Braid…what could have been.
In case you missed our demo-licious post, Braid is a cross between a platformer and a puzzler available from XBox Live Arcade. The price tag is $15, high by XBLA standards. The cost is to offset the money put forward by the game’s designer, Jonathan Blow, who claims the game cost him $180,000 to make. Was it money well spent for us or for Jon? Ehh…no.
The game starts out with great promise. You play the role of Tim, a boy in search of his lost love, who he alienated some time ago. I believe that’s the premise, anyway. Therein lies the overarching theme of Braid: confusion. It all begins when the first level of the game is World 2. Wha? I thought I had accidentally skipped past the first section of the game.
The game challenges you to use your intuition to solve puzzles. Each solved puzzle will result in a puzzle piece, part of a master image for each world that must be assembled. The controls of the game are never thoroughly fleshed out…a look at the controller layout in the pause menu denotes that the analog stick moves you, ‘A’ jumps, and ‘b’ does something. Alas, there are far more controls available to you that become necessary pieces of your arsenal. The most important ability is the ‘X” button which allows you to reverse time, in much the same way as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. When you screw up and jump into a pit or run into a baddie, hold down x to undo your unfortunate attempt and get back on the right path.
These simple mechanics make for a great first two levels. The puzzles are innovative and, most of all, intuitive. The game never holds your hand and says ‘you need to move over here and jump onto that ledge’ but it leads you there almost subconsciously.
Then in World 4, really level 3, the wheels fall off. The game begins to introduce more complex mechanics like the world rewinding anytime you move to the left or a shadow character that also affects the world. I’m not sure if they ran out of ideas for puzzles using the existing foundation but suddenly you’re constantly left wondering what to do next. The game completely loses steam and I began to have fits of frustration. The game essentially abandons the player to figure out schemes that were never introduced into the game. I found myself trying and trying the same solutions to the puzzles without success. I ended up using an FAQ to pass three of the puzzles in the last two worlds and with every one I thought ‘I probably would have never thought of doing that’.
The first two levels are extremely enjoyable and so I would definitely recommend playing the demo, just don’t get sucked into paying for the full experience. Trust me, it will be tempting.
It’s a shame really that Braid ends up not fulfilling its promise. The simplistic yet beautiful art style should have cascaded into the game’s dynamics and everything should have been kept, well, simple. It is possible to have modest game elements and still provide an experience that is challenging to the player. Braid had it…and lost it. A true tale of almost, but not quite.
So, out of 60 puzzle pieces, we had to cheat thrice. That’s not too bad, right? You know what is bad? The writing in Braid. I mean really, really bad.
“The candy store. Everything he wanted was on the opposite side of that pane of glass. The store was decorated in bright colours, and the scents wafting out drove him crazy. He tried to rush for the door, or just get closer to the glass, but he couldn’t. She held him back with great strength. Why would she hold him back? How might he break free of her grasp? He considered violence.”
Don’t think that you’re missing some context there. You’re not. Want to hear another one?
“His arm weighed upon her shoulders, felt constrictive around her neck. “You’re burdening me with your ridiculous need,” she said. Or, she said: “You’re going the wrong way and you’re pulling me with you.” In another time, another place, she said: “Stop yanking on my arm; you’re hurting me!”
How about this…
“He scrutinized the fall of an apple, the twisting of metal orbs hanging from a thread. Through these clues he would find the Princess, see her face. After an especially fervent night of tinkering, he kneeled behind a bunker in the desert; he held a piece of welder’s glass up to his eyes and waited.”
Ummmm… what? Apparently we’re trying to find a princess, but other than that, I was completely lost. The writing was like what a stupid person would think talented writing would be like. It was universally awful, in every way.
As for the gameplay… my advice is to stick with the demo. Cherish the brilliant, yet simple puzzle-platformer it offers you, and don’t look for a deeper, richer gaming experience. You won’t find it. What you will find is some terrible dialogue, no control explanation, and a couple hours of hair-tearing frustration.
The Internets has informed me that a lot of people think that Braid is the greatest game ever. I can only assume that those people either only played the demo, or they enjoy trying the same jump 100 times trying to land on the correct pixel to complete a jump.
Obviously this game is really doing it for some gamers out there. Unfortunately, we are not those gamers.
