10 Video Games That Owned Themselves
3. Flower, Sun And Rain
Goichi Suda's Flower, Sun and Rain precariously walks a line more dangerous than Philippe Petit's in gently ribbing itself, drawing attention to the fact that the obscure PS2/Nintendo DS adventure game is, you know, sort of crap.
Like all of Suda51's divisive output, it is at least confident. The story revolves around 'searcher' Sumio Mondo who, in a general parody of video games' lack of urgency in the face of disaster, spends so much time helping the natives of Micronesian island Lospass solve their problems, he forgets the reason he was sent there - namely, to diffuse a bomb.
This, for reasons that can be summed up as 'gameplay contrivance', results in a Shadow of Memories style timeloop, as Sumio repeats the same day, solving everybody's problems episodically. It's all a lot of hot gibberish, then, but with a sly wink to the player.
In one episode, an obnoxious kid called Shoutaro winds Sumio up something silly, pointing out the internal flaws in the game's logic - why, for example, is he wearing a dark suit on a Pacific island? - and even mocking its primitive graphics. Sumio - channelling Suda's rebuttal to critics of the PS2 original - explains the subpar visuals as "a unique, stylised way of representing human attributes". Riiight.