Flock! Review

Come buy?

Version tested: Xbox 360

In terms of reviewers qualified to take on a game that involves the herding of cartoon farm animals, there are none that come more highly decorated than I. In 1986, my Dad was named Sheep Farmer of the Year. If you can think of a farm animal - any farm animal - then the chances are that he's chased it around a field waving a stick. With these shared rustic genes in mind, allow me to lean over a metaphorical fence and explain just why Flock isn't particularly good - and then add a couple of reasons why you townie types aren't welcome in my gateway either.

Flock sees you control a UFO hovering over sixty patchwork quilt rural scenes, with the quaint extra-terrestrial intention of hoovering up a shopping list of sheep, cows, chickens and pigs. It's a game that's very much of a Lemmings mentality and, for that matter, World of Goo to boot. You must spook your furry charges across each level, herding them around pits, through gates and past various obstacles before finally manoeuvring them into the tractor beam of your waiting mothership. Or, as the game insists on calling it, the Mother Flocker. Because, yes, if you've been waiting for a game to finally make that brave tangential leap between the words 'flock' and 'f***' then you're about to have a field day.

The deal is that sheep shrink when wet, cows knock physics objects over and will stampede if herded too closely, chickens adopt Zelda-esque flapping behaviours when chased off ledges and pigs are spherical and roll around like marbles - which, the pedant in me wants to underline, is most certainly not canon.

'Flock!' Screenshot 1

The Mother Flocker. Yeah.

The abilities of each different animal play into each other: a cow can release a pen of sheep by blundering into its poorly constructed fencing, for example, and much puzzling ensues. As the game trundles along, your craft gets upgraded with tractor beams and suppression beams that pop your farmyard charges should you get any wise ideas and attempt to meddle with their personal gravity fields, but comes in useful for clearing stampede-strewn field furniture, flattening herd-bamboozling croppage or carrying boulders around the level to drop Black & White-style atop hill and dale to flatten whatever lies below.

To begin with, when you're just dealing with the animals dashing away from your spinning lights, all is well and good. Levels never outstay their welcome - a successful runthrough on each only takes a couple of minutes. Yet as the game grinds on affairs become more and more samey. To its credit, Flock does try to keep things fresh - but everything added as the game trudges laboriously onwards just feels like a bolt-on features. Ewes that chains of randy sheep will follow in a slut-hungry conga, lamb-providing love patches where your ovine friends sexually congregate behind a barrage of hearts, crop circles that can be drawn for bonuses, light shining obelisks... They all change the game, but never truly develop it. Only the introduction of predators that hide in nighttime hedges that must be warded off by your UFO truly raise eyebrows above the standard gradient.

It doesn't help matters that since time began herding gameplay has never really been that much fun. It wasn't that much fun in Sheep back in 2000 (which incidentally was about aliens too), it was a concept that wasn't quite strong enough to rest the laurels of Herdy Gerdy upon, and even the goat-herding in Twilight Princess wasn't exactly stellar. The problem lies in the fact that directing a variety of out-of-control cloth-eared mammals across a cliff-strewn danger zone means that, by its very nature, you rarely feel in enough control of what's happening on-screen.

The central 'have slight control of a bunch of suicidal animals' mechanic draws such a thin line between satisfaction and screaming blue murder that it can presumably only be analysed using an electron microscope. When things go wrong and a barnful of creatures tumble from a precipice and into the drink, you feel utter frustration rather than an urge to restart the level. It gets to the point that when you restart levels you hear the solemn thud of your own mortality with every press of a button.

The joke, of course, is that technically Flock isn't particularly difficult. You'll whip through its sixty levels in little more than a particularly dreary afternoon. It's just so mediocre that when your herd goes the wrong way and renders the last three minutes of your life null and void in an official capacity you feel an urge to go outside and hurt things. This is further compounded by in-game niggles like sheep getting stuck on fallen fences, chickens leaping off whatever they can find so they can embark on a doomed cross-screen flight into the ocean while serenaded by your screams, and boulder-opened swing-gates that automatically close for no reason other than flicking two fingers at you for wilfully breaking the countryside code.

'Flock!' Screenshot 2

The levels are quite pretty - reminiscent of Banjo's Nutty Acres.

At a base level, then, I do not recommend Flock! It starts out fresh and faintly interesting, starts to move the furniture around in an increasingly desperate attempt to keep the romance alive and ends up with you developing so many emotional hang-ups and irrational outbursts of bottomless rage that all the good times are purged from your mind. It is, in short, like the most damaging relationship you've ever had.

Then again, it does have a rather good co-op mode. Sure, it isn't exactly Halo 3 or Gears of War - but even the angriest of astral shepherds would find it hard to argue that having one player flatten out crops and raise gates while the other chases the four-legged abductees around the level is a clever distillation of what makes co-op gaming the joy it nearly always is. There's also a half-decent level design kit buried in the menu system, but if you ever go beyond writing your name in cloth meadows I'd be extremely surprised.

Finally though, and most damningly, there's just no charm to the game. You go into it expecting whimsy, laughs and character (as you did in the otherwise dire Sheep, actually), but you leave having raised a half-smile at the way pits spew out lamb-chops, and a feeling of nausea whenever you hear jaunty music. I don't like it, and I've told my Dad about it and he said he didn't like the sound of it either. He told me he was going to get his shotgun, and that's where we left it.

5 / 10

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Comments (38) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Svecke #1 3 years ago

    I've herded enough sheep in RL; I don't want to do it while I'm gaming as well!
  • TheBiGW #2 3 years ago

    A shame - the trailers look excellent for this and I was looking forward to it. Oh well, 1200 points saved.
  • UncleLou #3 3 years ago

    Very amusing review - well done, Sir! :)
  • Pro_Gamer #4 3 years ago

    guys, why do you review tosh like this and banjo instead of something, well, DECENT?? o_0
  • HuggyAtHome #5 3 years ago

    really baaaaaad then?

    (sorry had to be done)
  • seasidebaz #6 3 years ago

    Fair score really. The demo was very average.
  • Ryuken #7 3 years ago

    The demo kept on crashing here, too bad.
  • muscleblade #8 3 years ago

    Its Capcom! Still getting this.
  • UncleLou #9 3 years ago

    guys, why do you review tosh like this and banjo instead of something, well, DECENT?? o_0

    You've not quite understood what reviews are for.
  • 3william56 #10 3 years ago

    Herding has been fun - lemmings and that one with the sleepwalking kid were decent.

    Sounds a pretty harsh review - I wonder whether Will was traumatised by sheep related experiences early in life. Maybe found a pair of velcro gloves in the old man's tool shed.

    Hmmm... had high hopes for this - as BigW says, the trailer looked fun. I think a demo is in the works (at least on PSN), so might see for myself.

    Oh. Dear. God. I just realised. I can hear Leadbetter winding up his infernal pixel counter. Face off #351 here we come... :/
  • penhalion #11 3 years ago

    somehow I just knew this was going to be crud.....
  • muscleblade #12 3 years ago

    As in many other cases i bet the Eurogamer review will be the one with the lowest score on metacritic. I dont mind since i think the whole scale should be used.
  • dingo75 #13 3 years ago

    I don't like it, and I've told my Dad about it and he said he didn't like the sound of it either. He told me he was going to get his shotgun, and that's where we left it.

    haha :) Nice review. Kudos!

    I deleted the demo after lvl 4 or 5 because I felt the need to kill someone after my sheep plunged into the sea and holes time after time due to the aweful controls. Aiming for a gold medal (time based) became frustrating...
    Will definately skip this for the sake of humanity! ;)
    Edited by 1 at 07/04/09 @ 09:43
  • seasidebaz #14 3 years ago

    Regarding the controls:

    It's far better using a mouse. And even then it's not a very good game. Very pretty though.
  • Stompy #15 3 years ago

    Herding has been fun - lemmings and that one with the sleepwalking kid were decent.

    It was called 'Sleepwalker'. It was for Comic Relief. It had the digitised voice talent of Lenny Henry and Rowan Atkinson. It was funny because it had an animation of an elephant pooping on a child.

    Edit: sorry, it was Harry Enfield, not Rowan. My childhood is now ruined.
    Edited by 2 at 07/04/09 @ 10:03
  • Britesparc Verified Creative, ITV #16 3 years ago

    Sleepwalker was ace. Although I was about eight at the time and found it very, very hard.

    Even back then, though, it felt like a little bit of a Wallace & Gromit rip off.
  • Yeevle #17 3 years ago

    Oh well, I was hoping this was going to be a laugh, at least the review was. Good one. :D
  • Monkey_Puncher #18 3 years ago

    Damn, I liked the look of this :(

    I'll still play the demo just to make sure I don't like it, doesn't sound very promising though.
  • shamblemonkee #19 3 years ago

    wait till it's in the baaa-a-a-again bin.
  • butler` #20 3 years ago

    Good review! Shame about the game though really, it looked promising.
  • Trafford #21 3 years ago

    Edited by 4 at 07/04/09 @ 15:49
  • darc #22 3 years ago

    "doomed cross-screen flight into the ocean while serenaded by your screams"

    Nice.
  • Harmonica #23 3 years ago

    Hmm, I'll still be downloading the demo to see for myself. That review smacks of pretty generic criticism.
  • RobotRocker #24 3 years ago

    So, not as good as One Man And His Droid then...
  • Azazel #25 3 years ago

  • PrivateJoker #26 3 years ago

    'Hmm, I'll still be downloading the demo to see for myself. That review smacks of pretty generic criticism'


    Exactly. I'll make my own mind up thanks. People saying they're not getting this cus' one human being gave it 5/10 are like sheep themselves. Pun intended.
    Edited by 3 at 07/04/09 @ 20:39
  • Rirekon #27 3 years ago

    So I actually bought this on Steam as it looked cool and sounded fun... I really wish I hadn't. The controls are just frustrating, so much so that they kill any enjoyment that would otherwise have been gained from the visuals and puzzles.
  • seasidebaz #28 3 years ago

    People saying they're not getting this cus' one human being gave it 5/10 are like sheep themselves.

    Except it's not one person. It's everyone who's played it, myself included.
  • PrivateJoker #29 3 years ago

    'Except it's not one person. It's everyone who's played it, myself included'.


    I don't think so. That's just idiotic hyperbole. You don't speak for 'everyone' whose played it.

    The official xbox magazine gave it 8/10 for starters, and I couldn't say yet having only played the 1st level on the Steam demo which showed promise, but I love puzzle games anyway so Flocks' aesthetic's are appealing to me.
  • Harmonica #30 3 years ago

    Plus criticising games for being whatever genre they happen to be is elementary level journalism. Nobody ever said of Lemmings, 'It's rubbish because there's all these little guys who jump off cliffs and you can only interact in a limited way'. Duh, that's the whole bloody point.

    As for it lacking charm, I'm sorry, Mother Flocker is grade-A silliness, and the graphics are screamingly gorgeous.

    It looks like a nice little timewaster, we shall see when it gets released.
  • Kain201 #31 3 years ago

    Yeah, there are better sheep related games out there.

    Why don't you try Sven Bomwollen

    Just a black sheep trying to have some fun (cartoony, and i hope its nothing to explicit for the british crowd ;-))
  • zakrocz #32 3 years ago

    Man what a harsh review for a game that only costs £10. I played the trial game & when i herded the female and male onto their love bed and the cheesy barry white music started i just had to buy the full game.

    Harmonica sums it up nicely

    "As for it lacking charm, I'm sorry, Mother Flocker is grade-A silliness, and the graphics are screamingly gorgeous. It looks like a nice little timewaster"
  • Arwin #33 3 years ago

    Shame, this looked nice, and coop would have made this a rare game to play with the wife (she doesn't want to play nearly anything).

    Anyway, at least Rag Doll Kung Fu is fun! Haven't tried Worms, but I guess that's just worms again.
  • Scrumhalf #34 3 years ago

    What an unfair review - it is not exceptional but no way as bad as this makes out. I bought it and am pleased I did, it is fun and not too expensive.
  • PrivateJoker #35 3 years ago

    Spent a few hours on it so far, feels like a 7/10

    The reviewer was way out on this one, but hey, it's just opinions at the end of the day.

    Edited by 1 at 11/04/09 @ 17:47
  • IronCladChicken #36 3 years ago

    @RobotRocker
    Though, one man and his droid was genius
  • rainsong #37 3 years ago

    Tried the demo, found it extremely annoying. Why would anyone want to spend their time getting pissed off chasing irritating sheep about? Suprised it got 5/10. I give it 0
  • Vandit96 #38 3 years ago

    |I Won't even bother to get it.