Flower, Sun and Rain

Flower, Sun and Rain

Grasshopper Manufacture and CEO Suda51 have established quite a reputation over the past few years, and notably so in Europe. With only a handful of titles released being recognisably a work of the designer’s self-indulgent eccentricity, most notably Killer7 and No More Heroes, it’s undoubted that the company’s UK connections have done a good job of raising awareness amongst the general public. Capcom can take the congratulations deserved for creating a coffee table name in videogaming, but it’s a publisher that’s relatively ignored by gamers amongst the hustle-and-bustle of the constant stream of AAA productions from large publishers that have managed to permanently suture Suda51 to the back of gamers’ minds. Rising Star Games have a level of credibility here at Electronic Theatre. Though, as with every publisher, we’ve had a fair share of low-lights, the company, through it’s parent companies Marvelous Interactive and Bergsala AB, seem to have knack for bringing titles to Europe – and in particular, the UK - which would most likely be overlooked otherwise. Flower, Sun and Rain is a culmination of these two industry billboards. The title is a NintendoDS remake of a PlayStation2 Suda51 production released back in 2001, which surely would not have got-off-the-ground had the designer not reached the level of credibility he know has, and has arrived in the UK courtesy of Rising Star Games, which undoubtedly was the game’s only avenue for a release in these parts, and had Rising Star Games not been around to push the game, it’s unlikely UK gamers would ever have had the opportunity to ever play it, bar importing. repeatedly draw attention to. Casting the player in a perspective not normally associated with videogames, working alongside the protagonist – who often directly addresses the player with a post-modern series of insults and negative commentary on the game’s own recognisable flaws – during problem solving activities, and assuming control of the Character Model during third-person exploration sequences, the player find themselves alongside our hapless hero, Sumio Mondo as he tackles the threat of a bomb planted on a plane by terrorists, and attempts to find the secrets hidden within Hotel Flower, Sun and Rain. The However, through all of this deserved recognition, for hard work and creativity above all, there’s still nothing to guarantee that Flower, Sun and Rain has been worth all the effort. As stated in Electronic Theatre’s previous In-depth Review of a Rising Star Games release, Dungeon Maker, the publisher have such a packed line-up for the fourth quarter of 2008, there’s bound to be at least one disappointment, surely? The world of Flower, Sun and Rain is a very surreal one, as should be expected from productions with Suda51 at the helm. The title’s tropical envisioning of humanity lays somewhere between Twin Peaks and Brass Eye - effortlessly witty and incalculably mad – and liberally borrows from Groundhog Dog, a fact to which the game isn’t ashamed to third-person movement is controlled in similar fashion to that of Super Mario64 DS, with a dial demonstrating movement speed and direction on the Touch Screen, and the player’s on-screen avatar moving in conjunction with the Stylus movements across the dial. More traditional D-Pad based controls are also available, and generally easier to use. The bulk of the game is a series of clues and answers. More than just the right-key-for-the-right-lock puzzles made famous by the Resident Evil series, Flower, Sun and Rain’s puzzles are clues to solve a riddle; setting a scene of realistic detective work as opposed to simply working through the conundrums the designer has created for you. The abstract nature of the puzzles will annoy many – each answer is limited to a resolution of a series of numbers – and often their lack of cerebral challenge is noted by the game itself. Occasional puzzles, however, are far to abstract for any realistically enjoyable challenge. The puzzles and their arrangement may not be as well balanced and presented as the likes of Professor Layton and the Curios Village, but it certainly could be noted as an inspiration for such titles. A series of waves with crashing highs and tedious lows; with an exception to the brain training software wave, never have a player’s power of examination, deduction, and algebra been under such stringent observation. Thankfully, then, the game incorporates its own notepad. Utilising the Touch Screen players may make their own notes, and recall them later when required. The game develops some genuinely interesting characters that are easily on a par with any of Suda51’s later work, and even rivals some of the industries’ finest. Havens for uniquely insightful characterisation such as BioShock, FallOut 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV are often cited as utilising the power of the Current-Generation to delve deeper into believable characterisation than was ever possible before, and yet here, a seven year old PlayStation2 game remade for an even less technically capable machine has been able to draw figures just as respectable. Perhaps it’s at this point that the discussion of the distance between imagination and processing power be raised – and you could bet this time, Nintendo would be even more vocal. Flower, Sun and Rain includes many small touches – both in design and presentation – that will familiar to fans of Suda51’s more recent works. The self-referential humour and eccentric characters have already been noted, yet even the continuation arrows during text sections are exactly the same as the command arrows seen in No More Heroes. Subtly divided into chapters – of which, upon completion the charismatic hotel owner, Edo Macalister, brings you up-to-speed in preparation for the next – the title is well catered to a handheld console. Flower, Sun and Rain features a combination of live footage, pre-rendered Cut-Scenes and an almost Cel-Shaded quality with its basic polygon models, and, for the most part, is of surprisingly good quality for the NintendoDS. The occasional model lacks the required amount of detail to simply be believable within the world that has been established, which is confusing when the game features a distance of detail in it’s environments previously unheard of on the system. The game features some varied soundscapes, mostly of a very good quality, along with an Animal Crossing­-esque Babelesque speech. Flower, Sun and Rain may be a slight disappointment given the highly respectable nature of Grasshopper Studio’s output in recent years; however, if this is that weak link in Rising Star Games’ fourth quarter line-up that Electronic Theatre has been expecting, things certainly could have been a lot worse. Along with the likes of Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Growlanser: Heritage of War and Rumble Roses XX, Flower, Sun and Rain is the type of Japanese curiosity that the UK audience is rarely treated to, and so will establish it’s place in the videogame market very quickly, but is unlikely to attract any new fans for Grasshopper Manufacture and Suda51. source : http://www.electronictheatre.co.uk