[360] [PS3] [PC] [MAC] Braid

[Deku Scrub]

It's not a Mario clone. Mario was pure platforming, this is puzzle-platforming. However, from the little that I played, I'd say that the platforming is very weak because of the rewind function. Hence, whatever merit the game has, if any, must come from the puzzles. So the question is: how smart and difficult to solve are the puzzles? Given the fact that everyone I know of who played this game finished it in one or two afternoons, I'd say not very.

Your impression of the game so far makes sense - the first world is, at its very essence, a tutorial, showing and teaching the basic principles of how time can be manipulated in the game. Later on, the game begins to add twists, such as items and enemies that are not effected by rewinding time, or linking time to your horizontal position (Worlds 3 and 4 respectively). The puzzles aren't made to be near impossible, allowing only the smartest and most capable to solve them, or even so much as "hardcore," but they do require a fair bit of thought (especially as you progress further into the game).

WTF does this all have to do with art or games of the year? You simply take games belonging to the same genre and compare them. Where's the sense in comparing Braid to Portal? Or Lup Salad to fishing? Or Pikmin to having sex?

lol pikmin sex

The reference to Portal in the review is there for two reasons:

The first reason is that both games require you to think outside the box. At first, Portal feels like an FPS-Platformer, but you soon realize that you can't quite progress through the game this way for very long - you have to begin "thinking with portals."

In the same way, Braid seems like a simple 2D-Platformer (albeit with the ability to reverse your mistakes), but if you continue to treat it as such, progression comes to a screeching halt - you have to fundamentally change the way you think about the level in order to succeed.

The second reason is that both games have a story (or at least a semblance of one).

Much like in Space Invaders then! You know, like, when the aliens invade? And you have to, like, shoot them down?

That's a pretty poor example. Space Invaders has more of a scenario - "There were aliens and I shot them down" hardly qualifies as a story (your Wolfenstein 3D example would have made more sense). Portal and Braid both have plots, and characters, and describe a series of events; Portal's is much more straightforward, while Braid sets you up for most of the game and brings the actual plot crashing down during the very last levels. While I agree with Worm that this plot tends to be on the pretentious side and I personally think that calling it "art" is silly (though who am I to judge what art is and is not), I'd be hard-pressed not to find the sudden and drastic realizations made at the very end of the game pretty cool.

You see some of the universe's greatest riddles solved on this website, and you consider our "credibility" gone because of a simple pejorative? Only an artfag would think that way.

Whoa there, claiming that this website contains the answers to some of the "universe's greatest riddles" strikes me as sounding somewhat conceited; could you provide a few examples (I'm not refuting your claim, I just wish to see them for myself).

[icycalm]

The puzzles aren't made to be near impossible, allowing only the smartest and most capable to solve them, or even so much as "hardcore," but they do require a fair bit of thought (especially as you progress further into the game).

If the game can really be finished in an afternoon, then the puzzles hardly require any thought at all.

The reference to Portal in the review is there for two reasons:

Yes, I know them. 1) As part of Tim's effort to namedrop as many mainstream hits in each review of a mainstream hit as possible, and 2) To cover up the fact that he hasn't played any other puzzle-platformers with which to compare the game.

The first reason is that both games require you to think outside the box.

The kind of person who uses expressions such as "think outside the box", believing that they actually mean something, is the kind of person who is incapable of thinking -- either inside or outside boxes.

At first, Portal feels like an FPS-Platformer, but you soon realize that you can't quite progress through the game this way for very long - you have to begin "thinking with portals."

Oh, wow! It's a game with portals so we have to think about the portals! What a revelation! I bet your mother must be very proud of you!

In the same way, Braid seems like a simple 2D-Platformer (albeit with the ability to reverse your mistakes), but if you continue to treat it as such, progression comes to a screeching halt - you have to fundamentally change the way you think about the level in order to succeed.

Progression comes to "screeching" halt if I continue thinking that I am playing a puzzle-platformer? So what do I have to start thinking then? That I am playing an FPS? A JRPG? A work of art? What? What are you, fucking retarded?

The second reason is that both games have a story (or at least a semblance of one).

Great reason! He mentioned Portal in the Braid review because both games have a story! Why didn't he mention the OTHER sixty thousand games with stories then?

Much like in Space Invaders then! You know, like, when the aliens invade? And you have to, like, shoot them down?

That's a pretty poor example.

It's actually a perfect example. What's poor here is your sorry excuse for a human brain.

Space Invaders has more of a scenario

Retards playing with words, I see. I say potato, Dan Quale says potatoe. But what are you gonna do, eh? Retards.

- "There were aliens and I shot them down" hardly qualifies as a story

Perhaps not -- with the qualifying standards of people who come from retard-land.

(your Wolfenstein 3D example would have made more sense).

Go fuck yourself, retard. Everything I say makes perfect sense -- to non-retards.

and I personally think that calling it "art" is silly (though who am I to judge what art is and is not)

I'll tell you who you are: some random retard fuck on the internet.

I'd be hard-pressed not to find the sudden and drastic realizations made at the very end of the game pretty cool.

That's because you are a retarded, uneducated and uncultured little fuck.

Whoa there, claiming that this website contains the answers to some of the "universe's greatest riddles" strikes me as sounding somewhat conceited

If I wasn't located half-way across the world from you I'd strike you with something quite a bit more substantial than a mere claim.

could you provide a few examples (I'm not refuting your claim, I just wish to see them for myself).

YOU CAN'T EVEN UNDERSTAND THE SIMPLE THINGS EXPLAINED IN THIS THREAD, YOU LITTLE RETARD FUCK, AND YOU WANT TO BE SHOWN THE SOLUTIONS TO THE RIDDLES OF THE UNIVERSE?!!!!


P.S. If you post in this thread again you're banned. There's a limit to the amount of monkey business I will tolerate, even in a thread about an artfag game like this one.

[mees]

The puzzles aren't made to be near impossible, allowing only the smartest and most capable to solve them, or even so much as "hardcore," but they do require a fair bit of thought (especially as you progress further into the game).

If the game can really be finished in an afternoon, then the puzzles hardly require any thought at all.

I would say, rather, Braid is just really short. As someone mentioned previously, the game's puzzles rarely take more than two or three steps to solve. Nevertheless, those 2-3 steps are generally quite good.

When I was playing Braid, the thing that struck me the most was how a lot of the puzzles were solved by means which would ordinarily seem like tricks or glitches. I wish I could remember some examples.

In most of the mainstream puzzle games I've played I usually end up thinking of solutions which seem overly complex. So half of the time I just say "no, the developer wouldn't have made it that bizarre" and start over. In Braid, a lot of the puzzles seem to be designed with these subtler or more complicated solutions in mind. For this reason, I would rank above most other puzzle games.

[icycalm]

For this reason, I would rank above most other puzzle games.

You can't rank it either above or below other puzzle games, because Braid is not a puzzle game. It is a puzzle-platformer, meaning you can only rank it above or below other puzzle-platformers. Also, this:

So I beat it. Did anyone find the puzzles to be disappointingly easy? Save for like two or three of them, I knew how to solve the puzzle right away, and most of the time was spent in timing and implementation. Even when I didn't know the answer, there were only so many elements to play with in the rather barren world--wasn't like there were any red herrings, so a little experimentation found the answer right away.

Maybe I'm just a puzzle game master, spoiled by the likes of DROD?

http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopi ... 927#522927

[Beakman]

I'm not familiar with Tim Rogers or any review that relates Braid with Portal, but I associated them when I was playing Braid, at least when it comes to how both games twist rules of physics. Portal messes up space and Braid messes up time, both with the goal of giving the player puzzles to solve.

I liked the puzzles in the game and I found them challenging. It was kind of hard to get my head around the time warping stuff, I wasn't used to think about multiple time flows at once, either with my character or other objects within the puzzles. I just finished the game and it took me around 8 hours. (PC version)

I think Braid is worth playing. I hate the recent "arcade" trend as much as many people around here but this is not an old game rehash with pretty graphics. Or is there another game with similar mechanics that I am unaware of?

The game has its flaws. It's short, some puzzles require restarting the room if you fail (inconsistent with other ones where you would simply rewind) the story is useless (the developer tried to tie the time warping mechanics with stuff about causality, remorse, love with... clumps of skippable text?) and when it comes to the PC version, its system requirements are high as fuck for a 2D game.

[icycalm]

I liked the puzzles in the game and I found them challenging. ... it took me around 8 hours.

You have no idea what the concept 'challenge' means.

I hate the recent "arcade" trend as much as many people

Off-topic comment. Braid has nothing to do with arcade gaming.

but this is not an old game rehash with pretty graphics.

Did someone here say that it is? Are you entirely incapable of parsing the information contained in the posts in this thread? If so, PLEASE STOP POSTING. There are few things more annoying in a forum thread than spastic-autistic comments out of nowhere.

[zinger]

Some impressions:

What's most difficult about the game is to get your head around the rules. They change drastically from world to world. In the first world (world 2), time manipulation is limited to a simple rewind function (autosave, basically). In the second world you encounter several green, shiny objects, and these are not affected by time manipulation (for instance, you could jump down a deep pit, get a green key, rewind to get back up, and you would still hold that key). I cleared several of these puzzles by chance, before I had understood that the rules that apply to keys also apply to many other objects. The third world will have you scratch your head for a bit, where everything in the world is linked to your position in the stage. But...

In all of the game's worlds, it's the unconventional and confusing concept of time manipulation that is difficult, not the puzzles. The engine, that was the real puzzle to me, while the actual puzzles, which I often cleared by chance (well, those few that weren't obvious), served as clues when exploring it. It's definitely a cool experience though, but they never convinced me that the engine is versatile enough. I mean, you learn the basics of each world's concept just before you've completed it, but after that I expect devilish puzzles that push the limit of this concept.

Also, regarding the platforming, a dumbed-down Mario engine is just used as a base for their time manipulation idea, and it works well enough. But don't expect any good platform action, it's basically Mario 1 with goombas only and without the ability to run. But yeah, you do have the time manipulation mechanic, and that's pretty fun too! ;)

[icycalm]

Yeah, yeah, but what about the message, dude? Did you get the message?

[kingofcrusher]

I liked Braid but it was definitely way too short and easy, I only got stuck on one level and it was for about 20 minutes.

The Lost Vikings is basically the same genre, correct? That's a great puzzle-platformer, it took me weeks to finish it and some levels' solutions were just brilliant. I can't imagine how bad you have to be at these types of games to think Braid is challenging.

[Masahiro9891]

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/25/joystiq-interview-blow-unravels-braid-in-post-mortem/

Here's a little article I found, with Blow answering some questions about Braid, for those of you who haven't had a good laugh today.

[Worm]

The Lost Vikings is basically the same genre, correct?

Yeah, but I'd be careful with that comparison, because most of The Lost Vikings's challenge comes from the action elements. There are lots of spikes and other instant-death hazards to avoid, and you have to start the stage over if you die. I do remember a few tricky puzzles, but nothing more challenging than Braid's best bits, really.

And, although I'd like to have additional, challenging levels for Braid (messing with time is a pretty cool mechanic, and I agree with the review that Blow's ideas show potential), as it stands the game is actually too long because of all the easy parts you have to push through.

I looked back over all the puzzles in the game, and out of 60 puzzle pieces, I counted two that were mildly challenging and three that had me stuck for 20-30 minutes each. Only five out of sixty! And the official site has the nerve to say, "There is no filler. Braid treats your time and attention as precious."

About the review:

http://insomnia.ac/reviews/xbox360/braid/page_01.php

I am going to rate Braid's puzzle aspect PURELY ON THE AMOUNT OF TIME IT TAKES TO OVERCOME IT.

I expected nothing less from icycalm, but I was very pleased to see this laid out so plainly. If I'm playing a puzzle game and don't have to stop at least once to walk away, mull things over, and try again another day, the game's too easy. That's my bare minimum.

[icycalm]

Worm, zinger, and anyone else who's played this game and knows his shit: I would appreciate some extensive commentary on my review. I stand by all my comments of course, but deciding on the rating did give me some trouble. If there's any "indie" game that might perhaps deserve a three-star rating it's definitely Braid, yet I was still unable to give it three stars when I compare the amount of enjoyment it gave me with that of other games I've rated that high. I am simply incapable of deriving much enjoyment from anything I breeze through, regardless of how amazing its backgrounds might be or the engine it's based on. And even if I were somehow to overlook this fact, I'd still be left with a game world that feels jarring, cobbled together and retarded due to the rampant pseudo-intellectual fagotry that goes on inside it.

I mean yeah, I am only repeating myself at this point, but I still have a nagging feeling I can't shake off for having commited at least a slight injustice with this review. It could just be that I am still struggling with the herd-inherited part of my conscience, of course. There's more hype on this game than perhaps any other game ever, so it's not that easy to form your own opinion when it comes into conflict with it.

[icycalm]

And for the record, here's Ebert full review of Braid:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04 ... e_art.html

Her next example is a game named "Braid" (above). This is a game "that explores our own relationship with our past...you encounter enemies and collect puzzle pieces, but there's one key difference...you can't die." You can go back in time and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and negates the whole discipline of the game. Nor am I persuaded that I can learn about my own past by taking back my mistakes in a video game. She also admires a story told between the game's levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.

[icycalm]

Recap instantly homed in on the review's most imporant point:

http://postback.geedorah.com/foros/view ... 668#p11668

Man, I just love smart people. I am really writing everything only for them.

[El Chaos]

Great work icy, as always.

Found a typo in the third page's second paragraph:

Or, if he decided to pursue the puzzle instead of the action route, he could learn how to do that from Lup Salad: by designing a ton of stages, many of which would have to be GENIUNELY "DEVILISHLY" TRICKY, stages [...]

And in the second page's fourth one, you didn't italicize Bionic Commando the first time you wrote it.

[Avtar]

Recap instantly homed in on the review's most imporant point:

http://postback.geedorah.com/foros/view ... 668#p11668

Man, I just love smart people. I am really writing everything only for them.

You discussed this in your "On New Games Journalism" commentary as well as in your recent "On the Genealogy of "Art Games"". The idea that taking something that is childish and pretending it is not childish is immature behavior. This is the same thing that is happening with all these comic book and toy movies lately as well. People are refusing to let these fun and childish ideas remain fun and childish, and are trying to force them into their idea of maturity by dressing them up with "high-class" art aesthetics and absurd "serious" plots.

Videogames are not just plots and aesthetics like film though, above all is interaction. We need game designers who want to make the interaction "mature" by pushing it forward in new ways, or requiring the player to interact with the fucking game on a level that actually requires thought. Require the "player" to "play" the game, that's the whole point! I would probably say that is the main thing I take from this site as a whole when it comes to videogames. Braid does not compare as a game to Sin and Punishment. Fucking Star Wars does not compare as a film to something like Black Swan or Mulholland Drive, etc. Dragon Quest 9 revels in it's childishness and at least succeeds at being an enjoyable distraction. Final Fantasy 13 tries to force maturity onto the same premise and absolutely falls apart, while putting the game itself on autopilot and removing the interaction. Braid changing a plumber to a businessman while removing the game is absurd game design.

I would love for there to be more games that are mechanically complex, with high budgets, and story-telling, that aren't so stunted. I think that, for example, the Assassins Creed team thinks this is what they are doing. I've played the first two, but they just feel like big-budget "art games" to me. Pretentious plot delivered poorly, brain-dead combat mechanics, zero difficulty, etc. Only they at least have great technology(the large world, animations, etc.) I hope that this is not the future of videogames.

[zinger]

Worm, zinger, and anyone else who's played this game and knows his shit: I would appreciate some extensive commentary on my review. I stand by all my comments of course, but deciding on the rating did give me some trouble. If there's any "indie" game that might perhaps deserve a three-star rating it's definitely Braid, yet I was still unable to give it three stars when I compare the amount of enjoyment it gave me with that of other games I've rated that high.

It's been a year now, but from what I can read out of my forum post above, and from what I can remember from playing the game, the concept of the mechanics was shocking enough for me to be interesting during the few hours it lasted (even despite of how much I hated the game's aesthetics) at least, so though I agree with all of your criticisms, I still might have given it three stars.

Another thing, from the review:

Blow already has a great, unique even engine; moreover he also has a master pixel artist at his disposal, thereby having already cleared a hurdle that no other "indie" bum has ever cleared.

A "master pixel artist" would to me indicate someone who is a master of the mosaic art of drawing his images pixel by pixel (Nieborg, the entire population of Japan etc.), which nothing in Braid seems to be.

[Worm]

...the puzzle that takes ME longer to solve is FOR ME a better puzzle — because it PUZZLED ME LONGER.

As I said, I completely agree with this approach--but you never actually say how long the puzzles took you! I assume that you finished the game in about the same "4 to 5-hour time-frame in which EVERYONE ON THE INTERNET claims that they finished Braid," especially after reading your comments in this thread, but I found that section of the review to be oddly impersonal. After all, the Internet is full of whiny children who will run to a FAQ the moment they have to slow down. What do I care how long it took them? I want the authentic icycalm evaluation!

zinger's post (the one quoted in the review) gives a good general impression, but also seems a little vague on this point. How puzzling was the engine? None of the puzzles were truly devilish; okay, but perhaps there were at least a handful of good ones? I personally did not find enough to warrant three stars, but if I hadn't already played the game before reading your review, I'd wonder--especially considering the qualified praise you give Blow at the end.

[speakerteeth]

To be sure, Hellman can't design characters worth a shit, but he CAN render them into bitmap form, and he CAN make drop-dead gorgeous backgrounds...

A minor correction: Hellman is not solely or even mostly responsible for the character design. The essential and rather nauseating mediocrity is due to Edmund McMillen, the man lately responsible for Super Meat Boy. From an addendum to an interview with Hellman:

About the previous artist who worked on the game, I must have had a brain hiccup or been dodging traffic, because I forgot to mention Edmund McMillen, the excellent artist who did the original character animation for Braid. His versions of Tim and the monster are in that screenshot you posted with the bulbous canon. Edmund was hired to do the character art around the same time I was hired to do the world art, or maybe a little before. Eventually, the world art I was doing came to define the overall aesthetic, and the characters just looked out of place. So towards the end of the project, Jon gave me the go-ahead to replace the existing characters. In the interest of time, I pretty much traced over all the characters, frame by frame, preserving Edmund's basic movements. Edmund's stamp is still strongly present in the final game. He is listed in the credits for Animation Prototyping.

Here is the screenshot in question, displaying McMillen's original designs.



As you can see, Hellman's talents were employed only in rendering the characters as inoffensively as possible.

[Worm]

Also from that interview:



Wow! Aside from the character, of course, I definitely prefer this style to what ended up in the final game. More contrast, less cluttered, less muddy, and I love the illusion of depth.

[Worm]

Braid's official site links to a review by none other than Jason Rohrer. Unsurprisingly, it's offensively bad.

In the "Kierkegaard contra Rohrer" exchange, Jason claims:

I'm not shitting on the whole history of video games.

But in his Braid review (emphasis added)...

You can instant-retry your way through anything, and Braid celebrates this fact throughout World 2 by throwing all sorts of nearly-impossible challenges your way---you'll never see this kind of stuff in a standard platform game, because players would never be able to get past it.

There's a commentary lurking here about video games: they waste the players' time by forcing them to trudge through the trivial over and over in order to retry the challenging parts.

[...]

Braid strips out every last scrap of tedium and leaves us with nothing but the core challenges. Further, it shows us that the standard challenges really aren't that interesting, or challenging, without the tedious filler that usually surrounds them.

Braid could stop right there and still be a very interesting game---it has already knocked 90% of the existing games right off the shelf and rendered them repetitive and uninteresting.

Absolutely ludicrous. If I didn't know better, I'd think this was parody.

[Medal]

Found a typo on the first page:

(as the videogame press abudantly reproduced Ebert's and Soulja Boy's remarks...)

[icycalm]

Fixed, thanks.


I am going to be replying to the other comments eventually (probably at the same time I will reply to the comments in the Spelunky thread...), but I couldn't let this slide in the meantime:

Braid does not compare as a game to Sin and Punishment. Fucking Star Wars does not compare as a film to something like Black Swan or Mulholland Drive, etc.

There's nothing "fucking" about Star Wars, dickhead — it's EASILY one of the top ten movies ever made — top FIVE perhaps if you consider the entire trilogy as a single work. Fucking Mulholland Drive is at best a mildly entertaining gimmicky thriller — 3/5 if I am feeling generous, 2/5 otherwise. As for "Black Swan", I've never even heard of it, but given the rest of your comments on movies, I would guess it to be some boring, sucky pretentious bullshit. Perhaps you may not be a hipster in videogames, but you definitely are in movies — and in fact given the pathetic example you bring up to compare to Braid, I would guess that you also were a hipster in videogames before you read my essays. Fucking "Sin and Punishment" is supposed to be some sort of an epitome? What's next? Fucking Gunstar Heroes or GBA Astro Boy?

Meh, I banned the clown.

[aaden]

I mean, isn't it by now obvious why, even in purely thematic terms, something like Super Mario World is infinitely more immersive than tripe like Braid or Knytt or Passage? Ask yourselves: How can it be that the childish platformer is more immersive than the "serious" platformer? PERHAPS BECAUSE THE VERY CONCEPT OF THE PLATFORMER IS CHILDISH TO BEGIN WITH, AND CONSEQUENTLY WORKS BETTER WHEN PAIRED WITH AN EQUALLY CHILDISH THEME?

This is the box art for Braid's Russian release. It's too bad Braid was released in Russia last November, otherwise I'd wonder if the designer read your review. Maybe he's a time-traveler!

[icycalm]

http://www.caltrops.com/pointy.php?acti ... pid=151335

I wouldn't go so far as to call it "alright". I thought it was a good try, but ultimately unsuccessful, and I think I said as much in the original thread. There was certainly a lot to like about Braid - the painterly backgrounds, the musicianly soundtrack, the promise that Jonathan Blow was gonna liberate us gamers from male white corporate oppression. Nevertheless, it was still a puzzle game where the solutions were mostly obvious and kind of a pain in the ass to actually execute. There's a reason why the act of jumping in the Super Mario series became more forgiving with each entry, as the emphasis shifted from simple survival to exploration and item collecting: it's because once you take the possibility of failure out of the equation, any barrier between the player and success becomes a source of tedium rather than excitement. It's why you're allowed to "take 20" in Dungeons & Dragons, to proceed as if you'd rolled the most favourable result on your twenty-sided dice in any situation where nothing would prevent you from just rolling over and over again until you got it anyway. By transplanting platforming mechanics straight out of 1985 into a game that saves your progress more often than a nineteen-year-old games journalist "experiencing" The Lost Levels in BSNES, Blow seemed to be more concerned with evoking a specific feeling (in this case, wistful nostalgia) than delivering a game capable of succeeding on its own merits, and I think that underlying philosophy killed pretty much any chance Braid had of reaching "alright".

A wonderful mini-review. Still needed at least a line on the ugly character design. But it would have worked great as a second opinion to go along with my review. In fact, I'll probably integrate it in there when I move it over to the new site.