FLOWER: Relax, dammit.

February 15, 2009 on 8:03 pm | In Gaming, Stickypig | 23 Comments

-This is part review, part condemnation of the human mind.  Neat, huh?  Any resemblance to a respectable review is purely coincidental-

I love climbing and slaughtering collosi or  tearing people limb from limb, channeling the anger from being tricked by Ares into slaughtering  my innocent family as much as the next virtual escapist, but I’m always interested in games that present an experience far enough removed from the usual thing to be looked thought of not as a mere game but as a more artistic extension and expression of something as abstract as human dreams.  Not to say that tearing someone’s arms off, impaling them against a door and then kicking them to open said door isn’t something we’ve all dreamed of, but something a bit more scaled back as the ability to fly is a nice diversion as well, and more today’s subject.

So I’d been looking forward to Flower for awhile, brought to you by ThatGameCompany, who brought us the dreamy Flow, also on the PSN, for some time now.  Flow was one of the first games I downloaded upon buying that monstrous, lonely island of a console, and it was indeed a thing to show off to whatever unfortunate bastard got lured into my lair, not so much as a game but as a subtle spectacle, a curious thing of beauty to display and interact with.  I’d set someone up to play it, waiting to enjoy their discovery of the thing the way I experienced it, but a funny thing popped up with certain people upon their realizing there were objectives and threats in the apparently soothing universe of the game.  Apparently, getting hunks of your microbial body eaten off by hostile creatures wasn’t quite the perfect dream of people wanting to relax, and watching non-gamers struggle with the insanely simple controls was amusing to incredibly stressful, their arms twisting and turning as though they were having seizures while trying to drive a bus.  I’d marvel at the sight of someone grunting and exclaiming “FUCK!” as an enemy microbe would swim in for a bite, sending the player into whatever panicked spasms would help them escape the oncoming nightmare of being devoured.  

Enter Flower.  Downloading the thing took only about a thousand years on the PSN, despite its relatively small size, followed by the requisite and annoying install process upon having already downloaded the file.  Plenty of things are worth the wait, sure, but I’m the kind of person that wakes up on a game’s release date and leaps over the railing to the television downstairs, breaking both legs, dragging myself to the television to download a thing I’ve been reading about and looking forward to for however long.  I needed this, get it?  The stress from the anticipation had reached a head and Flower’s promise of soothing, stress-free exploration was the only thing that could keep me from bursting into flames right then and there.

Being thrown into the field, literally, is one of my favorite parts of Flower, with you not being asked to do anything at all, allowing you to figure out just what you can do and how to do it.  The world’s just begging you to figure out its limits, and it doesn’t take very long to figure those out at that.  

Flower’s all about flying around as a wee flower petal, using the single button to propel yourself around the field touching all the flowers that haven’t yet bloomed, picking up more petals along the way until you’re eventually trailed by a fantastically long swirl of color.  That’s the good stuff, especially if you’re decent with the flight rudder-style controls, which are as smooth in 3 dimensions as Flow’s were in 2-d, a rare bit of comfort with motion controls in the PS3′s lineup.  The sense of flight reminded me of playing Nights on the ol Sega Saturn, doin loops and swirls and other freakish sky-clown style maneuvers.  Thing is, unlike Nights’ ability to encircle a cluster of whatever it was he was after…gold rings or sandwiches (I forget), your flower petal has to pretty much make contact with most every single flower. It’s not so bad since you’re never pushed into having to play at any particular pace, allowing you to sail up to survey what you’ve missed to swoop back down and finish the job, but it IS a job, a very definite objective to move on to the next area.

I’d dig a freeflight mode with no real objectives other than to explore the environment as it reacts to your presence, but what’s presented is a very strict series of hoops to jump through that you may progress, or that you may simply flee the neverending loop of peaceful piano music assigned to each area.  There’s a REZ-like feel to the various musical sounds emitted by touching different flowers, and custom soundtracks might not exactly mesh well with the intended effect, but after being in the same area for a while, or going back to play the game a few more times, they’d be very welcome, especially for whatever music you in particular think would enhance the mood – Explosions in the Sky, The Wiggles, or the sounds of a slaughterhouse on a loop.  Either way, the music is another thing that you’re pretty much told you have to deal with.  It works nicely enough, especially in the more intense later two levels, but maybe that freeflight mode could have supported a more 360-like custom soundtrack system, but that’s a complaint for the PS3 in general.

Like with Flow, the controls are mostly motion based, so you’re actually tilting the Dual Shock controller back and forth and side to side to get your Flower on, and, having an innate understanding of how to fly like a beautiful, magic flower cloud, I had no problems with it, though, like with most games that rely on motion controls, including anything on the Wii, the lack of any tactile feedback creates a slight disconnect from what you’re physically doing and what’s happening on screen.  Doesn’t mean it’s at all hard however…for anyone used to playing games, but I’ll get to that later.

Where Flower, for me personally, pushed things beyond my being cool with HAVING to do anything, came a few levels in.  I was perfectly content with traveling from dream to dream, enjoying the sights and sounds each zone had to offer, performing my flowery duties to be treated to whatever little animations and sounds were triggered.  Then things got dark…real dark and stormy.  Suddenly I had to deal with navigating around downed electrical towers that punished you for making contact with them by sending white hot energy through your petal stream, blasting you away and making you emit a charred, black smoke.  That’s really not at all what i signed up for, and fortunately it’s not the majority of the game, but it was a lot more severe a thing than I ever expected from the game.  Not exactly one of those levels I ever want to play again and again, unlike a majority of the rest.

My last big complaint comes  from how often you want to just cruise around at top speed, unfettered by “design”.  For a game that wants you to just fly around and smell the roses, it sure as hell stops you to get your attention, grabs your camera and pulls you away from being the flower to suddenly being removed as the point of you mechanically hangs back to show you what magical thing you just did.  Now that’s fine for the first of a kind kind of event, but later on it’s happening again and again and you already know what’s going down, but you can’t just push through and keep your line going.  ”LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE!” the game repeatedly seems to be saying, when all I want to do is fly in peace without the designers constantly showing me what my flying is doing.  It’s a Halo cutscene rather than a Half Life one naturally blended into the gameplay.

All in all, for the price, it’s a damn fine lil’ download, and beautifully unusual experience.  Not for everyone, but most people are horrible.  It gave me a chance to live out my dreams of being an exploded cloud of pinata colored particles and for that I thank it.

And then I’d hand the controller over to someone else…and the horror would begin. ( END REVIEW SECTION.  BEGIN CONDEMNATION. )

I’d hand them the controls, expecting to watch their faces light up like mine did when entering something as surreal and lovely as that, and then watching as they turned it into something worrisome, their faces stern and pained as they felt they suddenly had to “perform”.  People with no gaming instincts frighten me.  Given the ability to live through these powerful avatars, given the ability to do whatever the designers have dreamed up , it’s fascinating and terrifying to watch someone feel pressured and attacked by the design of something, not living out what people might dream but panicking when presented with something that makes absolutely no sense to them.

My test subject, upon entering the field, simply held the controller, ASKING  what they had to do repeatedly, all while never actually DOING anything. They eventually figured that moving the controller would change their viewpoint, and what ensued was the slowest, most flotation-based game in history.  They would slowly crawl from flower to flower, hitting the wind button only for a millisecond, afraid of the rush of speed it would result in.

Even stranger, they stayed in the grass almost exclusively, afraid of how strange the control was in the air.  Watching someone’s neuroses played out in a game where freedom of flight movement is part of the joy is a fascinating, terrible thing, and I watched it for hours, marveling at what must be a stress filled grave for the ghost of this person’s childhood. 

Playing a game badly is one thing, but being too terrified to even try, or explore is a whole other thing.  The first field has a very clear path that leads over a hill and into another little valley, but that path meant nothing to the ground crawling flower worm I was watching.  It was a threatening thing, the dread-potential of NEW AREAS to be intimidated by.  I wiped a tear from my eye as I watched, tightening my grip on the piano wire I was planning on using to end this poor thing’s life.  This was not an isolated incident, as I’ve watched plenty of people simply shut down when put in control of a variety of games, feeling a mixture of both pity and rage that, should aliens ever attack our planet I might be teamed up with this broken individual who hasn’t even tried pressing every button before admitting they simply cannot make things work.  Watching this person struggle with Flower’s motion controls had me wondering if I should stuff my wallet in their mouth to prevent them from swallowing their tongue.

I know it’s probably wrong to judge people based on how they respond to suddenly being put into fantastic situations, even that situation is entirely video game based, but I can’t help it – some people just mystify me.  You put someone in control of a flying serpent made entirely of seemingly enchanted flower petals that can fly majestically through the sky, swooping in to swish through the grass at will, and you expect that, even if they’ve never done it before, the very prospect would excite and intrigue them.  

Kids, being the blessed ignoramuses that they are, get easily excited and intrigued – It’s how they learn.  But adults…they’re a different, sadder story altogether. I’d put the controller in their hands, finishing it off by nailing it through their flesh, and suddenly there was a look of concern, a feeling of HAVING to do something and do it perfectly at the start.  Just try asking a broken noob to play Guitar Hero and listen as they make excuses about how they’ll probably suck and how they don’t want to embarrass themselves.

Fuck that!  Fucking up should be part of the fun, part of the experience of getting better at something.  Curiosity is how a person overcomes adversity and eventually figures a way out of the basement I’ve trapped them in, right? That’s where a kid has most adults beat – they’re not afraid to look like a bloody idiot and in being so, they just happen to figure things out, having fun the whole while.  Next time someone tells you they won’t try something because they’re afraid of sucking, do them a favor and shoot them in the head right then and there.

The aliens are coming and we need confident soldiers, dig?

 

:UPDATE:  A few people have pointed out that my hovering over someone with a piano wire, still drenched in the life-fluids of the previous player while they attempt to acclimate themselves with a new game might be contributing to the raised stress levels.  They’ve got a point, but the piano wire’s just become a habit by this point, I’m sorry to say.

 

 

* Thanks to Emma Story for CSS help during this meandering mess.