I love games. Most of the time, I play fast-paced, exciting, enthralling, or scary games that have my heart racing and keep my adrenalin levels high. For once, however, I got the chance to play a game that departs from this convention. Flower, a Playstation Network title and a PS3 exclusive, is a game that’s — believe it or not — actually relaxing to play.

This may sound really boring, like describing a fancy new version of Mahjong for the game console, but it’s really not. I found Flower to be a uniquely captivating experience.

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When I was about 11 years old, I used to read a Dutch gaming magazine called ‘PC Gameplay’. It introduced me to gaming in general, and it also brought me into the world of trying games out instead of dismissing them at first glance. I made a resolution not to assume anymore that something was not my type of game; after the astonishing experience that was Baldur’s Gate, you tend to start looking for other immersive and amazing gems in gameplay.

That same magazine ran a review of System Shock 2 in October 1999, and I was amazed. Not because I thought it’d be such a great game, but because just the pictures and the review scared the living daylights out of me. It took me almost 4 years to gather all the guts I could muster and try the demo. I never realized I was in for an experience that’d return to me repeatedly in the 5 years to come.

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Wipeout HD is an exclusively downloadable title for the PS3. I think that it’s actually the first title of such a large franchise to hit the Playstation Network (PSN in short) Store while not being available in regular brick-and-mortar retail outlets. You’d start to wonder why exactly, as there’s people like me who’d certainly pay for Wipeout HD on shiny Blu-Ray, the PS3’s defacto disc format.

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