Braid [REVIEW]
Posted by Gary Hodges at 7:04 PM Aug 08, 2008
Playing Braid the past couple days, I did what I normally do when prepping a review, a process I describe to my girlfriend as “composting”: I mull over observations about a game for a few days until the mysterious Darwinian system that exists in my brain weeds out the weak ideas and leaves me with something worth saying. Or something I really want to say, anyway.
Up until last evening, I expected it’d probably be about Braid’s gameplay, which – sorry for the unintended pun – is as precise and intricately designed as a Swiss watch. I also thought about allowing myself a self-indulgent rant on the lesser elements of the gaming community – the “not worth it” brigade – who’ve labeled the $15 game “too expensive”… yet undoubtedly find a way to scrape together $60 several times a year for the annual sports roster updates from EA or yet another offensively unimaginative first-person shooter because it has “good deathmatch”.
But then I finished the game, and now all I want to talk about is its ending.
I won’t, of course, since it’s something – like the ending of an M. Night Shyamalan film – that shouldn’t be spoiled; something that’s only properly experienced as a blindside. If you love well-designed gameplay, if you’re a nut for puzzles, and you’re interested in the potential of games as a storytelling medium, do yourself a favor: just go buy it. And then swear off the Internet until you’ve finished the game all on your own without help. Trust me on this.
Developer: Number None, Inc. / ESRB Rating: E / Price: $15
Braid's a tough game to give someone a clear picture of. No explanation of the gameplay I’ve read sufficiently expresses how complex a game where your mistakes can always be undone can actually be. (Similarly, no screenshot or dingy downloaded video can possibly capture the game’s visuals, which look like a painting in the process of being touched up, almost everything on screen in subtle, shimmering motion as if an indecisive, omnipotent artist is obsessively adding and then subtracting minute details from the world as you play.)
Shorthanding it for JD alum Chris Ward, I dubbed it “Super Mario Sands of Time”, trying to express that it’s a “sorta platformer, sorta puzzler” with an ability to play with time. Unlike Prince of Persia, though, Braid’s protagonist Tim can reverse time as often as he likes and as far back as he wants, even if he’s killed.
This does make Braid effectively impossible to “lose” in a typical gaming sense; lives don’t run out and you’re never booted to the title screen against your will. Thus, the platforming is essentially rote; the real game lies in figuring out how to overcome obstacles using Tim’s unique abilities.
The mind-bending logic of the game – and the emphasis on environmental puzzles – invites comparisons to Portal. But where Portal forces you to change the way you think spatially, Braid forces you to rethink how things behave temporally – a reeducation my brain stubbornly resisted. Though abstract in a way, Portal is plainly logical; Braid on the other hand is almost exactly opposite, forcing players to reverse well-trodden intellectual paths in their brains like cause leading to effect. Tim has a host of considerations when approaching obstacles: he can reverse time at will, but certain objects (and even creatures) can be immune to this, and later he gains new powers like the ability to create localized distortions where time slows to a crawl, or paradoxes where alternate paths can be explored by a sort of “parallel reality Tim”. Trying to achieve a result by layering all these together can often leave you staring blankly at the screen feeling utterly stupid and out of ideas (the same feeling I had from time to time with Professor Layton and the Curious Village), which makes it all the more satisfying when the solution – something that was there all along – strikes like inspiration and works like a charm.
At the beginning of each level there’re books lying around, each revealing a bit of the game’s story. They can be carefully read or totally ignored on your way to the next map, but ultimately you’ll want to read them, especially once the trick to making sense of the vignettes is revealed at game’s end. While not extraordinarily well-written, Braid’s story – like its gameplay – is extraordinarily designed. Braid might be the first game ever to so ingeniously create exact parallels between what you do and what it’s about: the actual play mechanics an expression of the metaphor, the story a harmony that accompanies the action. While some writers – myself included – tout Portal and BioShock (where narrative is embedded seamlessly amidst the play) as the future of interactive storytelling, Braid blithely skips ahead of both by blurring the lines between narrative and play completely.
Like I said earlier, I won’t spoil the game by revealing plot specifics (and if you haven’t played the game yet you might want to skip this paragraph just to be safe), but speaking generally: imagine how differently things might look to someone like Tim, who can experience time in any direction – future to past as easily as past to future. Money taken could be money given. A person pushed into a pond could be saved from drowning. And a house burned to the ground could be magically born from fire like a phoenix. Likewise, think of how the actor in all those scenarios switches from hero to villain, depending on which direction time is flowing. Braid explores this strange ground.
Braid’s conclusion is like a gut punch, but I’d suggest it’s not so much the words; it’s the slightly subliminal realization that, like the game’s collected puzzle pieces or the discovery gameplay itself, the story was lying around in pieces and in plain sight the whole time, a seemingly incoherent mess… until the astonishing last few minutes when the game’s established rules are used to make an unexpected and disturbing revelation. The final piece falls into place, and everything coalesces in your mind at once. Like the puzzles that were once mystifying, you suddenly get it – a feeling you might find in movies like Memento or Sixth Sense, but never a damn videogame.
Those who open themselves to the utterly unique experience of Braid and see it through to the end can expect to find themselves dumbstruck.
5 out of 5 Blue Pig Ganons
Comments
Got it. Finish the game this weekend. Read the rest of the review after.
Also, I love the new rating system. I mean that.
Posted 08/08/2008 at 11:36:48 PMI get annoyed at the "people who say it's too expensive are hypocrites" crowd. Some people only buy one or two new games a year and operate on fixed income. And time wise, a $15 game that lasts a few hours and can't be replayed (You know all the puzzles now) is a terrible investment against a 15 to 20 hour used game that costs $30 and can be replayed after you finish the main story.
I like the demo, but honestly, $15 is what I pay for my Gamefly subscription, which lets me play those $60 games all I want.
Posted 08/09/2008 at 07:48:46 AMIn terms of replay value, the storyline is removed, but they do have time trials in their place. So you can go back and play it in a more competitive sense.
But.. honestly if you don't want to sit and think about your games, in both the puzzles and storyline that it presents, you should just skip it. The end result of games is to enjoy them, and if you're looking for a brute force approach, you won't find it here.
Do I think you're missing out? Yes. Without a doubt. But if I tell you to spend money on something I think you wouldn't enjoy, that'd be worse.
Posted 08/09/2008 at 12:10:58 PMJust to be clear: I'm not saying anyone should spend money they don't have, or buy a game they don't want. In a sense, if you don't want a game, any price point is "too high".
I'm just saying that objectively speaking, calling a $15 game "too expensive" is hard to rationalize.
People buy DVDs for $15-$30 all the time, and the typical movie is what, 2 hours? Not as long as Braid.
People buy "normal" videogames for $50-$60 dollars, and I'd guess most single player adventure titles run 12-15 hours. That works out to about 4 bucks per hour of gameplay. Braid probably lasts about 5 or 6 hours at minimum , about 3 bucks per hour of gameplay. That's not even getting into the (admittedly subjective) point that for 3 bucks an hour you're getting a 100% new gameplay experience - or figuring for the time it would take to finish the hidden "second quest" that could easily bump the game into the 15 hour range and make the whole discussion moot.
On Braid's length: I've seen people online claiming Braid's length is as low as 3 hours, which is ridiculous and misleading. You might as well say Super Mario Bros. is a 15 minute game... i.e., if you know what you're doing, take all the optimal paths, hit all the warp points, etc. Braid's experience can be a few hours if you know the solution to every puzzle - either because you've done them before, or - like many - you go online and read the solutions to all of them. But if you're doing that, you really are wasting $15.
The other common complaint I've heard is that Braid is $15, while most XBLA titles are $10. Well, "most" XBLA titles are games like Dig Dug: established properties that made all their money back 15 years ago with little or no new content for the XBLA release. Apples and oranges. Better comparisons would be Penny Arcade's game ($20) or the upcoming Castle Crashers (also $20).
I think a real problem here is the perceived value of a downloadable title. If Braid was released on a UMD for the PSP for $19.99, people would be buzzing about the "budget title"; release it over the ether, though, and somehow it needs to be no more than $10. This scenario happened almost exactly with Puzzle Quest, a game that was $30 on the DS, and everyone loved it... then it came to XBLA for $15, and everyone went crazy over the "too expensive" price point.
From talking to gamers, it seems the big difference is that a physical copy can be traded or sold, which becomes a consideration in a game's price - so a $60 game is only perceived as $40 since they know eventually they'll trade it for store credit or whatever. Downloadable games don't allow that offset: you pay what you pay.
But it's 15 dollars. It's the price you'd pay for dinner at Olive Garden, it's 3 gallons of gas. It's a relatively modest amount.
How much of this ire is due to the fact some gamers just don't see downloadable games as worth anything? And how will this impede MS and Sony's plans to eventually release full titles for download? How hard will it be for the "too expensive" brigade to stomach $50 or $60 downloadable games?
Posted 08/09/2008 at 12:18:34 PMIt's a shame when it's written off as being too artsy-fartsy or "gay" as the frat crowd would call it.
It's a damn dirty shame when one hell of a story-driven puzzling game is written off because somebody can't justify spending an extra $5 over the price of a normal XBLA title. Don't buy a DVD. Save up on gas. Ask your mommy for a couple extra bucks. Braid gave me more chills down my spine than MGS4 and at a quarter of the cost.
Don't look at the $$$ per hour you spend on a game... look at the quality. Shadow of the Colossus was an 8-10 hour game, Portal was 5 hours... Braid is added to that list where length of a game means jack shit when it's so flawlessy executed without any filler. What's the point of an executing an idea in a game to tedium when you can do it once and have it be incredibly satisfying?
I've just finished it and I'm still reeling at its' ending.
P.S. http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/20674
Posted 08/09/2008 at 04:39:05 PMP.S.S. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/
Reader Paul e-mailed me details about the hidden "star hunt" in Braid, which - as I told him - simply disembowels all arguments that the game is too short. Mind blown.
Ben: God I hope Tatsunoko vs. Capcom makes it to the States.
Posted 08/09/2008 at 04:48:57 PMWell, that makes it better. I honestly was expecting a 3 hour game that I'd likely be able to figure out in no time at all. Good to hear that it lasts a little longer than that.
Do the puzzles get any harder than the demo ones? That's where I really got the "short" impression. Because I got through the first world in about half an hour.
And for the record, Olive Garden is a massive rip off, and I'd never be caught dead eating there once I learned how to cook real food. :)
Posted 08/09/2008 at 06:02:37 PMKris: Olive Garden is indeed a massive ripoff. On behalf of Joystick Division, I give it 1 out of 5 Blue Pig Ganons. On the other hand, Gary Hodges' secret recipe spaghetti sauce is fucking to die for, an easy 5 out of 5.
As for the demo vs. the full game: it definitely gets much harder (the demo is the second world, right?). YMMV, but I found worlds 4 and 6 especially to be just brutal - I'm not too proud to admit I got a few of the puzzle pieces only after dozens and dozens...and then more dozens of totally wrong approaches. I'm sure there are some really bright guys out there who just breezed through the game, but a few parts had me in a despondent stupor, furious at my merely human brain.
Posted 08/09/2008 at 06:59:45 PMTalk of the ending:
http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?showtopic=190136%C2%A0
Wow.
Posted 08/12/2008 at 02:34:17 PM