PixelVixen707

Super-hott download Flower has been nagging at me since I started playing it last week. Not to copy Michael Abbott, who has posted about it repeatedly, but I have to give this a second post. And I have to give it my thumbs down.

Let me explain.

Like every grimy, congested metropolis, New York City still boasts real-life wilderness. Of course there’s Central Park, right there on the prime real estate between Central Park West and Central Park East. But we crave nature on every block. New Yorkers love their dogs, even big ones that hog half their studio co-ops. No city yet on earth has been free of trees or vines or rats or feral cats; mankind can’t pour enough concrete to chase out nature.

The question is balance. I’ll admit, I went into Flower assuming that the plants would triumph over civilization. Images of threatening power lines and infernal girders pushing out of the ground back that up. But as the last level makes clear, Flower doesn’t set nature against urbanism: instead, it argues for better urbanism. Worn, unhealthy cities should be wiped clean of their soot and snot. A green-tech message stares you in the face: those clean new windmills won’t kill you; the old, corroded power lines will.

In fact, by the end, Flower didn’t remind me of a “haiku” or a dream so much as a commercial. If you watch a grown-up TV show, say, one of the Sunday political talking heads programs, you’ll see ads from multinational fossil fuelers that talk about how they’re spending their profits on saving the world. These 30-second spots brag about solar and wind and clean coal, and they flit through close-ups of fields, puppies, children … and flowers. Imagine a spot of a single rose petal drifting past power lines, as Martin Sheen narrates: “Exxon. Investing in a greener tomorrow.”

That’s where the hammer hits the nail on my disappointment in this title. It is a one-fell-swoop game, a fantasy where vital, world-saving changes take place with the brush of a rose petal, and a disfigured power line tower is a velvety petal away from getting a fresh coat of paint. America’s crumbling infrastructure vanishes before our eyes. The game’s intentional lack of difficulty makes the fantasy that much sexier: you experience the thrill of that transformation, the joy of that rebirth, without so much as a platforming exercise to get in the way. Even more than a vote for Obama, this is hope in a pill.

Of course, that’s the point. This design seems to be right in line with the game’s vision: Flower has been described as a kind of game “haiku,” an exercise in “zen gaming.” The plot literally puts you in the dreams of flowers, not the dreams of the late Jane Jacobs (who in any case, wanted more bustling streets and fewer parks). It isn’t skill assessment; it’s wish fulfillment. Like a TV commercial, it finds an urge inside you and latches on, no muss, no fuss.

I respect Flower. I enjoy and admire it, and wouldn’t tell you to do otherwise. But this is not what I look for in games. The windmill didn’t invent itself. Wishes aren’t fulfilled; they’re earned, piece by piece. I would love to see elements of Flower incorporated into a sandbox game like Grand Theft Auto. Steering a petal or for that matter, a mop through a city sim would be satisfying if it felt like part of a system, because systems are a thing that games do well: they show the cause and effect of hundreds of interactions, strung together like a real city, with problems that spark even more despair than that giant girder tower in Flower - but that yield to brains and hard work.

Flower is magical. But I don’t believe in magic.