Welcome to the review of Flower, Sun and Rain -- Crispy Gamer's critical response to the Nintendo DS rerelease of the classic game by Suda 51 and Grasshopper Manufacture. What? You're wondering why I'm talking to you like this? Me, too. But before we get to that question, let me ask you something. Why do you play videogames? Don't answer yet. Let it simmer in your brain a bit. Okay, then. Let's move on.

As reader of this review it's important that you understand the following points. A) Suda 51 is up to something. B) What he's up to we're not entirely sure of. And C) The videogame Flower, Sun and Rain (which this very piece of writing will address) is proof that he's been up to this very thing for a while.*

Something like this could get me to watch UFC matches.

You may ask, what exactly is this thing that Suda 51 is doing? That's a very boring question, but I'll answer it anyway. Suda 51 has been experimenting with the form of videogames. He's been poking the conventions of videogame storytelling and gameplay with a stick. Sometimes he beats said conventions with said stick until they're unrecognizable -- bruised, bloodied and weeping in a corner. Authorities have been alerted to these abuses and have docked Suda 51 the appropriate number of Metacritic percentage points for his digressions.** But since you're here I'll let you in on a little secret: The conventions of videogame storytelling and gameplay had it coming.

We're pretty far into the review already, aren't we? It's kind of nice in here. Airy. There are so many things one could do with a space like this. We could talk about Takashi Miike. Or we could talk about Suda 51's "Punk's Not Dead" speech where the game-maker began to explain his approach to making games.*** Man, there really are a zillion things we could do in here. Let's go over into the corner and chat for a second. Over there by the jukebox. I'll put on The Smiths if they have it. Got a dollar? No. Forget it. I'll write it off. Do you like "This Charming Man?"**** Seems appropriate, right? Okay, go ahead and sit down. I won't bite. I'm going to be honest with you for a second. You'll probably hate Flower, Sun and Rain. I'm pretty sure of it. I don't know you, really. We just met. You seem polite. And you dress okay. But I have that feeling about you. Just like I know not to talk about movies and music or politics or sex or food or pretty much anything I really care about with my relatives in Michigan. The weather's nice, though, eh?

A scene from the insurance adjusting mini-game.

Don't look at me that way. I've been wrong before. Misjudged people. Maybe I got the wrong impression. I'll lay it out for you then. Let you see if I was wrong. Flower, Sun and Rain is ugly. Even by PlayStation 2 standards. Well, parts of it are, at least. Wander around the game long enough and you'll see pixels stretch off into the horizon like big, brown smears. The trees in Doom look better.

Crap. I promised myself I wouldn't do this. And here I am getting all critic-y. Old habits and all that, right? I'm serious, though. A good half of Flower, Sun and Rain is butt-ugly. The characters have lumpy Goldeneye heads. And the camera is frequently unruly, making it hard to wander around. Did you just yawn? Sorry. I started spewing bullet points. I think I'm starting to get you now. I'll be honest. When you came in here with your T-shirt tucked into your jeans I thought you were some kind of jerk. But I was wrong to judge you.

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.

Even though parts of the game are ugly and play sloppily, the game is a triumph of style and execution. The writing (and the localization) are fantastic. They make up for the simplicity and repetativeness of the puzzles -- though I suspect Goichi Suda is getting at something with the mantra-like way he repeats things in all his games. Or the way he stacks things in hierarchies like the different levels of the Masons. I bet you Suda is into Matthew Barney. Anyway, like this review the game is really weird. Not always successful at what it's trying to do, but interesting and important because of the effort.

Did I mention that the game has a plot? It's about hyenas, eye-ball farming and terrorism.

I know me talking to you like this sort of undermines the whole attempt to be all experimental and whatnot. But I think it fits the theme. Throughout Flower, Sun and Rain the characters comment on bits of the plot that don't make sense. They complain about bits of gameplay that aren't fun. It goes beyond breaking the fourth wall. The whole thing is kind of meta, you know? Like the fetch quests the game makes you run: You walk the length of Lospass island dozens of times. The distances are interminable and pointless. But there's a counter at the top of the screen that counts your steps. You get a reward every time the counter hits a big round number. Suddenly something kind of awful becomes kind of not awful because the game makes it more gamey. Running around is still awful (and the designers know this) but I suspect they're sort of critiquing videogames as a whole for baiting boring stuff with meager rewards. Besides, the whole running back and forth thing pays off with an awesome running gag later on.

Look at me. I'm chewing your ear off. Did you know they have all of "London Calling" on this jukebox? Now that I think about it, I was wrong. I think you'll really like this game.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.