flOw is easily the BEST download that Sony has made available on the Playstation Store.
Like some of the best “minimalist” games that have persisted in their popularity over the years (Tetris, Pac-Man, more recently Geometry Wars, etc.) flOw has some of the key elements for success that those titles are built around :
There’s really no need for complex instructions or tutorials, the controls are intuitive, relegated to basic movements and there’s only one “action” button (speed boost).
Additionally, this game shows the BEST use of the sixaxis tilt controls to date. It has a level of sensitivity in it’s motion controls than any commercial release / demo for the PS3 that has come before it.
And, again, while there’s a definite type of minimalism going on in the overall product, the art style / graphics and music / audio designs are spectacular and beautiful to look at.
Despite the fact that this is an $8 download, this should be up there with Resistance as a great reason to own a PS3.
I need to go spend some more time with it … but I’m immediately impressed with the fun / quality of the overall product.
It looks neat but I certainly wouldn’t put it as a reason to own a 500-600 euro console… PC gamers get stuff like these for free via the many wonderful freeware game developers that live out here on the internet. Sure there’s nothing quite like it around but then again, according to GameSpot the experience lasts about 2 hours as there’s no challenge whatsoever and extra features like co-op don’t do much to enhance it.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but give me 2 hours of a good game over 10 hours of an average one any day. How much you betting that the $8 download translates as an ?8 one next month? sigh
I’d rather go watch a 2 hour movie than buy a PS3 for this still
If reviews say there’s nothing more to do after 2 hours then I assume that they don’t mean the main mode of play lasts 2 hours (that would be quite long for a shooter) but that you’ve had everything the game has to offer within that time.
I mean, many shooters last far less than that but the difference is they’re highly replayable and you can get many more hours of fun out of them than just what the campaign’s timed length indicates.
It’ll probably go for 8 euros though, not pounds.
Off topic: Apparently in Greece Sony will charge an additional 60 euros so PS3s will cost 660 rather than 600. I’m glad really, maybe the stupid local retailers that have no clue of the industry will finally see they should focus on the Wii as prices like these are out of reach for most people therefor Sony’s new system isn’t the messiah they’ve been expecting to give them sales like last time.
My point was that people focus too much on how long a game is, rather than if they’ll have any fun playing it. It’s like saying a month of gruel is better than a slice of cake, because the gruel would last longer. People aren’t judging games by the experience, but rather how long it will take them to trudge through.
Or maybe they expect both quantity and quality? I mean, there are games out there that offer that (to an extent), why get games that offer less quality or less quantity?
Anyway, just playing devil’s advocate above, in my opinion it should be judged on a per game basis. A 2 hour long game might feel like it should offer more and not be worth the money even if it plays/looks/whatever good, while a different one may feel like it’s the length it should be and offers enough satisfation to the player. In my first response that is what I was trying to say as a reply to this title being a reason to own a PS3.
Well, perhaps my message was unclear … I didn’t MEAN this was a SINGULAR reason to spend (whatever the PS3 costs in your region) …
… I honestly never played the PC version until AFTER I had tried the PS3 version, but now that I have I think that the graphical / aesthetic / audio / and most importantly SixaxiS control improvements are well worth spending $8 over playing for free.
And I’m unsure which reviewer(s) claim that there’s only 2 hours of value in this product … but I suppose that they haven’t ever played any “old-school” games that have NO definitive goal or ending other than a “high score”. What are the play time measured “value” of those products?
How LONG am I supposed to enjoy a game of Tetris? How many waves of Space Invaders am I supposed to “tolerate” before I consider the game to be worth / not worth the money I paid for it?
I understand that this “game” (flOw’s creator calls it more of a meditative experience in gameplay) has a level-based style, but it’s truly “endless”, and (IMO) therefore very difficult to measure or quantify how long/how much one is supposed to “enjoy / equate a cash value to”.
Again, I think that this is a better “product” than Cash Money Chaos, Blast Factor or Rally Cross for the PS1/PSP … and while it IS a minimalist experience I think it’s UNIQUE and ENTERTAINING enough to STILL be valid as a “reason” to enjoy one’s ownership of a PS3.
My point was not that the free PC version of fl0w was as good as it is on the PS3. I didn’t even know it also originated as a PC freeware similar to the PSP’s Every Extend Extra. It’s natural these companies would update, enhance, perhaps even sequel-ise the games before putting them through as a commercial release.
My point was that if you want shoot em ups, puzzles, or other simpler and perhaps more abstract experiences like that, there are plenty fantastic freeware games out there, therefor fl0w by itself doesn’t make me want a PS3 more than I wanted it before as your original post seemed to imply (but now you’ve made clear it doesn’t).
And yes, I already said there are replayability factors to take in account, and that value should be judged on a per game basis seeing exactly what it has to offer rather than simply the length of a given campaign or story mode or whatever.
GameSpot’s review simply implies there’s nothing more to do in the game after a few hours, that it simply didn’t hold the reviewer’s interest longer than that. At least I don’t think that if it was a game he was unable to put down and replayed over and over to death, he would then go on to say it doesn’t last long. Still, I can’t know the reasons behind those statements unless I play the game and find myself agreeing with him. It just doesn’t bode very well for a game that is simplistic and is meant to be replayed to get reviews that show for some people it has very little to offer. It’s just another opinion I presented alongside yours, nothing more.
I don’t think it would add anything to the experience as the game is not made with it in mind. It would just replace the mouse with the wiimote. In fact, that would be the only way to do it at all, as that’s what all the driver software I’ve seen for the wiimote so far does, it simply makes it work in place of a mouse.
Except this project of course: wii.hl2world.com/media.html
It’s a Half-Life 2 mod made for the wiimote and nunchuck. Its creator has changed how pretty much every function in the game works rather than simply translate mouse movement. HL2 (and compatible mods) will feel like a whole new game played like this! I’ll be testing the beta once my bluetooth dongle arrives as I got to know him recently
does flOw for Ps3 work in 3d instead of 2d?? from what i’ve seen the driver for the wiimote supports the axis as well so it would basically perform like the ps3 controlled version
Well, there’s still a lot of questionable / unmeasurable “opinion-based” math in the GameSpot review.
Claiming that after “2 hours” there’s nothing more to do … well, that’s just silly, as we ALL know that there are a myriad of games that can be beaten in an hour or less (most fighting games can be beaten in MINUTES!) that are still very fun to pick up and play, ESPECIALLY if the games are multiplayer (which the PS3 version of flOw is).
And Al3xand3r, I don’t have a problem with the fact that you’d rather spend your $8 elsewhere, and / or that you don’t see this increasing the attractiveness of a very expensive console.
And I’m simply saying that yes, there are short games you want to keep playing but this particular reviewer shows that at least to him this particular game was not something he wanted to keep playing because in that case, short game or not, he would not mention its longevity in such a negative light.
I’m saying this because you seem to assume he judged it simply by its length, whatever that may be, when he said it doesn’t offer much beyond 2 hours. When it is possible that he simply genuinely found nothing interesting about it past that point, even with the multi player mode as he said to him it didn’t do much to enhance the game.
Your opinion differs and I’m glad since you got your money’s worth. Maybe I’d disagree with him too if I played it. That doesn’t mean his opinion is invalid or poorly constructed as you seem to imply when you emphasise how short games can be replayed as if the short length is all that made him judge it so…
