I'm a Leaf on the Wind. Watch How I Soar.

Though I've recently read and largely agreed with a post by L.B. Jeffries about the benefits of blogging for the long tail rather than the game du jour, I've actually been looking forward to trying my hand at the latter. Over the months that I've been reading gaming blogs I've often felt a bit out of the loop and unable to legitimately formulate my own thoughts because I lacked either the time or the tools (still a Sony-only household) to play some of last year's most discussed games. With all the critical hype surrounding Flower I'm excited to have a chance to throw my tam in the ring during the early stages of what looks to be one of 2009's most talked about experiences.

There's already been some discussion out there in the blogosphere. Michael Abbot's initial shoot-from-the hip impressions have spawned a deluge of comments which I've intentionally avoided for the sake of forming my own critical opinion before having it blown in other directions by my fellow bloggers. So after 2.33 playthroughs here's one PEEGers impressions:

Flower is a game about symbiosis. The hyped up notion of zen-gaming actually works in the game's favor by swaying players' expectations. Before booting it up you expect to accept the simple grandeur of the landscape as a way of turning the game into an exercise in relaxation. It rather reminds me of Cloud, a game I was introduced to back in 2006 as an academic attempt to create non-violent and non-exclusively-goal-oriented play in video games.

The stage progression is what really makes the game. The first dream is 100% natural, bright and airy, free and merry with some random rocks breaking up the landscape and a spectacular tree to capstone the experience. The second flower's dream might initially be seen as more of the same. While there are hints of human interference - the intentionally constructed stone circles - they are non threatening enough that one might not even notice them on the first play through, despite the obvious counterpoint they make with the randomly placed stones from the first dream. The desaturated color palette - an idea that seems to be gaining more purchase lately - doesn't even negatively affect one's mood because it provides a wonderful canvas to paint on.

I probably wouldn't have felt any tension between the natural and artificial elements of the landscape in the third dream if it weren't that I have a friend with a unusual fear of windmills. We've seen the windmills in pre-release videos of the game and, being that you control petals flowing on the wind, they seem like a perfectly reasonable and non threatening addition to the landscape. But as elegant and appropriate as they may be they still represent the beginnings of a tension in the game between nature and technology. This isn't just a narrative tension either. In the third dream you encounter for the first time some constraints on the hitherto free flowing game play. Once you've activated the windmills and enter the canyons it becomes nigh impossible to escape them and re-entering them to search for more petals is a might frustrating as the wind, seemingly generated by the windmills, constantly tries to push you out.

I'd like to stop here and think about this for a moment because in light of where the game goes I think the third and fourth dreams are the game's apex and best represent the symbiosis I mentioned at the outset. Though it doesn't really hit you over the head until the fifth dream there's a steadily building dread - literally an approaching storm - of technology encroaching upon the idyllic meadows and canyons of Flower. At the climax of the fourth dream (what I consider the second act) this becomes very obvious and I was a bit put off by it. I've got more than a little of the tree-loving hippie in me, but I just wasn't excited about being subjected to another trope about technology's deflowering of poor, innocent nature, nor with the rest of the game being a struggle to overcome the evil monoliths of electricity and steel. Not to mention the irony of such a story being told on as bloated a piece of technology as the PS3!

Fortunately Flower doesn't do this. While you may feel, particularly in dream five, that technology is the enemy and must be eradicated, by dream six you start to see how wonderfully nature and technology can get along. The sixth flower's goal isn't to return to the human-free meadow of the first dream but to achieve harmony through balance, a balance that had, in fact, already been achieved in the third and fourth dreams. Your primary goal in the sixth and final dream isn't to destroy the city but to repair it. It's an interesting critique in its own right of the idea that too many games equate "realism" and "grittiness" with drab and colorless landscapes. The solution isn't a full reversal to the land of dandelions and roses, the solution, in true zen fashion, is to find balance and harmony.

Still I have to admit that I've not successfully sat down and played all six dreams in one sitting because I simply can't stand the fifth dream. My poor flower has yet to be resurrected from that nightmare; it sits bowed over and pathetic despite the three bonus leaves resting in its pot. I don't even know if it's possible to make that flower bloom and I'm not sure I'll ever find out - I simply hate that dream! I hate trying to thread the needle, re-living the torture I experience years ago at the hands of Irritating Stick. I hate the way that stage interrupts my calm. In fact after getting literally sucked into the darkness and kicked out of the dream I've needed to "calm down" by playing some Street Fighter - at least there I know to expect tension and how to deal with it. How's that for harmony!

That said the fifth dream is an integral part of the experience. While I'd prefer the chilled out experience of the first dream to the fifth, both of them are extreme ends of a spectrum that needs balancing, a balancing that was present in the third and fourth dreams but that the sixth dream helps you re-discover. The first act is more play than game, the last more game than play, but the real genius is that thatgamecompany has taken the tired debate over what is most important in a video game - set goals versus tools for free form play - and distilled it into an experience that makes you appreciate the symbiotic relationship between them.

Ultimately that makes Flower a wonderful game of self-discovery. To which set of stages are you more apt to gravitate? The first two (Act I) where you can forget entirely about humanity and technology and just flOw, freeform, through the wondrous scenery? Act II (my favorite) where a careful balance is struck between push and pull, control and being controlled, set amongst a backdrop where nature and technology not only coexist but seem to feed off each other? Or the final act which is much more goal oriented, much more tense and dark but, subsequently, may offer a more gratifying feeling of accomplishment?

Time to go poke my nose in on other people's thoughts.