Thatgamecompany's Flower on PlayStation Network has received a great deal of critical acclaim already; I am quite sure I heard at least one pal from the critical press declare on Twitter that he "cried a little." Hefty evaluation for a title believed to be transcendent, positively -- but is it really?It's received enough coverage by now that you doubtless know the basic mechanics. Using the tilt of the Sixaxis, you stir the petal of a flower on the breeze, and as you touch other opening blooms on your way, your single pale curl is joined by gradually more colorful petals, eventually assembling the sort of floral cloud seen in artful visions of springtime cherry blossom breezes.
Your wind can be a languid, atmospheric drift, or with the push of any one of the controller's buttons, you can direct it into a brisker, fresher and more focused breeze. And that's it, really; each level is a different windswept zone of nature, from a sunlit, grassy plain populated with nodding daffodils and brilliant red poppies through a rainswept rolling hill under a sky of ominous violet, as your floral journey brings you ever closer to a dark landscape dominated by the black skeletons of electric urbanization.
Certainly, Flower may be the first game that allows players to control wind in such a lifelike way. The Sixaxis controls are subtle and virtually impeccable, and some levels feature ambient breezes of their own that gives your personal current the lifelike sense of being part of the air, genuinely.
The player-controlled transitions from speed to stirring, from sky-height to a whisk along the fingertips of the grass are lifelike and lovely; the color palettes are nothing short of awe-inspiring, and the music responds subtly to the player's pacing. When touched, each color of flower emits its own musical note, like a glass bell or a tinkling chime, and these effects blend fluidly into the soundscape.
It's breathtaking and highly original, no doubt about it. If it sounds naturalistic, meditative, that's because it is. An anecdote told to me by a friend goes that creator Jenova Chen (also known for flOw, of course) was asked, "do you control the flower, or the wind?" And Chen is said to have replied, with either gravity or whimsy, "you decide."
Well, wait a second. Here's where we get ahead of ourselves.
Ironically, Flower owes its brilliance not to some fantasy that it's reinventing game mechanics, that it's creating absolute belief, that it's video game Zen, or that it's a "video game that's not a video game." In fact, its playability hinges squarely and mundanely on just how gamelike it is, how naked its design principles, and how ancient and obvious are the laws to which it adheres.
This Destructoid review is slightly harsh, perhaps; personally, I don't find the schism so overt as critic Topher Cantler did, but in the literal sense, it's on point.
The flowers of Flower grow in tidy lines designed to be navigated on the course of level completion. You must collect petals from their appointed groups in order to transform the area around you from listless to green before you can progress. The game is wont to send your breeze through branching tunnels with little blooms growing from the walls or from the logs that arch overhead -- in a fashion resembling nothing more than the ring-collecting halfpipe bonus levels in Sonic 2.
Flower is an imitation of the pollination process -- then why should being touched by a petal cause a flower to open, why should spreading the greenery bring a trio of windmills to life, thereby opening the next area? The game's undertones ask us to believe that our petal-strewn breeze is imbued with some kind of flower-power capable of revitalizing dead grass, punching through metal structures and turning on lights.
No matter how well it imitates the lawlessness of wind, Flower is no Zen. It does not create belief; instead, it asks us to suspend disbelief. It works not because it defies the traditional bounds of video games. It works because of how well it adheres to them.
It's artful, but calling it an "art game," an experiment, a transcendence, is a bit of a misnomer.
And in fact, that's absolutely fine. If I have a small issue with Flower, it's certainly not that it is, through and through, a video game. I love video games. And I also think I understand why everyone's nonetheless so positively transported; I have a theory on why my colleague had a little cry.
I'll explain tomorrow. Meanwhile, how have you responded to Flower, and why?
