Flower PS4 Review

Flower Playstation 4 Review

January 6, 2014 By Maya Mayfield

Flower an original title from thatgamecompany first appeared on the PS3 back in 2009. The game was an instant success receiving several accolades for pushing the boundaries of gameplay. The reason it did so well was unlike other titles that focused on challenging complexities to their gameplay, Flower focused on the experience of human emotion to get its message across.

Flower is a very beautiful and relaxing game that begins each new chapter with a flower pot on the windowsill of an apartment building in a busy city. Once you select a plant, you will be whisked away into a dreamy short cinematic intro, identifying themes from a particular scenario which can vary from cultivating a lifeless colorless field of grass, to getting rid of power grid lines sucking the life energy around the field of dreams.

I really liked the idea of a whole new world to discover inside these seemingly insignificant flower pots sitting peacefully by the windowsills. It reminded me of the intro to a popular Dr Seuss story of how the Grinch stole Christmas, 'Inside a snowflake like the one on your sleeve, there happened a story you must see to believe.'  

The first major improvement I noticed on Flower from the previous PS3 version was in its control schematics, dramatically improved by the DualShock 4's accelerometers. Each dream starts with a single flower petal which you can control by tilting the pad and pressing a button to begin a draught. As your petal comes in contact with other flowers, a beautiful chain effect occurs blossoming into an array of gorgeous colors. I really liked the idea of collecting certain types of vegetations throughout Flower, as doing this causes a noticeable change of beautiful vivid colors to suddenly appear inside my apartment and the world outside my window. This made me consider what a huge difference we can make in our world if we all paid a bit more attention to mother nature. Although this was my personal opinion and interpretation behind the developers motive for making such a wonderful game, thatgamecompany does leave this interpretation to each individual player to figure out for themselves by not including any dialogue or text.

Flower has seen huge visual improvements from its PS3 predecessor. The team have re-worked the graphics adding greater detail to each blade of grass blowing through the windy colorful botanical meadows, running at a sharp 1080p, 60 frames per second on the PS4.
The music score and sound effects are gentle and soothing, complimenting the dreamy laid-back title. Collecting more flowers during gameplay also trigger sound effects that blend with the overall music score to create a delightful masterpiece to the listeners.

Overall

Flower is an experience that comes only once, but in this case twice thanks to the new and improved  gameplay on the Playstation 4. It is a game that makes you consider the mysteries of the outside world and what a difference we can all make to the eco system. The soothing gameplay and calming soundtrack makes for a pleasant change to most titles currently on offer and I would personally recommend adding this amazing game to your list of collections on the PS4.

Score 5/5