Flower

Flower is the video game equivalent of the plastic bag metaphor from American Beauty. Whether you found it moving and beautiful or stupid and contrived will directly reflect your opinion on this game. Personally, it had its moments of glory, but I can’t help but chuckle at the fact that the developers of this game tried to bite off more than it could chew here in terms of the level of depth they tried to achieve here.

As far as the titles from thatgamecompany, this one is easily the weakest out of the 3. Not because its has the less gamey elements out of them, but mostly because its pretty visuals dont really develop to anything more meaning. There is obviously a very pro nature stance in here, but i cant help but view its message as a very childish statement like "industry is bad".

It doesnt help that for such a narrative and relaxing driven experience its constantly hampered by the terrible flight controls and camera, which can be downright unresponsive when you are facing an invisible wall. Inverted controls also never geled well with me.

An average experience, even if it is quite unique.

This is a hard, if not almost impossible game to rate, its like rating artwork, like rating something like the Grand Canyon or Rocky Mountains, like rating a picture book. This isn't so much a game as it is a visual experience and artistic statement. You basically play as flying flower pedals and your goal is light up and bring color to dull and dying environments. There is a sense of beauty and accomplishment in this game, it makes you feel good at the end and the game itself doesn't even really have a story, its all told through visuals. On the downside, the game is very short and can be beaten in less than 2 hours and the lack of story does make this one of those one time experiences. Yeah its a beautiful game, but I almost feel like this would translate better to a film than a game, I mean I could see Pixar handling something like this really well. Either way I am rating this more as a game then as art, so I'll praise this for what it is, but it is one of those games once you beat there is no reason to really go back into, at least for a while.

I can certainly understand what other people see in this, and I expected to love it myself, but Flower only felt like a real step down from flOw to me, and it's definitely nowhere near the majesty of Journey. The thing is, there's a certain stripe of game this belongs to - I'm not sure what name to give them exactly, but I'm talking about those gentle, meditative games that pose little to no challenge and are all about the world, mood, and atmosphere, like Monument Valley, Thomas Was Alone, Myst, No Man's Sky, that kind of thing. Without challenge, these games all totally live and die on how successful they are at sucking you into their universe, and I just don't think Flower manages to do that at all. You'd think it would have a much easier of managing that than flOw did given the much more vivid and real setting and aesthetic, but all too often, Flower left me with this constant nagging voice in my mind saying 'well, it's just flowers and wind, innit?'. None of the other games I've mentioned ever had that problem save for No Man's Sky, and that didn't set in until I'd been playing for about six hours. Flower doesn't even last that long.

It's still a very relaxing experience and very pretty to look at, and there's a lot to be said for that, but the fact that I can't really immerse myself in this for whatever reason stops me from seeing it as a great game.