I was sad when she left me, but that's in the future now. My regrets are water flowing backwards under the bridge. I have been moved and removed, I have chased something and found it. Braid is tripped, and it's one of the most amazing games ever made. It belongs to the "new canon" of process-intensive titles that utilize interactivity to the reinforcement of their aesthetic souls.
Braid is the story of a lost love, an inescapable goal, time travel in an age of sorrow, a never ending explosion through memory. Braid is the story of Super Mario after he ate the wrong mushroom and turned impressionist; the text begins with a cadence that puts you into an adoring trance:
-
"Tim is off on a search to rescue the Princess. She has been snatched by a horrible and evil monster.
"This happened because Tim made a mistake."
Like Super Columbine, Braid is a game that critiques games at its starting gun. Mario was a breakthrough for flow, it brought 2D platforming into its pure, commercial prototype, it operated masterfully on the emotional plane. Braid is the mirroring breakthrough for "phantasm", for gameplay that challenges who-you-are. It ironically commands you to "Hunt!" before moving into a cerebral contemplations. It takes the damsel-in-distress motif out of its evolutionary roots and throws it under a warped light of hurried confession. It operates on the metaprogramming circuit: each world a different cosmology, a different way of looking at how time caused the self. You'll go over movements the way you'd go over memories of a shattered relationship, playing things over in your head, trying to solve what she meant or why you said that.
You will not find the Princess, because she's in another castle, and when you do you won't catch her, and when you do she won't be what you were expecting. She has abandoned you, and it's your fault. The end will offer to change your understanding of justice, of your own place in the universe, of why you act and play things and why you're wrong... sometimes. And then the true end will give way to a rare elite of obsessive searchers who'll find the stars, and then when you read the text you'll get it. The constellation will be fulfilled, the pulsing drip of the painted world will calm you with a quintessential sunset.
Jason Rohrer said that other than he, only Ledonne (of SCMRPG), Rod Humble and Jon Blow were making games that really use the strength of the medium to do something wholly new. Not to exclude anything, but he's right about those games. This game is as important as Spore, though Spore will definitely set its milestone in a more monolithic fashion. But size is irrelevant to a deep and unique feeling, and it's on that basis that I put these games together on the same level. Go to a friend's house, make whatever accommodations you need -- get a Xbox 360 and play Braid.
The puzzles are deep and satisfying, each one a unique pretzel, salted or sugared, always delicious. The progression of lighting in the successive worlds, the rewind of the violin, the repetitive deaths, the surfing through possibility space, the shadow and the ring; this is me spoiling everything and then rewinding and changing the words. Remember when the Portal trailer ended with "Now You're Thinking In Portals"? Be prepared to start thinking in directions, weighted circumferences, reversions, parallels; tie it in with a meditation on personal responsibility, dank and laced with beautiful sadness. To build a transhuman experience of appropriate size, we will need a great many games. But what we've got now feels like an acceptable start.
N.B.: Normally, it is our policy not to review console titles. But, you know... It's Braid.
Braid's flaws
Well, I played through some of Braid; I unlocked all the worlds, I believe, though I certainly haven't gotten to the ending. I've heard some people deriding the story. At the moment it seems to me like it's not a "story" as such, that is, not a narrative; it's more like a collection of vignettes, meditations on the theme of time with the game levels serving as "illustrations". So far it seems...interesting, though maybe not revolutionary. But, again, I haven't seen everything the game has to offer, so I'm not trying to make this out as a definitive opinion on anything.
One thing I noticed was the Braid "Walkthrough". I'll save you the feeling of being pranked by revealing that it's not actually a walkthrough, it's more of a taunt to the players. If you can't solve a level there must be something wrong with you, because the puzzles are "fair". I understand that the game is intended to be played in a certain way, so you get the experience the author intended; there's nothing wrong with that idea. However, trying to force the player to jump through all your hoops is seeming more and more outdated nowadays. We do have DVDs that let you see the end of a movie first, after all.
With that in mind, Braid seems to employ a sort of variant puzzle design. Many games have a model something like this:
1. See new technique
2. Solve easy puzzle
3. Solve trickier variant of easy puzzle
4. Solve harder puzzle
...and so on. Braid seems more like this:
1. See new technique
2. Solve easy puzzle
3. Look at hard puzzle
4. Look at hard puzzle
5. Wait a few days
6. Look at hard puzzle
7. Check FAQ for solution
Replacing the "learning curve" with more of a "learning wall".
I don't really want to be too spoilery, but I'll say that there were two puzzle pieces in the first world--the first world--that had me completely stumped. (Well, "world 2", but you know what I mean.) It turned out that you had to manipulate something that you had no clue actually mattered in terms of gameplay. It was like you had to get somewhere by climbing your health meter.
...I know what you're going to say; you're going to say that a game where you have to climb up your health meter is a great idea. Well, it could be, if the player is given enough warning that they're going to have to change their thinking to encompass such an action. Unlike, say, Braid.
RE: Flaws
If it's any consolation, there isn't really anything else in the game proper that's as out-of-left-field as the particular puzzles you're referring to. I say "in the game proper" because the star challenges are EVEN WORSE.
I played this with my
I played this with my brother, our combined perspectives made everything much more solvable. I admit to checking FAQs toward the end.
The key with this game is to just try stuff, since the transaction costs are almost nil. Just looking at the hard puzzles won't get you anywhere. :)
Control
[caveat... I've only played the first 3 hours or so of the game]
Much as I admire what Blow has produced here I'm not really feeling it, the graphics are absolutely lovely and the music is pleasant and a nice change of pace from your standard video game fare but the control just feels wrong to me, there are loads of fiddly jumps and manoeuvres that the control system is just not solid enough to support.
As to the fairness of the puzzles? Well they're no more or less fair than a typical point and click adventure (though the trickiness of execution can occasionally put you off the scent) but they're definitely of the same type, one single (in Braid's case generally satisfying) strictly predefined solution each. In this way Braid, for all it's visual freshness, seems very dated to me.
Also... The writing seems to me to be just wilfully obscure, and frankly not very good, though thankfully its easy to skip. (Really, do the people who are lauding its quality ever read books? Or is this just a case of it being one up from the normal game writing so it gets hyped sky high by insecure fan boys desperate to prove the artistic worth of their favourite hobby?)
In defense of Braid.
In reference to your caveat, I have to say... finish it and then judge it. The ending warps your perspective on what has taken place beforehand.
As for each puzzle having one single solution, I don't find that design philosophy dated. Unless you mean dated in that most mind-games, riddles, and puzzles through the history of humanity have had one single solution. The wonderful part about Braid is that the open-ended part is on the player - the point is not to simply complete the puzzles. As Blow puts it in the "walkthrough:" "the idea of 'beating the game' does not apply so much, here.'" The idea is that by applying the fragments of story before each world to the puzzles within, you'll think about the concepts of time, regret, consequences, forgiveness, etc, in a new way.
And as for the writing being willfully obscure... it is. It's not meant to tell a straight narrative, rather it is a series of fragments relating in various ways to the character and to the themes of the game.
The game takes the structure and conventions of puzzle games and platformers and gives you the space to think about some pretty lofty concepts, nudging you along the way.
Braid and Walkthroughs
I can understand Jon's point, that the experience of the game is in solving the puzzles (not getting to the "ending") -- which I'm sure is why you can traverse most of the worlds and unlock almost the entire game trivially. So if the point is solving the puzzles, if the joy of the game is in feeling good because you solved a tough puzzle, then walkthroughs kind of defeat the purpose of playing at all.
On the other hand, I did find a (legitimate) walkthrough, and the author perhaps said it best: he actually agrees with Jon, but then points out that it's a little unfair for a designer to demand that players play their game in a particular way.
Those two puzzle pieces in the first world were the only ones I felt were unfair, because they really weren't consistent with the rules of the rest of the game. They were the only ones I needed a walkthrough for.
fair enough...
Yeah I see what you're saying and looking back on it I think I picked out the wrong thing, it's not simply that the puzzles have one solution it's more the game feels very prescriptive, I hadn't played a game which required pixel perfect jumping for quite a long time and the solutions required by the puzzles seem to me to be similarly, conceptually, pixel perfect. There's no almost solving a puzzle, it seems to me all or nothing, add to that the fact that the author is omnipresent and the puzzles tend to test how much you think like Blow as much as anything. This is just how it seems to me, nearly finished now and looking forward cautiously to having my mind blown :).
None of which is straight out criticism, I didn't intend the old fashioned thing as a slight against the game, in fact it kind of re-enforces the nostalgic feel of the whole thing and could be seen as strengthening the package. As much as any other game this is a game that you'll like or not based on personal taste, I'm not disputing the quality, just saying it's not for me and trying to articulate why that is.
There's also the issue of expectation; I really agree with Blow's points about the ethics of WoW grinding and so on but it seems to me that the game encourages exactly that kind of grinding to collect all the puzzle pieces, I'm not playing because I really love every moment but because I've heard the ending is worth it.
I do stand by my criticism of the writing though, there's a difference between skilful ellipses and allusion and simply being syntactically convoluted and vague, it's the difference between Italo Calvino and Lost (Calvino's great, Lost is rubbish).
But hey, the fact that Braid has raised the general level of discourse around games is absolutely a great thing and IMO Blow's most laudable achievement.
About those 2 pieces in world 2
I think it's unfair to say those went against the rules. No rules were broken or changed, but you did have to think outside the box, which is in fact the beauty of the puzzle. Besides, there are only a couple of items in the level and you get plenty of clues.
Now, as it happens, the same level has a star. Getting to that is really nasty. (Still doesn't break any rules, though)
This platformer works on so many levels! *gunshot*
You know, it doesn't work perfectly, but you can read the little snatches of story in the pre-level cloud rooms in reverse order and they often still work as narrative. This doesn't apply to all of them (especially not worlds 1 and 4), but it's still a neat thing to try.
Climbing the health meter
I disagree. (I think this far down in the comments I can be spoilery, so if you still want to try solving the puzzle on your own, stop reading now.)
When I saw the frame with the puzzle pieces, I thought..."Oh, I see. You collect puzzle pieces in each level, then you come back and assemble them into a puzzle. That makes sense. I'll hold off on trying to solve this until I've acquired all the pieces in this world." There was nothing to imply that it was anything more than a progress meter. There was certainly nothing in the laughably vestigial instructions about them beyond "Collect them!". And you especially don't expect a trick like that in the first world.
...And what's a "star"?
Symmetry breaking
This is another thing that bothered me. Braid was billed as having this "rewind" feature that let you go back and try things again. In one of the very first levels there's a bit where you have to do a "pixel perfect" jump in order to get a puzzle piece...but hey, it's okay, you can infinitely rewind! You don't really need timing or manual dexterity to play Braid!
The problem is that many of the puzzles rely on "symmetry breaking", which means that rewinding is useless; you do have to get things perfect or else start that level over. Thus, the game breaks the contract it was trying to make with the players.
(And in other news: Hooray, Italo Calvino!)
More about Braid
Well, I managed to finish it. Once I actually got to the final "world" (since the FAQs and one of the Achievements implied there was more to do after finding all the puzzle pieces)...I found that final world to be actually quite well designed. Just the sort of experience I had been looking for from the beginning of the game.
The final "revelation" is, well...It seems like two things; First, sometimes when you think you're helping someone you're actually forcing your own thoughts and beliefs on them. Second, if you see things run backwards they can be interpreted differently. Also, Trinity references are cool. So that's...That's all okay, certainly, as far as it goes. I don't know, I'm not entirely sure Braid lived up to its grand ambitions and was able to tell the story the author wanted.
As for the epilogue, it was just more text you had to slog through and puzzles that you wouldn't really even be aware were puzzles. It's okay, but somehow I feel it could have been better...
So, apparently there's some sort of "stars" thing? I saw a "constellation" but I'm not sure what that's about.