PSN Pundit: Beautiful Flower and the Oh-So-Horrible Pulse

1/8/2009 5:43 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Recently, Sony sent an email with an online code to download Flower, the long-in-the-making follow-up to That Game Company's well-regarded flOw. FlOw has a dreamy, relaxing quality to it that almost feels like doing yoga under the sea; you want to say "namasté" to someone after playing it for a half-hour.

I wondered if Flower could bloom bigger than flOw. But first, I had to download Flower and a PlayStation 3 debug update. I'm not a luddite, but it was stressful, and the download took a lot of time. Somehow, the PS3 didn't read the data on the SD card. Worrier that I am, I wondered if placing the two files into the PS3 via a memory stick would work. The machine sucked up the info like a hungry dog. But I was still stressed -- until I played the game.

Flower is even more like a New Age yoga session than flOw. In flOw, you controlled a microscopic being whose tail grew and grew as it ate and ate in its underwater lair. In Flower, the creativity that went into the game is more prevalent and in-your-face -- so much so that playing can be inspiring.

The game begins in a colorless room, the exception to the banality being a plant that sorely needs water. It's drooping badly, like the neglected tree in "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Using the motion-sensor aspects of the Sixaxis controller, you get close to the plant. Press and hold any button and you glimpse a somber gray cityscape that's dirty, empty, even depressing -- kind of the way a city looks when you desperately need a vacation.

In moments, you're transported to a bucolic fantasy world of greenery where rolling meadows are all you can see for miles. If there were a tree here, you could put your back to the bark to feel like Newton, waiting for an apple to fall so that you could change history.

To say that Flower is about opening buds and catching the breeze is to do a disservice to the craft of making artful videogames. In other words, the gameplay is not that cold, not that cut-and-dried. You ride the wind that becomes your magic carpet, swooping down to touch each bud you'd like to open. You'll pick up a petal (and hear a note of music) for each flower you set into bloom. Each of those petals will follow you on your wind stream in a colorful, confetti-like, in-air parade as you search the countryside for more flora. By the end of each level, your vast expanse of greenery has turned into a garden full of reds, oranges, purples and blues. When you're done with the level, you're back in your bedroom, awakened from this botanical dream.

Or was it a dream? On your windowsill now is another potted plant, signifying another level to explore. And that shadowy cityscape which seemed so dead outside now has a shard of sunlight, just a small ray. After each dream, each fantasy, the real-life city gets brighter and brighter.