'Child of Eden' both dizzying and dazzling

The latest game to take full advantage of Microsoft's Kinect motion sensor does so with a mind-bending approach that is probably unlike anything you've ever played.

“Child of Eden” is about as close to virtual LSD as you're going to get in gaming. The stated goal is to save Project Lumi. The project is an effort to develop a human personality inside a futuristic archive, called Eden, of all human memories. But the archive has been invaded by a destructive virus and the player's job is to ferret out the disease and rid Project Lumi of it to preserve the archive of this knowledge.

Lumi's human personality takes the form of a lithe brunette who appears during cut scenes and at the end of levels, twirling and smiling amid a sheen of sparkles and soft techno music. As you stand in front of your screen waving your hands at Kinect, music thumps and light dances across the screen as you protect Lumi, and thus Eden, from the virus.

Confused? Imagine it's 1982 and you're at the arcade in flip-flops playing Tempest, and this wide-eyed girl with perfect hair runs over to you, grabs your hand and dives with you into the Tempest game, dropping you both into another dimension. Then she looks over at you lovingly as you careen through a cosmos full of enormous intergalactic tadpoles made from fractals of dark matter and says, “Quick! Help me find my mind!”

That's pretty much “Child of Eden.” Yes, it's that gloriously weird.

As far as game play goes, the controls became intuitive after just a few minutes. I was essentially flying through space. I aimed a laserlike apparatus with my hands and circles appeared on-screen to help me aim bolts of color at various objects in my way. A flick of my right hand shot a strong bolt at rotating blocks and twirling spores. Holding a steady aim with my left hand sent a never-ending stream of smaller shots, more akin to a machine gun.

One level had a gigantic whale bejeweled with shining red gems. I soared around the whale and took aim at the gems on his back and tail and they changed color as my aiming circle passed over them. All the targets emitted musical notes when struck, and they blended in seamlessly with the game's electronica soundtrack.

Other levels hurled me down a tunnel where I shot at enormous space worms with bodies that glowed brighter as I lit them up with pulses of light until they eventually disintegrated into a bloodless scatter of fading dots.

“Child of Eden” comes from Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the video game designer who brought us the popular puzzling blocks-and-lights game “Lumines.” He's still full of flabbergasting ideas, and they are well-represented here. “Child of Eden” dares to take you down a bizarre path chock-full of “huh?”

This is different stuff. Very different. It takes an open mind and a gamer willing to depart from the usual first-person shooter presentation to appreciate this title. You don't have to like “Child of Eden,” but you should play it. It will be good for your head.

<b>“Child of Eden”</b>

★ ★ ★ ★

Ubisoft, Xbox 360, rated E10+, $49.99