1. This is a faux indie game. It tries to capitalize on the popular aesthetics of indie games but it was made by a company w/ ten thousand employees.

2. Specific indie tropes to look out for: low poly graphics, cutesy main character, experimental physics and an ambient soundtrack that sounds like the last blushes of a molly trip over a picturesque sunrise.

3. Oh yeah, and this is basically a walking sim. You climb rather than walk but it's a walking sim at heart. You climb up vines until it's time to stop climbing up vines.

4. You character is named BUD. The plot of this as far as their is one is you must ride phallic green vines to deliver something called a starseed to an AI called MOM. No, really. The Oedipal implications here... I can't even.

5. So far so good. I don't really have much of a problem w/ this game thus far. It's cute w/ simple graphics, simple gameplay and an easily digestible plot. This seems to be just about right for a relaxing evening at home w/ your mom while that bastard father of yours is away on business. Maybe a good opportunity to break out a bottle of good champagne and play some romantic music...

6. Except the controls here absolutely infuriating, You will spend the majority of time in this game doing one of two things: climbing vines or riding vines as they grow. Neither of these is pleasant.

7. Climbing vines works okay. You basically hold what direction you want to go and alternate between the right and left buttons or triggers on your controller (or right and left click on the mouse if you play this w/ mouse and keyboard like the huge nerd you are). W/ each new grab, you have to hold the button on that side of the controller until you have the other hand placed. Mess this up? You fall to oblivion and have to restart from your last check point. This would be annoying even if the controls didn't cause your hands to cramp up but they do.

8. Riding the vines... holy crap this is bad. It has an inverted Y axis but not the X axis. No matter how you expect the controls to work, they don't work that way. Furthermore, if you are holding up on the stick to climb up to the top of the vine before inducing it to grow and forget to let go before you hit the button to start it growing, the vine will spiral off randomly and it is nearly impossible to gain your bearings as the thing moves.

9. And the camera! Can't get enough of the roller coaster of thrills this provides. Whether you love making critical moves completely blind or veering off in a random direction due to a camera change, this has something for you.

10. This gets into why I mention it's a faux indie game. I suppose in a perfect world we would judge a game exclusively on its own merits w/o regard to who made it but I'm not perfect. I might give out a mulligan for a dozen person studio having some flawed controls in their first game ever but Ubisoft had damn well better find whichever one of those ten thousand people it employs who knows how to program a third person camera and get them on that. Screwing up basic gameplay is unacceptable for a company w/ so much experience.

11. Speaking of Ubisoft, why do you people never have a save and quit to desktop option? Do you love your title screen so much that I must first stop there on my way back to my desktop? Select quit, confirm, select quit again, confirm again. Every. Single. Game.

12. After beating Grow Home you are treated w/ the option for your hands to further cramp up while you engage in the madding process of going everywhere in the game world you weren't forced to go in to complete the main story. This is the extent of replayability and will add a couple hours to your playtime. Not bad, really.

13. I feel the need to make another Oedipus joke here but I'm coming up blank. I will just reiterate that you spend a lot of time in this game driving green wieners toward your mom.