5.8 Frustrating. Would have been good if they would have removed that damn time limit.
Graphics 9/10
The game has a nice visual style which is closely tied in to the games soundtrack. Like other Pixeljunk games it is presented in a 2D style and this takes a very minimalist approach. It does look very nice and mixed with the audio makes a very impressive overall art style.
+Gorgeous Visual Style
+Graphics and Audio blend to create fantasic ambience
STORY
Story? What story? I'm really not sure what to say about this area, how can you mark down a story that does not exist?
LONGEVITY 7/10
The game has 10 levels of play and on each level you have to collect upto 5 spectra. This constant repetition of the levels does lengthen the game but does also seem a bit arbitrary ultimately pointless. Also, this game has been released with PlayStation Trophy support from day one. This does help to lenghthen out the game a bit more than you would normally play and involves some fun challenges, such as opening all seeds in a garden, and some incredibly hard ones such as not letting any pollen fall to the ground.
+Plenty of things to do
+WOO! Trophies!
-Wow, those trophies are way too hard to get
-Repetition gets really old, really fast
GAMEPLAY 3/10
Okay so the visuals look nice and there is plenty to do, you have a lot of seeds and things to collect and all that mixed with a very nice soundtrack looks a very enticing prospect indeed, given that and throw in the simple
controls that work well and fit the game nicely you might think it's almost a clear run home, right? I will simply say this, this game is one of the single most frustrating games I have ever played. Almost everything that is good about the game is ultimately ruined by the pointless timer, which not only makes the game immensely frustrating and needlessly hard but also completely ruins the mood and makes what could be a very good, relaxing game into an infuriating broken one, please take it back and get rid of the timer before I break my controller. I have given it a 3 in this area all because of the timer which completely breaks the game, it is punishing and makes things much, much too hard.
+Good controls
-Inclusion of absolutely pointless timer
-Timer too restrictive
-Timer makes game infuriating
-Timer breaks atmosphere
-TIMER! WHY?!?
FUN 4/10
I think you already know where I am going with this, The game is quite fun, in fact it is really peaceful and very fun, right up until the point where you miss one single jump and go right back to the bottom of the level and then
of course the timer punishes you for it. Once again the arbitrary timer completely runins and breaks this game. It would have been really fun if that cursed timer wasn't there.
-Seriously, remove the timer.
OVERALL 5.8/10
It is a visually stunning, very nice, quite fun and completely and entirely broken by one single gameplay element. I will admit it is very very pretty, in fact, if games were art this would be a van Gogh or a Turner, however it is not a piece of art, it is a game and games are supposed to be fun and playable, this, on the other hand, is frustrating and broken.
BETTER THAN: Watching plants grow (Even though that would be less frustrating) (Real Life)
WORSE THAN: Flow (PS3)