, set in a dystopian future with a generous helping of John Carpenter body horror.
For those unfamiliar with the games mentioned above, think of a puzzle adventure in which you control multiple characters, each with their particular skills, which must be used in the right context and in synergy with each other in order to progress.
That Project EDEN is something special becomes immediately evident from the CG intro, which establishes the game's universe without need of a single word, through the clever use of a child's teddy bear, which is accidentally dropped from a terrace in a white utopian future city and slowly plummets down and down into increasingly dark and degraded layers of past urban developments and the humanity who lives there in the dark, until it lands at the very bottom, where it's picked up by the hand of what is implied to be a horribly disfigured mutant. It's brilliant averbal storytelling that gives you all the context you need without any kind of exposition dump. From there we follow our team of four police operatives in their descent into the underworld in search of two missing engineers, which quickly spirals into something much more sinister.
The levels are essentially massive puzzle boxes in the vein of Core's own Tomb Raider, except far more complex, since you have to use four people to solve them instead of one. You might have to send your robot through toxic gas to open a door so your engineer can repair a fuse box so the hacker can maneuver a platform around to ferry the team leader across a chasm to open a door and let everyone through, or you might have to drive a remote controlled car into maintenance ducts to fix a broken circuit so a bridge can be extended. It's very in-depth, so much so it can get confusing at times.
It's not all puzzle solving, as there is quite a lot of action too: cultists and mutants threaten the team at every turn. To fight them off, the game gradually unlocks about a dozen weapons, each with its own alternate fire: rapid or charge laser pistols, rockets launchers, proximity bombs, deployable auto turrets, even a stasis field to slow down time. There is a lot of variety in the way you can face the abominations you will meet in the lower strata of the city. It may not be the smoothest combat ever, but if you know Core Design, you already know the shooting was never their forte, and it doesn't significantly harm the experience. Furthermore, dying is only a temporary setback in Project EDEN, as the developers saw fit to remove the frustration factor by allowing the player to respawn each dead operative at set regeneration points, rather than going back to a checkpoint. A wise decision, since the puzzle-solving aspect is the main course of the game, and too much emphasis on action would have gotten in the way.
If you're looking for a lengthy and deep action puzzle experience that doesn't hold your hand at all and provides a huge sense of accomplishment when things click together to find the solution, this overlooked gem is exactly the game for you. I can't recommend it enough.
All you need to know about Project EDEN is that it's a 3D action adventure version of Blizzard's The Lost Vikings and Sierra's Gobliiins, set in a dystopian future with a generous helping of John Carpenter body horror.
For those unfamiliar with the games mentioned above, think of a puzzle adventure in which you control multiple characters, each with their particular skills, which must be used in the right context and in synergy with each other in order to progress.
That Project EDEN is something special becomes immediately evident from the CG intro, which establishes the game's universe without need of a single word, through the clever use of a child's teddy bear, which is accidentally dropped from a terrace in a white utopian future city and slowly plummets down and down into increasingly dark and degraded layers of past urban developments and the humanity who lives there in the dark, until it lands at the very bottom, where it's picked up by the hand of what is implied to be a horribly disfigured mutant. It's brilliant averbal storytelling that gives you all the context you need without any kind of exposition dump. From there we follow our team of four police operatives in their descent into the underworld in search of two missing engineers, which quickly spirals into something much more sinister.
The levels are essentially massive puzzle boxes in the vein of Core's own Tomb Raider, except far more complex, since you have to use four people to solve them instead of one. You might have to send your robot through toxic gas to open a door so your engineer can repair a fuse box so the hacker can maneuver a platform around to ferry the team leader across a chasm to open a door and let everyone through, or you might have to drive a remote controlled car into maintenance ducts to fix a broken circuit so a bridge can be extended. It's very in-depth, so much so it can get confusing at times.
It's not all puzzle solving, as there is quite a lot of action too: cultists and mutants threaten the team at every turn. To fight them off, the game gradually unlocks about a dozen weapons, each with its own alternate fire: rapid or charge laser pistols, rockets launchers, proximity bombs, deployable auto turrets, even a stasis field to slow down time. There is a lot of variety in the way you can face the abominations you will meet in the lower strata of the city. It may not be the smoothest combat ever, but if you know Core Design, you already know the shooting was never their forte, and it doesn't significantly harm the experience. Furthermore, dying is only a temporary setback in Project EDEN, as the developers saw fit to remove the frustration factor by allowing the player to respawn each dead operative at set regeneration points, rather than going back to a checkpoint. A wise decision, since the puzzle-solving aspect is the main course of the game, and too much emphasis on action would have gotten in the way.
If you're looking for a lengthy and deep action puzzle experience that doesn't hold your hand at all and provides a huge sense of accomplishment when things click together to find the solution, this overlooked gem is exactly the game for you. I can't recommend it enough.