61 Frames Per Second

On Beating Braid

Posted by Bob Mackey

I hate to be late to the party--or whatever the lingo is for when you don't finish a game 48 hours after its release--but I finally got around to beating Braid. Yeah, it's been about three weeks, but this was a game I really wanted to savor.

Also, when it comes to logic puzzles, I suck on toast. If there's a Hell and I end up going there, Satan will lock me in a tiny room with nothing but The Adventures of Lolo trilogy for all eternity.

While I'm slightly ashamed, I was able to get through Braid with only a minimal amount of cheating. I managed to finish Portal unaided through sheer willpower alone, but Braid kinda broke me. The puzzles--save for one with an autonomous key--are all pretty watertight. My only problem with the game arises in a few of the later levels, when designer Jonathan Blow's penchant for non-intervention robs you of the tools you need to get some of the trickier pieces.

If you haven't finished the game, beware: spoliers lurk below.

The minimal amount of bitching I have to do mainly deals with the "time bubble" element in the last set of levels, which really should have been developed more before you're required to use it in some trickier ways. It took me hours--and a lot of experimenting--before I broke down and went to YouTube for help and realized that Tim's time bubble can actually drop to lower levels under the right circumstances.

There's also a puzzle piece very late in the game that requires you to know that Tim's glowy-green time-immune status exists for a few seconds after he jumps off of a time-immune object--which is something that never comes up before this point. These two examples aren't necessarily "bad" puzzles, but the rest of Braid is so immaculate that they kind of stick out.

The most common complaint about Braid that I'm hearing has to do with the inclusion of eight super-secret stars hidden in the game that can only be obtained through sheer tedium. I like to think that Blow put these collectables in the game as punishment for gamers obsessive enough to turn the game into an interminable collectathon, AKA, "YOU'RE PLAYING IT WRONG." An adorably dickish move like that is right up Blow's alley. Personally, I love it.

I was looking forward to Braid's final moments, since they've been hyped to hell and back by just about everyone; but at the same time, disappointment was possibly imminent. Even though I walked into the finale with grand expectations, they were mostly met; imagine if David Lynch directed the climax of a Die Hard movie, and you'll get the satisfying tone of Braid's final moments. Needless to say, this is a game worth finishing. And even if you can't understand what the hell happened, know that someone out there does and he's waaay smarter than you. But it's not me.

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Posted Aug 28 2008, 03:00 PM

Filed under: independent developer, braid, bob mackey, xbox live arcade, jonathan blow

Comments

Demaar said:

I know people will probably disagree with me, but I think Braid should have been longer and mixed it up with different time mechanics going in the same level. Like for instance having access to the ring in a level where moving left/right makes time move back and forward or something along those lines.

It possibly could have screwed with the pacing, but I doubt it. It could have made for some amazing puzzles, so I think it's a shame stuff like that wasn't explored at all, and Blow is apparently not considering DLC packs at all.

August 28, 2008 7:50 PM

Demaar said:

Oh, also, the only puzzles I had problems with were ones where you were never taught certain things, like enemies bounce off you when you die and stuff. I certainly never let an enemy land on me earlier in the game, so I had to read that this happens.

August 28, 2008 7:52 PM

Bob Mackey said:

Yeah, there's another thing that you have to learn on your own--well, you really have to learn everything in Braid on your own, but some things just have to happen before you can understand them. Enemies had bounced off of me a lot before that particular puzzle, so I didn't find it too tricky.

August 28, 2008 10:18 PM

About Bob Mackey

For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.

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