Love Is...In Bloom: The Flower Shop Garden

Love Is...In Bloom: The Flower Shop Garden
"This game definitely is more boring than watching grass grow, that's for sure"
Protagonist(s): Boy and Girl Genre(s): Party Platform(s): Nintendo DS Nintendo Wii Release Date: EU/AU 2009 Publisher(s): Zoo Digital Publishing Country: Europe Series: Love Is

Love Is...In Bloom: The Flower Shop Garden is a 2009 party video game published by Zoo Digital Publishing in Europe and Australia for the Nintendo DS and Wii. It is based on the New Zealand comic strip Love Is.

Why Love Isn't In Bloom

Overall

1. The gameplay is so repetitive, and overall generic that it can quickly bore players. It consists of only a given amount of minigames being played over and over again until you get enough money from the flowers you collect in order to either unlock minigames, or for progression. After you do all this, and unlock the best medals in each of the minigames, there's no point in playing the story mode of the game as there is nothing left to offer beyond that.
2. Very little resemblance from the source material other than the names, characters and their respective designs, and the cutscenes.
3. Very short in length, lasting an average of 4-5 hours for 100% completion, and even less to simply just beat the game.
4. A complete lack of emotion from the character models in this game, as what you see from them is all you get. The most laughable example of which is that if you lose, the characters are still seen smiling for no reason.
5. Every time you win, you only get 3 flowers, making the game feel very grindy.
6. For a kids game (much less a G/Pegi 3+ rated game), the characters are completely naked, being very inappropriate for it's target audience, although this is understandable as the characters were also naked in most issues of the comic.
7. This game rips off aspects from several other games, like Pac-Man in the Wii Version, and the pipe-fixing games in the DS version.

DS Version

1. Only 4 songs play throughout the entire game. One of which, plays through all the menus, the second, in the rhythm level, and the latter 2 playing when you win and lose respectively. Other than that, complete silence.
2. Unlike the Wii version, you have to buy the minigames in a completely separate menu, instead of within the hubs where you can play the minigames, which is a complete waste of code that could've been implemented like said version.
3. The graphics look absolutely terrible, making the character models look cheap
4. The minigames are made even more generic, compared to the Wii version.
5. There are only 12 minigames in the entire game, more than the 9 present in the Wii version, although the game offers next to no content besides these minigames.

Wii Version

1. The motion controls in some of the minigames don't detect movements so well, preventing players from earning high scores.
   • The most notable example being the water bucket minigame. The motion controls are at their absolute worst here because firstly, you are put under a strict time limit, and secondly, it may not register your movements, causing you to spill water, or knock your player into the bushes, preventing you from scoring well enough to get all the way to the platinum medal without retrying over and over again until you get lucky enough to beat it.
   • In the flower minigame, there's no way to tell how hard you need to throw the flowers into the bucket unless you play the game many times and figure it out yourself, leading to a lot of player input resulting in misses in the process.
   • During the flower shop sections, because the inputs are very finicky, it's easy for you to miss certain actions in favor of others, being a major inconvenience in the player's end.
2. It's impossible to see the losing screen in this version unless you do so on purpose.
3. There are only 9 minigames in the entire game, even less than the 12 present in the DS version.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Most of the minigames in the Wii version are decent, as with a fraction of the minigames in the DS version.
2. The cutscenes are 100% faithful to that of the comic strip. In fact, a lot of the plot seems to be adapted from the many comics made for the franchise.
3. The game is at least playable.
4. The pacing on the DS version is a lot quicker.
5. The Wii version contains several enjoyable pieces of music, and a lot more variety compared to that of the DS version.

Trivia

• A Love Is comic strip compilation also shared the same name as this game.
• Depending on the region, certain characters may either be seen clothed, or naked.

Comments

Loading comments...