All games, to some degree, are designed to tease emotions out of you -- excitement, fear, joy, intrigue. What's so incredible about Flower is the emotions it brings out in such a compact, beautiful and simple game design. The pure joy of exploration, the elation of soaring through sky carried by wind -- these are to be expected. It's the final two levels of Flower which I didn't expect. (Even after knowing to expect something different, based on other reviews.) I won't spoil it, but I will say I didn't even consciously realize the game was having an emotional effect on me. I was just drawn completely into it like a great movie, except this character I identified with was just a simple flower.
Also worth commending thatgamecompany for their seamless design of the front-end "menu" and endgame "credits". This is a unified experience from front-to-back and a memorable, artful achievement in video game design.
Flower is not so much a game as it is an experience, few titles have managed to move me quite like this, in fact i believe ICO was the last game that gave me this feeling, another game case of less is more.This seems to ... Read Full Review
If there's one thing that can be said of Flower, it's that it supports the long standing argument that video games are an art form. More of an "interactive dream" than a true video game, Flower capitalizes on this argum... Read Full Review