Flower, Sun and Rain (DS)
A mystery is concealed within this review.
7/2/2009 7:53 PM | 8 Comments | Page 2 of 3
What's Hot: Making a TinyURL using the digits in the footnotes.
What's Not: Not doing What's Hot.
I'll tell you something cool. Back when
Flower, Sun and Rain first came out in Japan they published a sort of companion magazine -- an exact replica of the Lospass guidebook that the game's main character Sumio Mondo uses. Remember when games used to come with real stuff? Like cloth maps and "Peril Sensitive Sunglasses." No shit? You played
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy too! Man, that game was hard, wasn't it?
Flower, Sun and Rain isn't that tough, really. I know, I know. But I should tell you. Management, you know? The dude Sumio, he solves all the puzzles with a briefcase he calls "Catherine." The briefcase is a kind of machine that plugs into people, things, whatever with a bunch of universal adapters. Whenever Sumio encounters a situation, a mystery or something that needs doing he plugs Catherine in to the thingy in question, dials in a number, and that artificial barrier to progress is artificially removed. And those numbers? They're all embedded in the articles in the Lospass guidebook. Kinda nifty, right? You don't think so? We'll you're wrong. It is nifty. It's not old or outdated or boring or all those things that you're thinking.
Why aren't there more videogame puzzles around area codes?
I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to do that. I got up kind of fast and the chair went flying out behind me. It's because I'm big and clumsy. Don't leave. Did I come off creepy? Was it The Smiths? I knew playing The Smiths would weird you out. I knew it. What if I tell you about the story of
Flower, Sun and Rain and the way it's all fragmented and crazy like a David Lynch movie. But still videogame-y. Like Hideo Kojima if he didn't take himself so damn seriously? No. You're right. I went too far. I get passionate about these things sometimes. It's cool. Go ahead. You've got things to do. I'll just stay in here, listen to some music and think a little.*****
*
Flower, Sun and Rain was originally released on the PlayStation 2 in 2001.
**57 critics erroneously granted
Killer7 a mere 74%. Learning their lesson, 64 members of the critical community granted
No More Heroes 83% approval.
***See Gamasutra's
coverage of the 2007 GDC panel for a summary of the talk. But man, you really had to be there.
****"This Charming Man" is the 6th track on the band's self-titled 1983 album and has a runtime of 2:43.
*****Hey! You came back. Sorry about my little outburst before. And all this weirdness. I guess I'm feeling a little underconfident about this whole experiment. I thought it would be really boring to write a conventional review about such an unconventional game. I figured why not go nuts the way Suda does and see what happens. And just like a Grasshopper Manufacture game, some parts of this review worked and some didn't. So I'll be straight with you.
Flower, Sun and Rain is an adventure game with more than a dozen chapters. Each takes place on the same day, one that repeats over and over again ending with the explosion of a passenger plane. You play as Sumio Mondo, a detective of sorts who goes to a Micronesian resort hotel to solve the mystery of the terror attacks.
