There is no shortage of cyberpunk games these days. It is a subgenre that has resonated with gamers in the 2010s and 2020s since it depicts a “the future is now” but also “the future sucks” ethos, but wrapped in a neon-soaked dystopia that looks cool. While many cyberpunk-themed games are legitimately thought-provoking and highly enjoyable, their successes lead to countless shallow cash grabs too.
There is no shame in enjoying an aesthetic. I am easily swayed by games with bizarre and illustrative styles wrought with verisimilitude. What matters most is how the game plays and if the story capitalizes on its art direction to make gamers feel something. The cliched cyberpunk style is admittedly a cool one and it is understandable why it has endured for so long.
Is there any genre more played out than cyberpunk? Probably not, but that won’t stop the minds behind the insidious Aeterna Noctis from throwing their hat into the ring. While it isn’t a brutal metroidvania this time, it is still an unrelenting action platformer that pushes players to their absolute limit. Does this cyberpunk action game transcend its tropes? Find out in our Eden Genesis review!
Eden Genesis
Developer: Aeternum Game Studios S.L
Publisher: Aeternum Game Studios S.L
Platforms: Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Release Date: August 6, 2024
Price: $19.99
Eden Genesis proudly wears its influences on its sleeve to the point it becomes obnoxious. There was a time when the cyberpunk genre was pretty rare in video games, but now it’s become one of the most played-out sci-fi subgenres in media. There are only so many rainy Kowloon-inspired neon cities I can stomach before the concept glazes over me.
Eden Genesis‘s story does try to justify its derivative setting by taking place in a virtual amalgamation, where Leah, the cybernetic protagonist must perform trials. Cybernetic augmentations come with a side effect where the mechanical components cause some kind of brain corruption. The story kind of frames it like HIV at first, but as the story goes on, it has more in common with a tumor than anything.
Leah herself is your prototypical cyberpunk hacker girl with tomboyish tendencies. She’s exactly what you’d get if Major Kusanagi was created by a Westerner. She is thankfully not girlbossy, and her voice actress does deliver a solid performance with the material given to her.
Major cutscenes are impressively cinematic and are fully animated sequences that could be TV-quality. One stylistic choice that was distracting was that character’s mouths aren’t animated. It looks cheap, especially when everything else in these scenes looks much more complex than having to animate mouths.
Anyone who can catch half of the constant references Eden Genesis throws at the player will be able to figure out exactly where Leah’s story goes. The story feels like an excuse to have all the excessive pandering. Pretty much every single piece of cyberpunk media is referenced to a point that the game’s story has nothing of its own to say.
Some cameos look like they might verge on copyright infringement, while some are cheeky and subtle in a way that makes me point at the screen with a smirk. Sometimes the cameos don’t make sense and Eden Genesis feels more like a knock-off of Ready Player One, which is also referenced in the game.
Back to the Future, Sea of Stars, and Trigun were not cyberpunk media. Out-of-place homages are frequent enough that I started to question the sincerity of the story and Leah’s stakes stopped mattering at all. A bit more restraint and some originality would have been preferred.
Much like Aeterna Noctis, Eden Genesis is a very challenging 2D action platformer. It features a large sprawling city hub that gradually opens up as Leah completes levels like in a Kirby game. Every stage grades the player’s performance and there is very little room for error since anything below an A rank gets the player nothing. Only the top three ranks will earn tickets that are redeemed at gates like Mario using stars to open doors ala Super Mario 64.
The structure is a good foundation to build upon because Leah’s controls are very tight and responsive, even if she has the goofiest-looking running animation in any video game. She can run up walls and even ceilings with ease so long as players know how to drive the analog stick in the appropriate direction. Air-dashing and double or triple-jumping while grabbing shards and killing foes with her laser sword feels good.
The trick to Leah’s abilities is to keep a combo gauge from depleting. This is as hard as you’d think since players are under constant time pressure, she can’t take too many hits, and the level design is pretty cruel and unforgiving. Speed, accuracy, and finesse are everything and it can be easy to spend over an hour on one stage trying to get a better score to earn an extra ticket.
The obstacles are diabolically placed and surfaces are distant enough to make platforming butt-clenchingly tense. There are also various kinds of slopes to butt-slam to get a speed boost which is required to get enough momentum to launch Leah. The experience demands precision, like playing a Meatboy game where players must hit their marks. Killing foes to get an extra jump which you will need to do in mid-air to cross vast gaps.
Other levels will require players to kill every foe in the room fast enough to get a good grade. These assault challenges still will require tricky platforming and gravity-defying parkour to reach wandering sentries and mechs, but at least there is a little more room for error… you just need to be fast and deadly.
After a while, the constant flow of hard platforming and unforgiving par for earning tickets to progress the story becomes exhausting. The only reprieve is walking around town and trying to progress the story. Sometimes there is a hacking minigame but it is very simple and surprisingly easy considering how much harder the rest of the game is.
Unless you enjoy getting punished constantly, Eden Genesis is a hard game to recommend. There is not enough variety to go around to prevent the unrelenting gameplay from getting tiresome. This is also a fairly lengthy game and it’s made longer with the absurd amount of retrying.
Thankfully, Eden Genesis is open-ended and players can freely play most stages out of order and can approach them at their own pace. Hitting a wall on some stages, coming back to them later, and earning a higher grade is genuinely cathartic and gratifying. You won’t need to get all the tickets to get to the end, but you will feel like you didn’t see all that the game has to offer unless you become an Eden Genesis master.
This is the kind of game that attracts a certain kind of gamer who hungers for a hearty challenge and high skill ceiling. Eden Genesis will certainly deliver on that front, but it won’t satisfy players who want a compelling story with characters they care about, which is a shame because Eden Genesis does try to offer. If you like pointing at the screen at things you recognize, then you’re going to feel right at home.
Eden Genesis was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 using a code provided by Aeternum Games Studios S.L. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Eden Genesis is now available for PC (via Steam), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
