Sometimes, I think about the things I would say to the child version of myself if I could travel back in time to meet him: the profound life lessons, which girls to avoid, confidence-boosting details on what adult Chris would become and so on. As much as I would love the opportunity to spend some time with the younger me, something tells me, despite my best efforts, I would probably waste whatever time I had showing him how intense video games are in the future.
Think about it. What would you have done if the grown-up you came in your room, unplugged your NES, put a giant HD television in front of that 19'' Symphonic CRT you were rockin' and showed you Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, Resident Evil or Call of Duty 4…
If you were anything like me, you probably would have shit the big one.
But after the initial shock, I think young Chris would jump right in to nearly any modern game I showed him, because as much as games have changed, for the most part they still revolve around the same concepts they always have. Kill the bad guys, save the girl, explore the world and complete the mission. I don't think young Chris would be able to see it as clearly as I do now, but every modern space-marine-versus-the-aliens game you could throw at him is basically just an evolved version of Contra. Although games in this generation are more intense, more complicated and demanding on the player (not to be read as more difficult), they nearly always fall back on the same couple of principal ideas.
However there are exceptions to the rule. Every once and a while a game comes along that is so fresh, forward-thinking and unique you might feel like a future you brought it back in time for the current you to see. I recently spent some time with Flower, a downloadable game for the PS3 and I have to say thanks to future Chris for letting me check it out.
Flower is a game that gives you nothing to kill, nothing to destroy, no humans, no aliens, instead it offers a soothing, almost hypnotic gaming experience unlike any other in recent memory. If you really open up to the experience of Flower, it transcends beyond what I would call a video game to something more pure and simple, something else.
It is truly a relaxing game, this fact alone sets it apart from anything I have played in a long time. The relaxing element for me was magnified by the fact that I first played Flower just before going to bed, after a marathon session of Resident Evil 5 and Killzone 2, which are both intense to the point of being near-panic-inducing. It’s incredibly refreshing to play Flower after wading though countless dark and war-torn environments, killing anything that moves, knowing that you are only one wrong move away from instant death.
The controls are simple and instantly intuitive, just tilt the Dualshock3 back and forth or side to side to guide your “character”, a string of floating flower pedals, towards its destination. I am really surprised how well the motion controls work after so many failed attempts at using them by games with ten times the budget of flower. I had written off the PS3’s motion controls along time ago, but flower demonstrates that it is possible for them not only to work, but work exceptionally well.
As you breeze through Flower, the painterly graphics wash over you like rays of sunshine. Every blade of grass, leaf and pedal is so lovingly rendered you will swear you can smell the warm summer air coming trough your screen. Each of the five “stages” has its own unique visual mood and character, providing a variety to the experience that keeps you in at peak interest until the end of the relatively short play-through. With the lack of beauty and color in many modern games, it’s not enough to say that Flower is visually inspired. It is visually inspirational.
There is a subtle narrative told through Flower that I won’t delve into here because I don’t want to take away any of what the game has to offer you. However, the game developers themselves have referred to flower as “a videogame version of a poem” if that gives you any idea of what to expect.
Although I can’t say for certain what young Chris would have thought of Flower, I can speculate that without the years of gaming experience that I now have, he may not have “got” it. However, for us who have grown up with them all of our lives, Flower proves to be a reminder that video games can be more than what we are accustomed to and perhaps offers insight to what games may become in the future.
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