Braid - Jonathan Blow - Xbox

[Samprimary]

I don't need to review Braid, just vouch it. It has already garnered universal acclaim and is (rightfully) the best reviewed XBLA title of all time. All I can do for you is confirm it deserves this acclaim.

The most important point I can make is: what you get out of Braid depends on what you put into it. It is a puzzle game. I guarantee you that it will frustrate you. It's supposed to. It's about how well you eventually adapt to bizarre new time mechanics and manipulate them to solve puzzles which initially can look absurdly impossible. The game coaxes you to act upon ideas that other games have trained you not to consider.

Every time you solve these puzzles and successfully enact a run for a puzzle piece, you are treated to immense satisfaction. It is incomparable. The time mechanics of the different worlds are mindblowing and well-applied and may even mess with your normal thought patterns when you aren't playing the game. The surface of the game is a deceptively simple platformer with goombas, keys, and doors, but the gameplay underneath has you fracturing and restructuring paradigms. You master each world as you progress through it. And you love it.

So, if you're reading this, you have fair warning. The more you read about or watch Braid before you play it, the more you have lost. You can't feel that satisfaction if you merely replay moves someone has already shown you; spoilage is bad with this game. Do not watch videos of Braid. Do not watch other people play it. Do not read anything about it that may spoil you to the game's mechanics. It doesn't keep you hung on particular challenges that stonewall exploration. If you can't solve a puzzle initially, you can simply bypass it and return to it later once you have a greater mastery of that world's time mechanics and an eager idea as to how to revisit an intractable problem. Consult the game designer's strategy guide only as a last resort.

The visuals of the game are fantastic, all drawn by David Hellman of A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible. The story is noteworthy, too. It's very, very esoteric but never so abstract as to be irrelevant. The texts in front of each world do provide insight into the nature of that world's upcoming time mechanic and have an appreciably deep expanded context. Besides, if you don't give a shit about the story, the game lets you skip it.

Rating: Buy it. (Only $15!)

[Yegolev]

A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible.

Wow, thanks for this link.  I love it.

I'll try the game, too, if I can tear myself away from Too Human.

[Margalis]

The fact that Blow is an incredible douche kind of ruins this for me.

Any time anyone says anything about Braid he shows up in comments telling people that they don't get it, blah blah blah, he's so misunderstood, etc etc. He has no problem ragging on other people and games when when someone says something perfectly valid about his he throws a hissy fit. One one hand he says that the story is personal and that it's impossible for anyone else to divine the meaning, then he'll give an interview where he bitches about the fact that people missed his intention. He's ultra-defensive and he blames the players and the press for everything.

I wish I had never heard of him. I suppose this is the effect Dyack has on some people, but Dyack doesn't bother me. It's hard to enjoy something when you know it was created by a twit.

[Slyfeind]

My thoughts on "message" or theme or whatever...

If there's a message to anything you create, and the audience/player/whatnot doesn't "get it," then you did it WRONG. If they got it, then you did it right. If they got something totally different out of it, that's even better because now it's that elusive "art" thing that you were trying to achieve in the first place, and if you argue about it then you're really arguing against your own creation. It's taken on a life of its own at that point, and should be celebrated for that.

[Samprimary]

Jonathan Blow is indeed right now being a pretentious toolbox. I think he is doing this inadvertently because of a number of reasons tied into his personal attachment to developing this game, but it's not like it absolves him of anything; he's still being a pretentious toolbox.

When I listen to him talk about — or talk around — what we missed about Braid, I am glad that he wants to talk at length about the content of the game that he spent a long time developing and put a lot into, but he provides a lot of eyeroll material. His opinion on writing is a completely dismissible and weak one that probably results from his own failed fiction aspirations or probably even a poor English program, but his critical problem is that he is acting on this tendency to go blatantly overboard on people getting his intentionally vague and esoteric plot points "wrong" based on subjective interpretation.

He's tripping over himself at this point. He says in responses that it is not his purpose to tell people how to "get" his game, but then he chafes when people interpret it 'errantly.' You can't have it both ways. If you don't want people to not fall in line with a concrete concept, don't make your game a matter of personal interpretation, guessing at vagaries, and an expanded concept that is not explicit. And if you do, leave it at that if you aren't going to answer questions. Can't have your princess and eat her too. Ewwwww.

yeah but honestly if Jonathan chances across this (and he probably will since he's been furiously mining for discussion on him and his game since it came out) all I can say is seriously dude change your approach. You are hyperdefensive and you are nitpicking on attention you create. Stop poisoning your own well.

[Margalis]

Well said. He does seem to spend a lot of time Googling himself so he can interject into any Braid discussion.

He doesn't seem to get the fact that the work as it exists in his own head is different from the work as it exists in the real world. I once wrote a short story that everyone thought was hamfisted and didactic even though the meaning they read was totally unintended on my part. But instead of blaming the audience for failing I realized that the story was written poorly.

[Phildo]

Zero Punctuation review

Also Margalis, it may have just been the wrong audience.  For you and for... Mr. Blow.  I'm sort of picturing him as a Mega Man villain now, is that strange?

[Samprimary]

Yahtzee manages to inimitably review the game spot on, including how he could see that it is less than ideal to have the story be 'in a different room' from the gameplay. I am of a quantum viewpoint where I was okay with the story as-is (it keeps itself separate from the gameplay so as not to impede the gameplay and keep people from having to pay attention to things they are uninterested in) but I totally get how it is possibly a better approach to have your story have explanations and concrete ties to the game itself as opposed to an abstract dialogue.

/

Also Margalis, it may have just been the wrong audience.  For you and for... Mr. Blow.

Mr. Blow is currently giving the game a Caravaggio dilemma. I think it will die down, though. Blow has all the time in the world to learn chillage. 

[Slyfeind]

Hah, that was indeed a great review. I am now a fan of Mr. Yahtzee.

I'm glad to hear the story and the gameplay are seperate. I wouldn't be able to handle reading in a game like that. I'd just want to jump around and manipulate time or whatever it is you do. I'm sure the story is fabulous, but that sort of thing is Not For Me.

[HAMMER FRENZY]

I have to agree with Marg, this game seriously turns me off only because it has this weird film student artsy BS about it. It just rubs me the wrong way. If you want a game to have a message, that is fine, but don't be a dick about it when your message is convoluted and vague, and people have a hard time understanding, "just what you were getting at". It really is an art fag mentality that the game industry could totally do without.

I thought the game was pretty fun, and I liked some of the time control ideas, but it is not nearly as awesome as people think, I really think that people got caught up in all the hardcore types sucking this game off and it got out of control.

[Rasix]

I tried the trial.  Jumping on trampoline-goomba puzzles with I-don't-really-give-a-shit time mechanics.  STILL MY BEATING HEART.

Story had me rolling my eyes.  This may be the cat's pajamas to some of you, but I was just kind of bored playing it.

Had more fun with the other more simple minded trial I tried. 

Quick, someone call me a retard.

[Margalis]

I agree. I'm not a fan of puzzle games at all. I liked Portal but almost in spite of the puzzles, not because of them.

Solving puzzles doesn't make me feel smart. I feel smart when I do something meaningful in life and accomplish something worthwhile, not when I solve some arbitrary puzzle.

The only puzzle game where I really enjoyed solving the puzzle was a Japanese "sound novel" Super Famicom game written by a Japanese mystery writer. WHen my friend and I finally figured out who the killer was and how he did it it was pretty awesome.

[Ingmar]

The story and the writing are awful, but the actual game is pretty interesting and a nice new take on an old chestnut in terms of gameplay. And it is definitely purty.

I do find it a bit frustrating at times, because I can clearly see how a puzzle should be solved but I just can't quite execute it, but I suck at platformers.

[Quinton]

I had not heard of this previously (and don't own xbob360), but I just saw an announcement about a Mac port, noticed it's available for PC, and checked out the demo.  The demo was enough to get me to drop $15 on the full game, and I'm enjoying it.

[Mosesandstick]

Whatever you do, don't look at solutions for the puzzles  . If you don't get one, leave it. Come back in a day or two.

[Quinton]

I'm done with the first three worlds and partway into the last two.  I did look at a hint for one spot where I was totally stuck because it turns out I could interact with something that I didn't realize I actually could interact with (having tried with no luck initially), because it required me to do something in a later level in that world.  Otherwise I've been doing my best to avoid spoilers, walkthroughs, or gameplay videos.

You definitely have to remember that you have some new tools to play with and not get trapped into a classic 2d platformer mindset.  Slick gameplay, love the art and music.  I agree with a friend who says "my review of braid is that I felt like my money was going to pay for some therapy" (regarding the "story" bits).

[Yegolev]

Unfortunately, decades of 2D platforming has broken me to the point where I can't seem to enjoy the demo.

[Tarami]

Necro.

I've played the first four worlds and wanted to share my thoughts on it. To be honest, it's more interesting than it's genuinely fun, the only gimmick I really enjoyed was the shadow which allowed you to do two things simultaneously, and that has been done couple of times before. The world that advances the time as you move right was downright obnoxious. The time-slowing ring was contrived.

It really, really overuses "episodic gimmicks," mechanics that only exist in one or two instances in the entire game. One of the satisfying aspects of puzzle games in my opinion is that of building a mental toolbox of moves and arrangements of props that solve specific problems. In Braid, every problem is new and each is to be solved by using some obscure mechanical quirk. World of Goo, and many other new puzzle games, shares this design. I'm not sure whether it's a short-coming or not, but I don't feel satisfied because all I seem to do is exploit how the game works. The lack of a consistent ruleset makes it feel more like a toy than a game. It's fun to play a little with it but it doesn't motivate learning.

I like puzzle games for the most part, but I don't really get the gushing over Braid as a puzzle game. Like I said, it's interesting and pretty but lacks any real depth.

PS.
The writing is... bad. It's written the same way non-native speakers write, i.e. "let's use big words and irregular punctuation, that makes it seem profound."

[ghost]

I have to think all day at work.  When I play games I want to vegetate, for the most part.  I like this game and understand what it is trying to do, but I probably won't finish it.........at least not without cheating and looking on the internet.