| OUR RATING:
8.8
GREAT
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TANGIBLES:
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Why you should buy it: You’ve beaten PixelJunk Eden and want more.
Why you should rent it: You’ve not beaten PixelJunk Eden yet. |
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UNIQUE RATING:
8.8
  SUGGESTION:
Buy It |
Written by: Chris Selogy | Tags: PixelJunk Eden Encore, Playstation 3
With the purchase of PixelJunk Eden Encore, you get five new levels in a new Eden Encore garden that is separate from the main garden. Once you find the right portal and enter the Eden Encore garden, you’ll see that it looks a lot like the main garden did when you first started PixelJunk Eden. That means that you should only have Garden 11 available to play at first, but collecting a few spectras within that garden will bloom new plants in your Eden Encore garden that allow you to reach new places in the garden along with four remaining levels. You will find some of the same types of bonuses, like weird steering wheel things that change the color scheme of your garden and eventually you get the special mode you unlock upon collecting all 25 spectra in the new garden, assuming you’ve collected all of the spectra in the original Eden garden, as well. It’ll stay a surprise in this review, but it is a cool surprise that changes the gameplay quite a bit.
If you haven’t paid attention to the two major updates for PixelJunk Eden that have been released in the past four months or so, you will find some interesting tweaks and changes to Eden since you’ve last played it. The first update increased the amount of time that the large time crystals add to your time meter to help make the game more manageable for those not skilled to collect all spectra when it first came out. It also added a new continue option when you run out of time, though you can not earn trophies if you do continue. The newest update, which was released the same day as the Eden Encore add-on, adds a new move that causes all Pollen Prowlers to burst into a shower of pollen when you activate three seeds in a row.
The first two gardens in Eden Encore, Garden 11 and 12, are the most traditional of the new gardens since they feel more like some of the earlier levels in the original garden than completely new experiences. Garden 11 takes a new approach to the vertical nature of some earlier levels and takes it to a new level with very large and tall plants that probably take you higher than you’ve ever been able to go in the entire game. That does unfortunately lead to collecting spectra taking up a long amount of time, well past the hour long stretches that were the norm when collecting all five spectra to finish off a garden in the main garden. Garden 12 feels like either of the first two gardens with nothing that really sets it apart mechanically from the original set of gardens, but these two gardens feel like the calm before a storm in a way.
The three remaining gardens Eden Encore feature new mechanics that change the way you play the game while still retaining the core fun of Eden, so they feel more like the last few gardens from the original set. Garden 13 features floating rock formations that sink when you land on them, which is an unexpected surprise that adds more interaction to the environmental puzzles that the level holds. Garden 14 features these special large crystals that turn on zero gravity for a few seconds during your jump, which allows you to get to platforms that you couldn’t reach with your normal jumping ability. It feels a bit linear with the first and second spectra, but as you get further into the garden, it opens up and offers more of a choice as to where you want to go. The final garden, Garden 15, features a really cool mirror world mechanic where you use the portals you’ve encountered before to access an alternate version of the level that allows you to reach new spaces you couldn’t before in a unique way of cramming two levels into one.
One thing that became apparent after playing these Eden Encore gardens was that it seemed like Q-Games put a lot of work into not making these levels as hazardous as some of the gardens in the main game were. By that, we mean that under spots where you could mess up and fall to your doom and would have to start over; there is usually a rock formation below with a seed containing a cannon flower that easily helps you get back to where you were so you can continue with little frustration. Thing like that show that a lot of thought was put into not only the functional portions of the levels that lead to success, but also to try to understand how to tweak things so that these levels don’t become a frustrating mess. One additional note for tweaks is that you will routinely run into multiple types of special prowlers, those enemies that go out of their way to attack you before, rather than just the one type that you’d see throughout an entire garden.
Just as you’d expect, new gardens in Eden Encore also means new backgrounds and music. The new backgrounds do look nice for the most part, but Garden 12 and 14 as the main highlight in the interesting background department. You will not find new enemies, plants, or any significant new types of rock formations in Encore, as most are recycled from the main gardens but are used in new ways here. The new music may be a bit of a misleading feature as most of them don’t feel all that different from the original soundtrack, but more like remixes of stuff you’ve heard over the many hours in Eden before. It’s still good music to play along with, but not really as new as it was advertised to be.
PixelJunk Eden Encore may not seem to offer a ton of new content for the $5.99 it offers, but you will easily find about 10-15 hours of enjoyment in the new gardens along with that special surprise for collecting all of the spectra to make it worth it. The new mechanics added in the final three gardens some neat changes to the typical Eden garden formula while the first two gardens offer the more basic brand of fun Eden offered before kicking things up a notch. There are new trophies that come along with Eden Encore that are in the same vein as the original trophies that Eden offered. If you’ve conquered the Eden mountain, this is a worthy piece of content to buy to get back into the game for a while longer. While Eden Encore is a bit friendlier to newcomers than PixelJunk Monsters Encore was, you’d be best to stick with beating Eden first before tackling Eden Encore so that special surprise will be within your grasp.
| A common result of being in zero gravity is known as space adaptation syndrome or SAS for short, which includes nausea, vomiting, vertigo, headaches, lethargy, and an overall feeling of malaise. Roughly 45% of all people that have gone into space have suffered from SAS, but it usually only last no more than 72 hours before the body is adjusted to being in space. |
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