Reviews// Flower

“This is a sissy-boy game!”

“Is this Sonic the Flower?”

“This looks like the game equivalent of a Murakami novel – long, soporific and slow.”

“It's a game for freaking goddamn hippies!”

That's a selection of the comments that were flung my way when various other SPOnGers stumbled back into the Underwater Castle after lunch, half addled by booze and cold, to find me sat contentedly playing Flower.

Flower, if you haven't come across it before, is the latest offering from thatgamecompany, the company behind flOw (Flower, see?). Sony appears to have invented a whole new genre just to describe their output – 'Zen Gaming'. That's the sort of pretentious bollocks that makes me want to throw up in my shoes then throw them at whoever said it, but in this case... well, it pretty much fits.

Also, I've just been playing Flower so I'm currently experiencing a state of serenity only usually achieved by taking large quantities of illicit substances, so I don't want to throw my shoe at anyone. You could walk into the SPOnG Underwater Castle, pour acid on my lap and tell me Rachel Bilson is a shit-eating-whore and I still would not throw my vomit-filled shoe at you.

Are you getting an idea of what Flower's like yet? In the game you play Etherea, Goddess of the wind and clouds, a disenchanted spirit who seeks to rejuvenate the land around... Sorry. That's not true. Well, it's possible that's true, but you'd never know because Flower isn't burdened by one of those story things that bogs down so many other releases – at least not explicitly, anyway.

You control the wind (or the first Flower petal you pick up, it's kind of difficult to tell), blissfully steering the slices of colour across a stunning landscape, brushing past other petals to pick them up as you go. Successfully doing this will prompt the landscape around you to revitalise, spilling colour across your surroundings.

You control your petals using the Sixaxis and the the Sixaxis only. The only other thing you have to do is hold any button you like to make sure you keep moving. Beyond that it's all motion control.

And... that's the game, really. And that, frankly, is plenty.

Now, the Sixaxis-only control might have rung alarm bells for some. There's a reason most games don't use it – it's a ball ache. Before I played Flower I was right there with you. To be honest, as I played it I was there with you for some of the time (mostly as I swung the pad in the faces of the people around me, watching my petals careen all over the screen) but for the most part it's smooth and intuitive.