I'll never look at a flower in the same way again...

So Valentine's Day arrived. Whoop-de-do. It's never been one of my favourite days - it always struck me as a way to waste money on crap for each other if you've got someone special, and an excuse to get blind drunk if you haven't. Over-commercialised bull. Having said that, I have a rather dim view of most other [something] days. The only day of the year I can think of that doesn't really nark me is May Day, as there's not really any way for people to make a profit from it. Other than the pubs. And anyway, I'm now on the far side of the planet, where May Day, if it existed here, would be at the beginning of winter and not really worth celebrating... guess I'll have to go with one of the kiwi days now.

Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent there - time to get back on topic. So this year I didn't get the better half flowers. I didn't even get her a flower. No, this year I got her Flower, a new addition to the PSN store and the latest case study in the "are computer games art?" debate. And I think she liked it. Granted I'm not about to find myself wrestling the controller from her hands the next time I want to run through the Killzone 2 demo, but she actually played it for more than twenty seconds.

In Flower you play as a petal in the dream of a depressed flower on a dull city apartment windowsill. Seriously. You float around on the wind bumping into other flowers in wide open fields, gathering more and more petals that float along with you, bringing colour to previously dull landscapes. It's such a remarkably odd concept that it is even more delightful to discover that it works.

A word that I have seen a few times used to describe the feeling it instills is "zen" and I couldn't put it better. It's a bit misleading to even call it a game - there are no time limits, no score, no enemies (not counting a few environmental hazards later on that hardly warrant mention here) - it an experience. In a world where computer games are closest to television, films - even books - in their format, Flower comes across more like a piece of music or a fine painting. You don't go in at the start with a view to getting to the end (well, maybe you do, but that will soon change) like the storyline or raising difficulty of most other games dictate. You go in to please your senses, in the same way a picture hanging on the wall does for your eyes or a piece of classical music does for your ears.

And that all leads me round to the games-as-art debate. Most art in this world stimulates one of the senses, but Flower stimulates more than one. It has not just pushed games closer to being art, but has single-handedly surpassed all other forms of classical art. Many games have made me smile or feel good inside over the years, but Flower manages this without giving me an obvious reason as to why it made me smile and feel good. The more I write about it the more I think it's pointless for me to do so - there is simply nothing out there that it can be compared to or referenced against. Simply put, if you own a PlayStation 3 go and buy it. It's the only way to really understand anything I've written here.

Games will never replace paintings, sculpture, music or any other form of art - like radio never replaced print and television never replaced radio - but I believe that thanks to Flower they will increasingly be able to stand next to them as an art form demanding of equal respect. The ball now lands at the feet of other developers to see if they can match or even surpass the new standards that have been set. I look forward to the future...

A whiter shade of orange...

With circumstances being the way they are at the moment, I've found myself returning to quite a few PS3 games that I've not played for quite a while. The upshot of which is that I've finally completed all the games included on Valve's Orange Box (excluding Team Fortress 2, which interests me as much as the average puddle), and it has left me with a number of different feelings.

I originally picked it up second hand about a year ago, mainly for Portal. Having completed Portal in the typical no-time-at-all it quickly found itself lying unloved on the shelf. I'd played through HL2 on the PC previously, and had little motivation to return to it at the time. So I cracked it back open a couple of weeks back when there was nothing better for me to do and worked my way through...

First things first - the cake is not a lie. It is clearly there right at the end for all to see. Admittedly the implication that you will actually get the chance to eat any of said cake is a lie, so maybe I'm just being picky. Needless to say, Portal is a sublime (if somewhat short) experience on any platform, and if you've not played it yet I strongly suggest you go and do so.

So on to the Half Life-flavoured meat of the package. EA's Playstation port has been frequently slated for technical problems, but I have to say there was only one point when the frame rate dipped enough to make me think "OK, this is bugging me now". Considering that was through the course of essentially one-and-two-thirds games, i can let it go. It also controlled surprising well with a gamepad and, although Valve are a bunch of PS3-hating heathens, their ability to craft a good story driven game cannot be denied. The antlion caves were a bit boredom inducing, but again I think one poor section out of one-and-two-thirds games full of interesting locales and tense set pieces can be forgiven.

Those of you paying attention will have noticed that I have used the term "one-and-two-thirds games" twice now. I think it's an important point to make, as by Valve's own admission they see Episodes 1,2 and 3 as equivalent to one full game. That's all well and good if you're a PC gamer and can just pick up episode 3 on Steam when it eventually surfaces, and being the Microsoft-lovers that they are I'm sure Valve will find a way to bring the series conclusion to the 360. But what about me as a PS3 user? Whilst something with as much substance as The Orange Box might warrant passing to EA for porting, I doubt they will view the relatively small Episode 3 in the same light (unless bundled with a ported full title such as Left 4 Dead - an idea they recently laughed out of the room). A real shame considering that the PSN would lend itself perfectly to that sort of title.

At the end of the day, The Orange Box has a relatively large amount of quality content. Portal is a shining example of new ideas being well implemented and the HL games don't seem to have aged at all in the past few years. But I can't help leaving the experience feeling a little bitter. Maybe they'll surprise me and I'll see Episode 3 on my PS3 one day, but I doubt it. It's like seeing Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, and knowing you'll be deaf and blind before Return of the Jedi is released...

UPDATE 14/2/09: Having just had one of my regular ganders at joystiq, I discovered a post containing this video. Needless to say there is a lot of fan-made stuff out there, but I don't think many capture the spirit of the source material as well as this does - and supposedly on a budget of just $500. Bet they couldn't pull of a Portal one though...