[Moogle]

I'm surprised there is no thread on this PSN game already considering it's supposed to be out next month. Having said that it's more of a relaxing experience then a game especially as you can't die. I'm really looking forward to it.

IGN: Flower Preview

IGN Video: Flower PlayStation 3 Trailer - E3 2008: Wind Trailer

Gametrailers.com - Flower: Reviews, Trailers, and Interviews

[Widge]

I really want this, looks like its going to be really good. Quite a lot of interest on Eurogamer forums for this one too.

[Moogle]

Originally Posted by Widge

I really want this, looks like its going to be really good. Quite a lot of interest on Eurogamer forums for this one too.

It's strange there isn't much interest in the game on these forums. It's certainly shaping up to be one of the best experiences you can download from the PSN. It's not really a game in the true sense but more of a visual and sonic relaxing experience.

[Stinja]

Enjoyed FlOw for what it was, and will get Flower as well, there's just so little info theres nothing to discuss...

[Widge]

I think people don't know that its very much a different beast to fl0w.

Maybe if I embed a video!

<object width="425" width="267"><param name="movie" value="http://www.gamepro.com/bin/vid-bin/octPlayer.swf?vId=132581&p=e&ae=d"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="false"></param><embed src="http://www.gamepro.com/bin/vid-bin/octPlayer.swf?vId=132581&p=e&ae=d" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowfullscreen="false" width="425" height="267"></embed></object>


oh, THAT FAILED. Here is the link:

http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/...reen-pastures/

[Br0ken]

A few 1UP episodes ago they had a segment on Flower. Looked neat. Plenty of gameplay in the 1UP discussion too, worth checking it out on their website or iTunes.

[Stinja]

Yeah sorry, i didnt mean FlOw and Flower had the same gameplay, just different to the typical shooter/driving/sport gameplay - which is a good thing

[Robothamster]

Release date revealed:

Flower is a downloadable PS3 game that has been confusing and impressing preview players at trade shows for the last few months. Is it art? We dunno, but we do know it is nearly out.


Flower has been variously described as a ‘poem’, an ‘interactive artwork’, ‘really trippy’ and a ‘wind simulator’. Occasionally, someone will call it a ‘game’.
‘Players’ use the PS3 motion controls to guide a floating flower petal across a beautifully rendered landscape, as if tossed by the breeze. As the petal wafts around it can attract more petals. Um, that’s pretty much it.


You can make up your own mind when Flower is released via the Playstation Network on February 12th. You could always buy a bunch of copies to give as a Valentine’s Day gift. If you were mental.

[Br0ken]

Originally Posted by Robothamster

Flower has been variously described as a ‘poem’..

Lol! Some one was a bit too relaxed when they wrote that

[Stinja]

Eurogamer hands-on: Flower Hands On - Page 1 // PS3 /// Eurogamer - Games Reviews, News and More

Flower's divisiveness is assured. Many will accuse the game of pretentiousness, which is a word that's now irritatingly synonymous with anything that's ambitious, unusual and different. Flower is not pretentious: it is ambitious, unusual and different.

The strength of the game is in its wholesale embrace of its fragility: the confidence to be an art game without apology, the courage to be textless, the strength in focusing on a subject matter with such feminine overtones and association on a platform that has neither. This is interesting. This is unusual. Only a bonehead would deny its existence is a good thing for videogames. But whether the result makes for a good videogame is another question.

Personally i'm always willing to try arty stuff, cant wait!

[Br0ken]

Originally Posted by http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2009/02/02/flower-price-confirmed/

Sony have announced that the eagerly anticipated PSN game, Flower, will cost £6.29 when released next Thursday 12th February.

I'm not sure how I feel about that price, its just a bit on the wrong side of my ideal price, <£5 and I'd buy it, not so sure now. I bought echochrome and barely play that.

[Tonks01]

Originally Posted by Br0ken

I'm not sure how I feel about that price, its just a bit on the wrong side of my ideal price, <£5 and I'd buy it, not so sure now. I bought echochrome and barely play that.

Thats actually a better price than I was first thinking, £6 and a bit is a bit of an odd price and does slightly move it outside of the realm of impulse buying for the majority of people - which is unfortunate as I really want games like this to sell well.

[Robothamster]

IGN Review here: IGN: Flower Review

9/10, looking good.

[Toon]

Originally Posted by Robothamster

IGN Review here: IGN: Flower Review

9/10, looking good.

Robot, you seem to pop up in a lot of threads

[Robothamster]

Originally Posted by askew_s

Robot, you seem to pop up in a lot of threads

yeah I'm an old tart!

[Robothamster]

If you took the most beautiful scenery in mega-hit video games such as Halo 3, Gears of War 2, and Resistance 2 — and then brought that scenery to the foreground of the game — it wouldn’t hold a candle to Flower.

This three-hour game, which you can now buy as a $10 download on the PlayStation 3’s PlayStation Network, has some of the best graphics in a video game. The premise is simple, but unique. The game opens with a scene of a homely flower in a pot by a window, overlooking a drab city. The flower has a dream of being in the wide open spaces, and you as the player are the wind in that dream. You can blow throw 200,000 individually swaying blades of grass and bring vivid color to the gray world as you do so.
Thanks to those blades of grass, this is perhaps one of the few games that fully exploits the processing power of the PlayStation 3. My daughter Tanya thinks that Flower’s graphics are the best she’s ever seen. Like Sony’s other creative title, LittleBigPlanet, this is exactly the kind of game that Sony has to bring to market in order to broaden the audience for its third-place game console, which trails behind Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii. The game will be available for download on the PS 3 on Feb. 12.

We noted in our earlier preview that Flower was a breath of fresh air in an industry full of Hollywood blockbuster-style sequels. It’s unique for its lack of violence and familiar genre. I finished playing this all-too-short game, and it lives up to its billing. It is unique in that it brings the environment to the forefront, raising our own awareness of human impact on nature, and it dips into a fantasy about how we can rescue the fragile beauty that surrounds us. While many games are starting to pound this message home, Flower manages to convey it without sermons — in fact, without any words at all.
It is the product of Jenova Chen’s thatgamecompany, a small Santa Monica, Calif.-based game studio that has made imaginative hits such as Cloud and flOw. Chen said in an interview that the company worked for a long time to get the “character” right. At first, it was a physical consciousness with a presence in the game. But then they changed it to an invisible consciousness embodied in the concept of wind. You can change the view and speed of the wind, but you only see its impact on the environment, not its actual self. You can visualize the wind because you pick up flower petals along the way as you move over flowers.

The PS 3’s Sixasis controller’s motion sensors let you tilt the controller to change the direction of the wind. You hold down any button to speed up or slow down. It’s so simple that pretty much anyone can play this game. (It is a little harder to turn around and go back than it should be, but that’s not a huge hurdle).
As the wind, you can soar as if you were on a rollercoaster, speeding through the environment, or move along as a gentle breeze. You can pretty much go anywhere, although there are set goals you have to accomplish in each level. How you do each goal, or in what order, doesn’t matter. You find flowers and breathe life into them.

When you complete one sequence of the dream, you get cool visual rewards that amount to an explosion of nature. Then you return to the drab window sill, which bit by bit starts looking more inviting. A new flower pot appears and then you go off into a new dream.
It’s quite possible that some people will go “wow” at the graphics of the game and then after five minutes, get tired of it. But there are a couple of hooks that kept my family going. We liked the soundtrack because it conveyed the emotion of the scene. The game’s path clearly led you from one part of the journey to the next, so it was never really hard to figure out what you had to do (except for one area that was more like a deliberate maze).

And since Chen was a film student, the game has its emotional arc. You go through ups and downs. Even though there is no dialogue, there is a story. And you want to see that story through to its conclusion. The developers manipulate your feelings through the environment: the time of day, the pace and tone of the music, the use of color and black-and-white, and light and darkness.
It takes you to a primal emotional level, like you feel when you watch a good IMAX nature film. Some people might very well find this boring since there are no guns and no fast-action button-mashing. But I see it as a breath of fresh air.

[drskhaled]

Just played the first 2 levels and its a very nice game, the sixaxis is perfect for this kinda game. Overal impressed so far especiall when you pull up into the sky and can see pretty far around you very impressive.

[DeanE]

Bought and downloaded this from the PSN Store earlier (£6.29), and it is a lovely little title. Visually it is stunning the audio very calming with the blossoming of each flower triggering a musical note which is in key with the music at that point.

The objective is to make your way through each level, guiding petals to open other flowers with your six-axis until you get to the end point which usually offers a visual colourful reveal (think Okami but with much more colour).

Overall, a very calm, colourful and relaxing little game. Imho, well worth a purchase

[Master Yoda]

Well after reading positive things about this I decided to buy it. First impressions are it's ok but not as impressed as you guys it seems. Graphically it's alright but nothing amazing at all - Infact it reminds me of the free Nvidia graphics download demos you get for the PC... except the Nvidia ones have considerably better graphics... Hmmm...

The main problem I have with Flower isn't the graphics or anything like that - it's the playability of it - I found playing it quite boring frankly and too predictable (was bored within 10 minutes). I don't particularly like the music in it (I normally love free flowing pieces, but these tracks aren't that great) and also found that the game (if you can call it that) is extremely linear - was expecting something with alot more freedom to do what you want in it given the concept of it. The areas you can move in aren't very big really, you can't travel very fast at all (you're meant to be moving like the wind!) and I don't like the way you can't go very high in the air either.

Anyway, it's ok, I guess. It does remind me of Flow and there's no surprises that the same people made both games. I like the concept behind Flower, just think it's nowhere near as good as the hype suggests and is definitely overpriced... There's hardly anything to the game - I wouldn't pay more than £2.99 for it... Oh... I already have... (...)

[Robothamster]

Finished Flower tonight (took me about 2 hours) so here's my opinion on it.

It's certainly an 'interesting' game. Think it is classed as a game as despite the 1st couple of levels where basically all you are doing is steering the display along fairly linear paths, it does get trickier later on.

Spoilers follow:

*
Levels 1 & 2 basically require you to brush across other flowers to breath life back into dead areas, pretty easy.

The 3rd level they introduce some windmills which you have to switch on again via brushing flowers. The addition of harsher external wind forces makes this level trickier than the previous couple.

4th level takes place in the dark, there are now street lamps (strangely in the middle of fields) to activate and these are done in diferent ways, from the old 'brush some flowers' method to drawing certain patterns in the grass. Towards the end a disaster happens and sets up the following level.

On level 5 there are broken electrified pylons everywhere. You have to deactivate these pylons by navigating tricky paths and brushing certain flowers. There's a twist though and hitting he pylons causes your petals to get fried and shot in the wrong direction. There is a trophy for doing this level without being harmed, quite a challenge with the sixaxis. Personally I didn't like this level at all, it was a complete contrast to the others, ugly looking and pretty creepy.

Level 6. Ah, this was the best part of the whole game for me. On this level you get your own back against those pesky pylons and can destroy them, freeing the city and breathing life back into the derelict buildings, roads and playgrounds. I actually forgave the game for the previous level thanks to this last one. Found this level good fun, and very impressive looking.

Then it was over. There is a further easy level which basically in a fancy way of showing the credits, and you get a trophy for brushing every flower with a name on it.

Also, there is a trophy for brushing 10,000 flowers and I think you'd need to play through the game maybe 5 to 10 times to get that one. I think there is a hidden extra level to be found as well as there is a trophy called 'Dream' which suggests 'beyond all flowers lies another room'
*

So, would I recommend this game? Not sure. It's very good looking, nice calming music, some very nice effects but for £6.29 you don't really get alot of playtime in there unless you want to go after evey single trophy. There's no platinum, which I'm not suprised about, but there is the one gold which is for the one I described in the spoiler.

On the Robot-o-meter I think I'd award this game 6/10.

[Rich G]

Originally Posted by Robothamster

On the Robot-o-meter I think I'd award this game 6/10.

Wow, I though Eurogamer were harsh, you don't work for them do you?

[russd1978]

Originally Posted by Robothamster

There's no platinum, which I'm not suprised about

Yeah I think all PSN download games are not supposed to have platinum trophies (with the exeption of big games like Burnout etc).

I loved Fl0w so I think Ill like this but agree £6.49 is perhaps a little steep, I think £4.99 would have been a better price, and Im pretty sure it will drop a bit at some stage.

Good to read your opinion on it.

[Robothamster]

Originally Posted by Rich G

Wow, I though Eurogamer were harsh, you don't work for them do you?

It's a good little game but £6.29 for under 2 hours to me seems a blatant rip-off.
I can't fault the game design or the look, that's great, and if the game was either £2.99 or lasted about 5 hours I'd probably give it an 8.

[BradleyLove]

Originally Posted by Robothamster

It's a good little game but £6.29 for under 2 hours to me seems a blatant rip-off.
I can't fault the game design or the look, that's great, and if the game was either £2.99 or lasted about 5 hours I'd probably give it an 8.

Has it got any replayability?

I mean, Everyday Shooter can be finished in 2 hours, but I play it all the time. So the length doesn't bother me so much. But if it's pretty much a one play deal, then I might have lost interest.

[Robothamster]

Originally Posted by BradleyLove

Has it got any replayability?

I mean, Everyday Shooter can be finished in 2 hours, but I play it all the time. So the length doesn't bother me so much. But if it's pretty much a one play deal, then I might have lost interest.

Yeah I think so. If you are into getting trophies there is definately replay value in there.
I think in the 1st could of levels once you've done them once there is little else to see, apart from increasing your flower count. The later levels there are some challenges so I think I'll try to improve on them at some point.

I can imagine Everyday Shooter has more replay value though as I assume you always try to improve your score, get through faster or with loosing less lives. None of that on this apart from the 5th level where you get a trophy for not getting harmed.

[mss99]

Personally I think it is a great game. I've completed the first 5 levels although I think I may have failed the 5th somehow. I reached the end after being shocked a few times and was in the open area where you have to enter the swirling petals to finish the level. I didn't have many petals in my trail and the whilst I was just sat there not moving the level ended without me entering the swirling petals. However the flower never grew upright after completing it but the next level was unlocked.

Do I need to redo this level or due to the tone of the level when you complete it does your flower not standup like the others on the window ledge?

Level 5 is a very different tone to the other levels and I found the mood the game evokes to be excellent. Closet I can remember to feeling such a mood from the environment was the Team Ico games.

Really do wish there were a few more big flower levels with more challenges earlier just to extend the game further. I will replay for the trophies and to see everything. I think it is worth the money as it is so original, and looks stunning. A lot of work has obviously gone into it.

[Wamphyri]

Welcome Back trophy - Play the game after a week long break

*Set the date on your PS3 to 1 week in the future, boot the the game up, DING, change date back to correct

[catisfit]

Originally Posted by Wamphyri

Welcome Back trophy - Play the game after a week long break

You no longer classify as human

[DeanE]

Originally Posted by mss99

Personally I think it is a great game. I've completed the first 5 levels although I think I may have failed the 5th somehow. I reached the end after being shocked a few times and was in the open area where you have to enter the swirling petals to finish the level. I didn't have many petals in my trail and the whilst I was just sat there not moving the level ended without me entering the swirling petals. However the flower never grew upright after completing it but the next level was unlocked.

Do I need to redo this level or due to the tone of the level when you complete it does your flower not standup like the others on the window ledge?

Level 5 is a very different tone to the other levels and I found the mood the game evokes to be excellent. Closet I can remember to feeling such a mood from the environment was the Team Ico games.

Really do wish there were a few more big flower levels with more challenges earlier just to extend the game further. I will replay for the trophies and to see everything. I think it is worth the money as it is so original, and looks stunning. A lot of work has obviously gone into it.

No, I don't think you did anything wrong as the level ended pretty much the same way for me too with the plant looking a little droopy. Levels 4 and 5 though, the atmosphere changes considerably, and have to admit that level 5 was my least favourite so far, however level 6 is stunning. I have just got the silver trophy attached to this level (Urban) by bringing all parts of the city back to life, although I can see the trophy attached to level 5 being quite frustrating to obtain.

As for replay value, obtaining all of the trophies will no doubt take several playthroughs, but to be honest, some of the earlier levels are almost like interactive screensavers and I suppose it depends on what kind of gamer you are as I'd be quite happy to just fly around and take in the scenery when I fancy just chilling out.

Like others have said though, I can see how some feel it is a bit pricey for what you get as it can be completed in 2-3 hours, personally though, I enjoy titles like so I can see this getting a few playthroughs.

[Robothamster]

Originally Posted by DeanE

No, I don't think you did anything wrong as the level ended pretty much the same way for me too with the plant looking a little droopy. Levels 4 and 5 though, the atmosphere changes considerably, and have to admit that level 5 was my least favourite so far, however level 6 is stunning. I have just got the silver trophy attached to this level (Urban) by bringing all parts of the city back to life, although I can see the trophy attached to level 5 being quite frustrating to obtain.

100% snap to my experience.

I'm sure it will get played again too, but I still think short games like this should be under £4 like the 1st pixeljunk games were. Sony seem to be getting worse & worse with their pricing. LBP costumes closing in on £2 each, Skate2 packs are almost a fiver for some extra camera effects which should have been in the game to start with (EA to blame probably for that), Burnout Paradise Ultimate £30, yet tesco have BR version for £25?!
Won't even begin to mention HOME...