Game Review: Flower

I've been tempted to purchase Flower for a while, but always hesitated. The game premise is so bizarre--being sucked inside a flower's dream to act as its conscience in the form of wind and revive dead fields--that I was unsure of whether it would be worth the money.

Luckily for me, PSN was having a fall sale and Flower was available for $5 as opposed to $20 when it first came out. Now I realize that this game would have been worth the full release price.





















To start with, the controls are largely intuitive. I wasn't told to press X to start a level or to speed up. Nobody said I had to tilt my controller in order to steer my stream of flower petals. It simply felt like that was what had to be done, and it was right. They work well, too; uncomplicated controls for an uncomplicated game. All you have to do is steer your starting petals onto another flower to make it bloom and add a petal to your stream. Certain flowers (which are always surrounded by a ring of light) will cause events to occur when you collect their petals. They may cause a brown area to suddenly turn green, or create a new line of flowers. The only problem with any of this is a minor one: for us perfectionists, it can be easy to miss one or two flowers when the petal stream gets up to higher speeds (more petals=more speed) and it's difficult to turn around sharply and collect the missed flower. It's possible to slow down and inch toward the flower without pressing X so precision is guaranteed, but this method is painfully slow. Again, though, this is a minor detail. It isn't necessary to collect every petal, and you'll likely have a stream of hundreds of petals even if you missed a few flowers.

Flower doesn't really try to challenge you. I plan on turning to this game whenever I'm stressed. Even though I beat its six levels in a mere three or four hours, it's fun and relaxing to revisit past levels (save for one--but I won't spoil). The music is very calm. It's soft and doesn't use any dissonant melodies or contain any tension. When you touch a flower, a musical note will sound depending on the species; I heard a plucked guitar string, a violin, and a chorus of voices, among others. This is a delightful detail. But Flower isn't just pleasant musically; it's absolutely jaw-dropping in terms of the scenery. Even with all the buckets of colors, the graphics aren't garish. Everything manages to remain soft. You can watch literally thousands of individual blades of grass sway gently in the breeze, and during the nighttime levels you can witness glowing flowers blooming in the darkness.

That isn't to say Flower isn't without it's exciting moments. There are times when you will be whipped through a valley with rocks falling all around you, and later in the game your tiny petals will be able to utterly obliterate metal structures. This game truly reinvents the phrase "flower power".

Aside from the aforementioned problem with the controls and the disappointing brevity of the game, Flower is greatly underrated. I surely understand where any doubt about this game originates, but Flower offers an experience unlike any other game. If you're looking for something new, something artistic, you won't want to pass up Flower.