Richard

Flower, Sun and Rain is almost unplayable, it looks like someone has kicked the graphics into the DS with a muddy boot and I couldn’t possibly recommend playing it to anybody, yet at the same time it’s a game that everyone should go out of their way to experience. Let me explain.

In Flower, Sun and Rain you play as Sumio Mondo, a man sent to Lospass island to prevent a terrorist from blowing up a plane. It sounds pretty normal so far, however the game was designed by Suda51, the mind behind Killer7 and No More Heroes, so it’s batshit insane. The way Sumio tries to stop the attack is to solve really stupid code puzzles.

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I love a quiz game. I’ve played most of the Buzz games and I can’t enter a pub without having a go on it’s Itbox, so I was really looking forward to Scene It. Was I disappointed? Well, yes and no.

First, the good. The presentation is – apart from the annoying voice overs with their awful, over-written banter – good. There’s a great use of cutely-animated avatars, however there are no pre-built characters to select, so a game can sometimes take an age to start as people try and randomise an avatar to suit them. Each individual round is presented in it’s own style, with enough nice flourishes of animation to give the game a good bit of character. The questions themselves are well presented, too, with the video clips round a particular highlight.

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In Growlanser every character seems to be an orphan; quiet types, who say things like “…” and “umm”. You see, most of the characters’ parents where killed in the war, because war is bad. The characters are out to stop war, because war is bad. Did I mention that war is bad? Well it is. The game told me. Every five seconds. The previous generations of orphans had a great idea to stop the war. They pointed a big gun at everyone and asked them to be quiet. However, now there’s a new enemy. The earth is being attacked by the mysterious screapers, who live in the sea but occasionally come inland to chow down on some human flesh. The story is in equal parts uninspiring, clichéd and stupid.

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Xbox Live Arcade is brilliant. Ikugara, Rez, Worms and Uno have sucked up hours of my time, even though I’m unable to reach level three of Ikugara. However, what the Live Arcade has missed so far is quality original games, instead relying on old classics to prop up the service. Braid has come along in a gallant attempt to buck that trend.

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England qualified for Euro 2008, easing past the group stage with two days to go, thanks to top drawer performances from Phil Neville and superb leadership by me, on the left wing.

Obviously in real life this didn’t happen. In real life England spluttered towards the inevitable outcome of failure, due to awful management and not playing me on the left wing. But this is what games are for. To redress the balance, to change things back to the way they where supposed to be, to create a fantasy that’s better than reality. So England qualified, and I played on the left wing, set up the winning goal in the final against Holland, Phil Neville lifted the trophy, and Frank Lampard didn’t get a game.

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