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It’s awesome: Flower (PS3)

July 16th, 2008

Filed under: e-Distribution Games

A carefully typed PowerPoint presentation had Jenova Chen's next PSN game's title as Flower. No, not flOwer, because that would suggest it was flOw+er, which would do an incredible disservice to this surprisingly ambitious title. Sure, there are a number of similarities between flOw and Flower: both use SIXAXIS tilt-controls, both are technically "single button games," and both fuse music and intuitive gameplay to evoke emotions rarely found in any other game. But, Flower does much more than we could have expected.

Jenova Chen described flOw as a gaming "haiku" -- but Flower is a "poem." It comes as an incredible surprise that Flower tells a story, told through the dreams of various flowers. When a player begins a new game, they aren't treated to lush green fields of grass. No, we see a colorless dying cityscape, one with a lone flower sitting in a cracked, dirty pot. Trigger a flower's dream, and we're treated to abstract watercolor paintings of a city that hint at a much bigger story.

So what's the gameplay like? You control a flower pedal, and you must tilt the PS3 controller to guide it to other flowers. It's a simple premise that's instantly accessible, but figuring out what must be done in each level requires exploration and experimentation. Each playthrough is meant to be a "performance," and players will want to tilt their controllers and create music through the various flowers in these fields. Each flower creates its own unique sound, depending on the background music, the speed of the wind and the player's timing. The mix of lush visuals and synesthetic gameplay is nothing short of mesmerizing.

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Entry Filed under: PS3