More Game, Please.
Flower is an experience first, a game second. I'm glad to have played it, but not to have paid for it. There is very little replay value in it for me, and for a game that took only an hour and a half to complete, that's a big problem. As a result of my experience, it's been difficult for me to recommend it to anyone.
When I loaded it up, I was instantly enthralled by the look of it. It's beautiful. The music is perfect. The first three levels were fun to fly through while marveling at the individually rendered blades of grass and the way the flower petals drift languidly in the breeze when i laid off the accelerate button. I never really felt like I was playing a game, though. The game practically plays itself. While you can fly anywhere in the level out to the invisible boundaries, there's really no reason to do so except maybe to view the valley from a great height, if drinking in CG vistas is your thing. The game shows you exactly where you need to go, and often goes so far as to propel you along a predetermined route.
The fourth level was the deal breaker for me. The game unexpectedly changes tone at the end of the level, but it does so in such a way where i couldn't help asking myself, "Did I do something wrong?" Of course I didn't. The game was just stringing me along down a path I wasn't really interested in following.
The dark levels with the electrified barriers that follow are not fun at all, and I was irritated the entire time I was playing them. In think that this was exactly what the developers wanted me to feel, and I wasn't pleased with their decision. The final level is intended to be uplifting and liberating, where I was given the ability to smash the aforementioned barriers, but I was too annoyed to feel anything but my annoyance. Sprouting flowers were replaced by giant sprouting, textureless buildings that clogged the level and made flying just as tedious and cumbersome as it was while I was trying to avoid the electrified barriers. The pre-game screen for Flower says something to the effect of "relax and enjoy" and I found the latter half of the game to be neither relaxing nor enjoyable.
I didn't feel that Flower lived up to its hype or to my expectations. That's not the game's fault, I know, but I feel its content would be better served as a three-dimensional IMAX experience than as a game.
When I loaded it up, I was instantly enthralled by the look of it. It's beautiful. The music is perfect. The first three levels were fun to fly through while marveling at the individually rendered blades of grass and the way the flower petals drift languidly in the breeze when i laid off the accelerate button. I never really felt like I was playing a game, though. The game practically plays itself. While you can fly anywhere in the level out to the invisible boundaries, there's really no reason to do so except maybe to view the valley from a great height, if drinking in CG vistas is your thing. The game shows you exactly where you need to go, and often goes so far as to propel you along a predetermined route.
The fourth level was the deal breaker for me. The game unexpectedly changes tone at the end of the level, but it does so in such a way where i couldn't help asking myself, "Did I do something wrong?" Of course I didn't. The game was just stringing me along down a path I wasn't really interested in following.
The dark levels with the electrified barriers that follow are not fun at all, and I was irritated the entire time I was playing them. In think that this was exactly what the developers wanted me to feel, and I wasn't pleased with their decision. The final level is intended to be uplifting and liberating, where I was given the ability to smash the aforementioned barriers, but I was too annoyed to feel anything but my annoyance. Sprouting flowers were replaced by giant sprouting, textureless buildings that clogged the level and made flying just as tedious and cumbersome as it was while I was trying to avoid the electrified barriers. The pre-game screen for Flower says something to the effect of "relax and enjoy" and I found the latter half of the game to be neither relaxing nor enjoyable.
I didn't feel that Flower lived up to its hype or to my expectations. That's not the game's fault, I know, but I feel its content would be better served as a three-dimensional IMAX experience than as a game.
