Journal #6399
Posted 14 years ago2010-02-15 16:37:25 UTC
A couple of days ago, a friend said to me: You MUST check out this game. No excuses. And gave me a download link. We occasionally share abandonware and rare underground games, so I just downloaded it and thought nothing of it. It was a rather small file (around 100MB, small indeed for modern figures) and apparently had modest computer requirements. I needed to download a missing DLL which wasn't hard to find anyway, and I had it running in no time.
It was a modest game indeed. The title screen was the first level, even. The title of the game... Braid. Didn't ring a bell. No game menu, no help screen, only 5 useful keys in my vast keyboard: The arrow keys and spacebar. And only one thing to do, too: play.
You play as Tim, an (apparently sad) little man with a red tie who is in a mission to rescue an evasive Princess that has been kidnapped. You jump on top of enemies to get rid of them, and Tim's mission - besides finding the Princess - is to gather some puzzle pieces that vaguely picture his memories... it's a platform game. It reminded me of good ol' Mario, only this one has a twist: You can't lose. If you die, you just rewind the game back to when you didn't, and keep playing. But hold on, it's not that easy. Most puzzles are thought out around the idea that you can go back and forth in time, and so you must do that often to be able to gather the keys and puzzle pieces in order to continue. Each world (6 total) has a different twist to it, but I won't spoil. There is not much to explain here, anyway, as the game does an awesome job at self-explaining - even without words, as the only text you'll see onscreen is the game story.
Throughout the game, the story is (intentionally) kept rather vague and confuse. Only when you get to the end you can kind of see the whole picture, but even then you'll have to stop and think about it for a moment. What you've seen is not what you thought it was, that's all I'll say.
I finished it last night at about 4am, I was hooked. It doesn't have mind-blowing 3D graphics, or a bizarrely convoluted plot, or HDR, or whatever. It's a beautifully simple game like I haven't seen in at least a decade (not to say two).
In my games rating, it gets a 9 just because Mario won't be beat off the top so easily. Tim wasn't around during my childhood
TLDR: Check out Braid. It's a must.
It was a modest game indeed. The title screen was the first level, even. The title of the game... Braid. Didn't ring a bell. No game menu, no help screen, only 5 useful keys in my vast keyboard: The arrow keys and spacebar. And only one thing to do, too: play.
You play as Tim, an (apparently sad) little man with a red tie who is in a mission to rescue an evasive Princess that has been kidnapped. You jump on top of enemies to get rid of them, and Tim's mission - besides finding the Princess - is to gather some puzzle pieces that vaguely picture his memories... it's a platform game. It reminded me of good ol' Mario, only this one has a twist: You can't lose. If you die, you just rewind the game back to when you didn't, and keep playing. But hold on, it's not that easy. Most puzzles are thought out around the idea that you can go back and forth in time, and so you must do that often to be able to gather the keys and puzzle pieces in order to continue. Each world (6 total) has a different twist to it, but I won't spoil. There is not much to explain here, anyway, as the game does an awesome job at self-explaining - even without words, as the only text you'll see onscreen is the game story.
Throughout the game, the story is (intentionally) kept rather vague and confuse. Only when you get to the end you can kind of see the whole picture, but even then you'll have to stop and think about it for a moment. What you've seen is not what you thought it was, that's all I'll say.
I finished it last night at about 4am, I was hooked. It doesn't have mind-blowing 3D graphics, or a bizarrely convoluted plot, or HDR, or whatever. It's a beautifully simple game like I haven't seen in at least a decade (not to say two).
In my games rating, it gets a 9 just because Mario won't be beat off the top so easily. Tim wasn't around during my childhood
TLDR: Check out Braid. It's a must.
14 Comments
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Everything was easy to figure out. I just didn't like it because everything was only a matter of "doing it".
Absolutely great considering one guy made basically all of it though.
I could blame my hype, as I expected something absolutely groundbreaking, and even if that's somewhat true - it's just an interesting mechanic executed in a very visually appealing, yet dry way. The obvious Mario elements in the gameplay just didn't seem to cling right with the extra time control thing.
The story seemed overly-sweetened mucky-muck, and even if it changes in the end, it sure deteriorated my experience in the beginning.
Portal could be dubbed, to some extent, as a more superior analog. Even though the locations weren't as vivid, they worked perfectly, and while the new gameplay mechanic was just as ingenious, the absolute hilariousness of the narrative kept even the most skeptical going.
As for Portal, I've never played it. I'd guess most of its attractiveness lies in the new gameplay concept of portal, and it wouldn't be much without it.
Agree with Penguinboy, too. It's whole presentation, or lack of story-telling, comes across as being waaay too pretentious.
"Buy this! It's artsy!"
Funny enough the real game wasn't all pretty like it is now and the creator outsourced the work to another person to transfer his vision in it.
I like it, I think it reinforces my belief that games are art and need to be admired in a different way.