And I still say it’s brilliant. The secret stars are bastards though: frustrating, sadistic and in a couple of cases, pointlessly long-winded. If you do collect them all, you can access an alternate ending, although I’m not sure how much it adds to the game. Certainly not enough to warrant collecting the stars just to see it. You’ve got to enjoy the game enough to find fun in the challenge. The alternate ending in itself isn’t a big enough payoff.
I claimed I was going to write a big long post about Braid being art (or not, whichever the case may be), about the story and about what Braid’s done for gaming. Actually, though, there’s no point. It’d be pretentious of me and it’d really only serve as a self-congratulatory “see, I can write pseudo-academic waffle with the best of them” post.
I do still want to say a few things about the game, but I’ll keep them short.
If you haven’t played it, you really should. It’s expensive, as Live Arcade games go, but it’s definitely worth it.
It’s very clever. It merges platforming with puzzling well (though it’s not the first to do that by any stretch of the imagination) and the time-reversal gimmick is very effective, as is the evolving way in which it’s used.
It looks and sounds fantastic.
The story is very interesting, with multiple layers and several equally-valid interpretations. And although it’s actually quite predictable in its structure (start at level 2, play through 3,4,5 and 6 before moving back to 1 for the big reveal) and its surface interpretation, there’s so much under the surface that I didn’t mind. The story is also well-integrated into the game, no small feat considering it’s told through text boxes.
Overall, I’d recommend this to anyone who’s interested in gaming beyond just shooting things or playing on plastic guitars. I’d much much rather buy four or five games like Braid than one like Gears of War 2 (though I’ll no doubt end up picking that up too, at some point).
I played the demo, but found I was too stupid to reach some of the jigsaw pieces. Perhaps we ought to have a ‘session’ where you teach me where I was going wrong.
I’ve talked to a bunch of people about Braid, and a few of them have said that they couldn’t get all the puzzle pieces. One of them didn’t realise that you have to collect the pieces – he thought they were optional extras – so he thought it was too easy.
I don’t remember the demo being all that hard (Jonathon Blow, the game’s creator, maintains that all the puzzles have a really simple, obvious solution) but you definitely have to be thinking the ‘right’ way about it.