Fl0w

by Daniel Tuff - 2007/11/26 5:38am

Starting out as a small organism in the shallows of a vast body of water, you encounter all kinds of interesting organisms, and eat them. Players move their organism around by holding the Sixaxis controller so its face is parallel to the ground, and tilting the controller down in the direction they want to move. It's the first successful implementation of the motion controls in the Sixaxis I've experienced - less than ten minutes had passed before I had forgotten about the controller in my hands completely.

Eating different organisms will grow and evolve your organism, and allow you to navigate deeper into the water. The graphics mimick nature in that large structures of immense beauty can be made recursively from small, simple shapes.

The music is relaxing, inviting, and sparse enough to leave plenty of room in the mix for the sound effects triggered by eating other organisms. The two mesh wonderfully and the result is a gripping aural experience defined by what you're doing in the game - a long overdue departure from the painfully short loops of anthemic synth lines and monotonous breakbeats passed off as music in several Xbox Live Marketplace games.



fl0w is a truly unique experience that is intuitive enough to be picked up and played by anybody, and deep enough to keep them there for a while. Given how easy it is to lose a couple of hours in the game, the only downside is that you'll probably have seen all there is to see within a similar timeframe.

It offers a hypnotic experience that is easy to get fixed on. The simplicity of the whole game makes it even more fun to play. The overall length of the game isnt long, but its so easy to play over and over again.



Fl0w offers an experience that a lot of games don’t. Well recommended and the price is very much more than fair.