A Strange Trip Through a Motion Control Wonderland
A wildly flawed, yet unabashedly ambitious entry into the PSN library.
Games like Datura are the reason that most critics hate assigning a qualitative value to their reviews. This PSN exclusive offers a flawed experience that is far too nuanced to be shoehorned into a rigid scoring system of numbers, letters, thumbs, or passionate adjectives. On a rudimentary level, Datura can be crudely described as a Myst-like exploration title with a heavy emphasis placed on motion controls. But this terrible Hollywood elevator pitch can't possibly do the game's successes and flaws justice -- Datura is a strange, wild beast.
It often buckles under the reach of its mechanics while simultaneously delivering immersive moments like no other game has ever done. It's a binary, frustrating experience, yet despite this, the game manages to provide enough enthralling moments to keep you powering through to the end.
Hallucinogens alter your reality and make you see things that aren't there. Plants in theDatura family are renowned for their dangerous hallucinogenic qualities, and their beautiful white flowers -- which you'll find smattered all over the mysterious woods where developer Plastic's new game Datura takes place -- don't exactly belie the trippy nature of the game. It's within that mystery-laden woodland that you'll be thrust into a series of unusual events designed to tell a larger, highly artistic and possibly drug-induced story.
