Review: Flock!

Puzzle games are a dime a dozen these days, so it’s nice to see a game come out that breathes fresh air into the stale genre.  Capcom has opened the gates and released the cute little puzzler Flock for XBLA, PSN and PC. The goal is simple, round up the animals and call it a day. Sound simple? Think again! This cute little puzzler is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The Story

Why do UFO’s always land in farmer’s fields? To abduct animals of course! That is the entire plot behind this downloadable puzzler. You control a small UFO who’s main goal is to round up the animals in each level and steer them back to the mothership to haul them away! That’s all you really need to know (although we would like to know what they plan on doing with all those animals). There are no cut scenes here to make this into an epic tale, a simple story with simple gameplay.

Throughout the game you will encounter 4 barnyard animals which you must gather. Sheep (hence the title), steers, pigs, and chickens. Each animal behaves differently. Sheep run from your UFO and tend to scatter quite easily. Steers also run, but chase them long enough and they will stampede, destroying fences, and trampling crops (used to open up paths) in their way. Pigs act like marbles and simply roll, but look out if they find a pile of poo. They will stick to poo like a fat kid on a smartie! Pigs love poo and you’ll find it tough to pry their little hind quarters away. And chickens, well, chickens fly in straight lines if you scare them off of ledges.

Chasing each animals has it’s own unique challenge. Mix all four together and you have a real puzzle on your hands trying to figure out how to get each animal to the mothership. Many obstacles lie in your way, bottomless pits, crops (animals get lost and confused), mud (slows down the animals), moles (fling your animals in all directions). Then of course there’s the time limit. Abduct all the animals in a set time, or it’s game over

Round up the sheep and chase them towards the mothership

The Graphics

Flock can be described in one word, cute. The graphics are vibrant, and the animals come to life on screen. Extra attention has been paid to each animal. Sheep will cry when their comrades plunge off a cliff. Small hearts float above animals when they fall in love with a mate. Pigs get dirty as they roll around in poo. The details are nice to see,  and add quite a bit of humor to the game. I laughed out loud when I saw tiny little tears cascade out of a sheep who just lost his mate. The detail is quite surprising to see when you consider the animals are quite tiny on screen.

The Controls

The concept here is to chase the animals with your UFO. Fly up behind them and scare them in the direction you want them to go. The UFO is easy to control, and reacts quickly to your commands, which is key since those animals can move quite fast.

Your collect upgrades for your UFO along the way. After you beat a certain number of levels you will be awarded with options like a speed boost, tractor beam (used to pick up items) or a beam that flattens objects (and lets you create nice crops circles!) These upgrades are key to completing some levels. The tractor beam will be used to pick up hay bales which can be used to plug pits, the flattening beam can trample crops so the sheep don’t get lost. You will be relying on your trigger buttons to activate the upgrades, and many levels will require you to use more than one.

While the UFO controls well, it’s the animals themselves you have no control over, and that’s the biggest problem with Flock. The animals never seem to react the same way twice. Some may say this is good, but it can be downright frustrating. Approach sheep from behind, and they should go straight. In theory yes, but if you approach them from behind and you’re just a wee bit off centre, they will scatter. This makes navigating through trees, and pits aggravating.

Mix sheep, steers, pigs and chickens together, and you get complete choas

If you don’t care about your overall score, or achievements (on XBLA) some may forgive the animal’s behaviors. If you take your time, you can eventually steer all the critters to the mothership. But if you’re playing for keeps and want high scores, you will be throwing your controller on the floor in a fit of rage! No two abduction attempts will play out the same. For example, roll a boulder through a swinging gate and it will open for your animals to go through. Sometimes it will close after 5 seconds, other times 2 seconds,  and then sometimes it will just swing back and forth. Trying to herd sheep through these gates almost caused me to have a meltdown. There will be times when you will tackle the same level for 30 – 40 minutes before achieving gold status. Fortunately there is a “restart level” option, which you will use over and over again. Trust me on this one…over and over again!

One nice feature of the game is the level creator. Once you finish all 50 levels, you have the option of creating your own puzzling levels. Every time you defeat a level in the main game you open up more items to place in your user created levels. This will extend the re-playability of this game for many.

The Bottom Line

Overall Flock is a lot of fun. A puzzle game with living, moving game pieces is a nice twist. The cute and colourful graphics, bring it to life and give a fairly enjoyable experience.

But I do have a beef!  I don’t mind playing tough games. Heck, I love a challenge, but when you play the same level over and over again for 40 minutes, restarting  that level every 20 seconds because something didn’t go right, the game’s fun factor drops pretty fast. A lot of the advanced levels seem to have to much “chance” involved. Gates never swing open the same way twice. Sheep never go in the same direction if you scare them from behind. It leads to a frustrating experience that will have some gamers put down the controller and walk away. There is a fun game here, no doubt about that. I just wish it wasn’t all based on chance towards the end of the game.

The Good

Cute, colourful graphics
Attention to character detail
level editor

The Bad

Random animal behavior leads to frustration
Some gamers will find this cute puzzler too tough