61 Frames Per Second : xbox live arcade

Rez: 4/20 Game of the Day

Bob Mackey — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:00:00 GMT

It may be a bit of a stereotype, but I'm willing to bet a lot of you gamers out there--people known for laid-back, couch-bound fun--plan on celebrating the High Holiday (of course, no pun intended) of April 20th. People unfamiliar with this special day should probably be aware that--wait, you're not a cop, are you?

To avoid personal incrimination and also to talk about naughty, illegal things in a self-aware, cheeky fashion, I'm just going to assume that you know entirely what this holiday is about. And if you're wondering if I'll be participating, know that we video game bloggers lack the disposable income to take part in in today's many rich customs--also, some of us have to spend the rest of our daylight hours writing an insufferable term paper about 19th century working-class women's autobiographies. I'm thinking about selling my blood.

But if you're lucky enough to have ample free time and a steady supply of towels to jam underneath doors, you may be wondering about any video games out there that may enhance your experience. It's a bit cliche at this point, but you should really look no further than Rez; it was designed by a rave-friendly DJ (for Christ's sake) as an experience that envelops all of the senses--except for taste and smell, which may require the use of accessories found in your local supermarket.

Rez could be the stereotypical Bob Marley poster of the video game world, but it's hard to think of many other games that fit today's festivities so appropriately--and it helps that the game has a built-in mode where losing is impossible. It's almost as if designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi built an altered-state lightshow that requires only as much input as your body will allow; this may work out well for those out there who find both arms trapped inside of bags of Cheetos, the traditional food of today's feasts.

I might have went for the most obvious choice, but I'm sure you 61FPSers have some good ideas. Are there any overlooked games out there that are particularly enhanced by the good vibes of April 20?

Related Links:

The Long and Winding Road: Rez’s Journey From Proof-of-Concept to Game
Ports That Need To Be Made: iTouchRez
BIT.TRIP BEAT is Hella Sweet

The Problem With XBLA Pricing

Bob Mackey — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:15:00 GMT

When the amazing Bionic Commando: Rearmed launched last summer at the cost of 800 Microsoft Points (10 dollars), fans of the old-school franchise were relieved--and some were even worried that Capcom wasn't charging enough. But just a week before this, the 1200-Point price tag attached to the equally-amazing Braid caused a bit of alarm--though most agreed that an extra five bucks was more than worth it for such a unique and unforgettable experience.

These days, the 800 Point-and-under pricing structure of XBLA games is seemingly becoming a thing of the past; this week's releases of Puzzle Quest: Galactrix and Flock are available for 20 and 15 dollars, respectively. For the gamer on a budget--or me, anyway--the 10-dollar price point is the sweet spot for XBLA game prices. And as new XBLA releases find themselves slipping further and further from this comfortable territory, I'm finding myself less and less interested in what's available in the marketplace.

Before I'm ripped to shreds, I'd like to state that I do want to see the makers of these XBLA games adequately compensated for their work--it's just that the perceived value of a new game (downloadable or not) is far less than publishers think it is. Even at the happy price point of $10, frugal gamers can get much more than a single XBLA game; in fact, if you're a regular follower of Steam's fantastic sales, you could have bought both Bioshock and Tomb Raider Anniversary for this tiny sum.

Of course, these games can be had for so cheap because their publishers have already sold as many copies as they could at retail prices, but that doesn't mean that this competition doesn't exist. The Xbox Live Marketplace has been slashing prices on some of their more-popular games--the first episode of Penny-Arcade Adventures has had its originally-outrageous price chopped in half this week--but we're creeping closer and closer to having 15 dollars as the norm.

What do you 61FPS readers think about the situation? Has the rising cost of XBLA games made you just as miserly as me?

Related Links:

Whatcha Playing: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Again)
Board Games Should Be Downloadable
Yahtzee Says, Support Your Local Independent Developer (He's Right).

Crystal Defenders: Square's New Low

Bob Mackey — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:45:00 GMT

While hopping onto the Xbox Live Marketplace yesterday to force another innocent soul into the cult of Peggle, I noticed something that could only be described as “curious.” Somehow, a Final Fantasy game had snuck its way onto XBLA—and it wasn’t just any Final Fantasy-based product. This new title, Crystal Defenders, was entirely based on the Final Fantasy Tactics (Advance) universe, my most preferred of Final Fantasy settings. So, knowing absolutely nothing about Defenders, and with the screenshots and marketplace description giving no clue as to what the game actually entailed, I downloaded Crystal Defenders if only to find out what the hell it was. Booting the game up, I was greeted by a selection from Hitoshi Sakimoto’s amazing Final Fantasy Tactics A2 soundtrack.

And after that, it all went downhill.

What I didn’t know is that Crystal Defenders is a tower defense game—at least, according to various online sources. I’ve played tower defense games, and they usually involve towers (or at least buildings) which need defended. Crystal Defenders has none of this; instead, the game involves placing units (a selection of the familiar FFT classes) with differing strengths around a path that waves of monsters will eventually walk down. The thing is, the monsters don’t really fight back, which makes for a pretty hilarious sight when a parade of seemingly ambivalent critters are brutally murdered by your team of heroes for merely walking from point A to point B. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this game takes place in Texas.

To some, the description I’ve given may make the game seem somewhat appealing—and I’m sure the Crystal Defenders concept could produce something similar to fun if the game didn’t feel so cheaply made. From the minute I booted it up, I knew Defenders was just a port of a cell phone game—and even for a modern cell phone game it looks pretty terrible. While the game uses sprites recycled (or perhaps inspired) by the portable Tactics games, Crystal Defenders manages to look much worse in a way that only cheaply-made Japanese cell phone games can. This general sense of shoddiness extends to the ugly menu system to the actual gameplay itself; it actually took me a few minutes to figure out which button actually started the game after setting up my units. And when this happened, I could only sit back in dismay as I realized that Square was essentially selling a turret placement simulator for 800 friggin’ Microsoft points.

Oh, and there’s nothing more soothing than hearing the same “thwack” sound of your unit hitting an enemy repeated every tenth of a second. Crystal Defenders may be the first accurate reproduction of what a dryer full of tennis balls sounds like.

What makes this all so tragic is that Square attached the Final Fantasy Tactics name to this awful product, and that’s a name that still has some dignity left. I ask you, why couldn’t Crystal Defenders have been a licensed Secret of Mana product? That’s the form crappy Square games used to take for many, many years.

Related Links:

Square-Enix's Coup Brings Back Memories
Brave New Wi-Fi World: Square-Enix Might Just Change the Way We Play Nintendo Games
Square-Enix's Prez Sez: "Japan needs to be #1 in gaming again, homeslices."

Board Games Should Be Downloadable

Bob Mackey — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

I love board games, though we've had a confused relationship over the years. Once I could no longer torture my parents with endless games of Monopoly, Scrabble, or Hero Quest, I quickly dismissed the whole activity as low-tech kid stuff and concentrated my nerd powers into more pressing matters, like video games. But around three years ago, I wandered back to tabletop gaming on a whim; a few friends and I started to dabble in fantastic games like Settlers of Catan, and I was unexpectedly brought back to something I once truly loved. Part of the reason I opted to first buy a 360 over the other systems was the fact that there were so many board game adaptations available on XBox Live. And while they could be much greater in number--where the hell are my Catan expansions, anyway--things like Zombies!!! are still on the way, which means that the whole XBLA board game thing must not be a total failure.

Then again, if you happen to be a fan of traditional (non-nerdy) board games, the selection available on this gen's digital download services is a bit troubling; the old standbys of Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Sorry, and others are only available in disc form at prices slightly lower than the standard $60 cost of a new game. To be fair, some of the these games have been bundled together in packages like Hasbro's Family Game Night, but the aforementioned Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit are only available as stand-alone retail releases. I can understand why the games' publishers are taking this approach with their properties; it's obviously making them a lot of money. But you have to wonder how absurdly popular something like Monopoly would be if released at $10-$15 on XBLA; I'm certainly never going to plunk down $40 for a disc-based version of Monopoly, but at digital download prices, I'd undoubtedly be playing it online regularly--and I'm not even the biggest Monopoly fan.

So, should more traditional board games take the same digital download format their obscure relatives have taken, or is a disc-based approach the best way to target the casual gamers who'd be interested in these familiar games? I'd like to get some feedback on this.

Related Links:

Whatcha Playing: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Again)
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Virtual-On and On: Oratorio Tangram Resurrected on Xbox Live Arcade

John Constantine — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:30:00 GMT

I’m not sure that the videogame fan’s fetish for promotional and limited edition hardware is much of a problem. Most people just love having stuff. Some folks are into shoes. I’m not talking about people who hang out at Footlocker waiting for a fresh shipment of Lebron Signatures. I mean there’s a whole freaky subculture of people who collect and buy custom made sneakers designed by graffiti artists. They spend thousands of dollars on pairs of sneakers. Sneakers they already have. Those sneakers look different than their other sneakers. The things you learn watching Entourage, I tell you…

The gamer’s most disturbing predilection is his unceasing devotion to brand. Nothing gets our blood going like the latest sequel, remake, or re-release. It isn’t just nostalgia, that ready scapegoat for franchise excitement. The iterative nature of game design (and business) has simply made us gluttons for the familiar. We are addicts for the names we know being followed by ever increasing numerals and for the inevitable resurrection of classic milieus.

I’m feeling particularly guilty about it today. When it came out last night that Sega’s Virtual-On Oratorio Tangram was getting re-released on Xbox Live Arcade I damn near wet my pants. I’m a sucker, what can I say.

Virtual-On, so ya know, is a game that has you controlling angular, bi-pedal robots in single combat. These fights take place in large arenas, allowing you to run, leap, shoot, stab and strafe at high speeds. Your goal is to make another robot blow up. Discerning 61FPS readers may recall my writing a surreal devotional to Sega’s robot fighting game just a few weeks back, so the announcement that the series definitive arcade entry, Oratorio Tangram v.5.66, is coming home made me doubly giddy. There isn’t much to report. It isn’t confirmed the XBLA version will even release outside of Japan and it’s guaranteed Sega won’t be making a new twin-stick controller just to accommodate rabid devotees. Who cares though?! HD ORATORIO TANGRAM!

(Much love to duckroll for letting US citizens know about Weekly Famitsu’s latest news)

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My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2

Bob Mackey — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:00:00 GMT

It's the end of another year, and that can only mean one thing: it's list season. Inevitably, you're going to see top ten lists by the thousands; and, as an official member of the enthusiast press, I'm afraid I can't violate my directive. But, to make things a little more interesting, I've decided to assemble my 10 favorite games of this year in non-hierarchical form because--let's face facts--it's hard to pick a favorite. And unlike other top 10 lists, this one will be doled out to you in piecemeal over the next several excruciating days! Please enjoy.

Since I jumped on the current-gen bandwagon so late, the modern twin-stick shooter was an unfamiliar concept to me. I'd played a few of the old-school predecessors like Robotron and Smash TV, but, before picking up a 360, I didn't really understand how such limited gameplay could possibly hold my attention in our futuristic age of bells and whistles. Obviously, I hadn't yet experienced any of the Geometry Wars games at that point in time--otherwise, I would have been aware of my complete and utter wrongness. Geometry Wars 2's lack of superficial complexity is almost a necessity--with its insanely twitchy, adrenaline-pumping close calls, I don't think my brain could have handled much more than move, shoot, and bomb. And in applying these few concepts to six completely different game modes, developer Bizarre Creations makes developing stratgies a requirement for success--kind of unexpected from a game that, at first glance, looks like a screen saver gone horribly wrong.

My best memories of Geometry Wars 2 involve how it fostered in me a hatred for my fellow man. Displaying your friends' top ten scores before you start any game mode was an evil stroke of Genius on Bizarre Creations' part; never before in my life had I felt such a strong desire to destroy people I didn't even know. Every time my dinky little score would move its way up the chart, I would feel a sense of accomplishment that didn't even come when I graduated from college. And yet, there were constant reminders of my inferiority by those jerks (who I assume were cheating) that had scores I could never reach in my wildest dreams. It's true that I haven't picked up the game in a few months, but that's only because I've been training in secret. One day, history books will speak of my amazing score in Waves. Or not.

Related Links

My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Audiosurf
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Braid
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Grand Theft Auto IV
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Fable 2
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Persona 3: FES

My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Braid

Bob Mackey — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:00:00 GMT

It's the end of another year, and that can only mean one thing: it's list season. Inevitably, you're going to see top ten lists by the thousands; and, as an official member of the enthusiast press, I'm afraid I can't violate my directive. But, to make things a little more interesting, I've decided to assemble my 10 favorite games of this year in non-hierarchical form because--let's face facts--it's hard to pick a favorite. And unlike other top 10 lists, this one will be doled out to you in piecemeal over the next several excruciating days! Please enjoy.

As far as downloadable games go, Braid was a pretty big deal; I don't think a day in August went by without me reading several blog posts by people caught up in creator Jonathan Blow's amazing world--oh yeah, except for those days in August when Braid wasn't out. Nevertheless, there's really nothing else on XBox Live Arcade--or any other platform, really--that's like Braid; though its originality would be irrelevant if the game played like crap. Luckily, Blow's deconstruction of the platformer is an immaculately-design work of genius, a mechanical, visual, and aural delight from start to finish. And somehow, even with my embarrassingly poor competence at video game puzzle logic, I stuck through to the game's mindblowing ending.

Please stop me if you can't take all of the well-deserved hyperbole.

What amazes me most about Braid is that no one--as far as I can tell--has actually figured out what the game is about--and Blow ain't telling. A somewhat recent--and very extensive--interview with Blow on 1UP FM shot down a few of the more popular interpretations of Braid, and gave all of us a greater insight into the function of Blow's brain matter. It's a must-listen if you're like me and plan on digging into the Braid once again during the holidays to try to pull out something that might resemble a definitive meaning. What other games out there deserve a second playthrough just for their philosophical substance alone? Answer: not many. And that's what makes Braid so great.

Related Links:

My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Audiosurf
Derrick's Top 13 Games of 2008 - Part 1
Ceci N'Est Pas Une 1-Up: The Surrealist Future of Postpunk Gaming

The New XBox Experience: A Brief Reaction

Bob Mackey — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The New XBox Experience is finally available to all XBox 360 users today, and I couldn't be happier. Microsoft's old "blade" format had quite a few problems, most of which involved finding stuff on the marketplace; to use the old GUI effectively, you pretty much had to train yourself to think bass-ackwardsly. And when you got to the right place, sometimes you couldn't even find what you were looking for; I remember a certain summer adventure when a friend and I wanted to play the newly released Commando 3, only to find it minutes later listed under WOTB--which caused me to forever think of the game as Woe Tub.

The best idea out of all of the new changes has to be the Netflix streaming movie integration. As a loyal NetFlix customer, I was aware of their streaming service before the NXE announcement, but never really used it because I sit in front of my computer too damn much as-is. But now when I'm alone or entertaining (and most importantly, far from my computer desk), I can choose from a good selection of quality (and not-so quality) programming that further justifies me not having cable TV. My own cheapness can only excuse so much.

The Avatars--Microsoft's bone thrown to the non-hardcore--have that same kind of limited appeal that that Nintendo's Miis have; though, in Microsoft's favor, I think the 360 uses their little cartoony creations much more effectively by actually including them as part of the interface instead of segregating them to a separate program. I could honestly give or take my Virtual Bob, but Avatars are an astoundingly better idea than paying Microsoft for the benefit of using a tiny, blurry image to represent yourself. I once paid for some GamerPics with some leftover Microsoft points and now must live with the shame forever.

All in all, NXE is a pretty monumental--though expected--change to the 360 interface. I especially appreciated the simplification, as the combination of both NyQuil and DayQuil on my brain is making it hard to do simple tasks, like navigate menus and construct simple sentences. Hopefully you haven't noticed the latter.

Related Links:

Microsoft Might Just Hate You
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R.I.P. Xbox 720 and Playstation 4: The Future of Gaming

God Help Me, I Am Looking Forward to Banjo-Kazooie XBLA

Bob Mackey — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:30:00 GMT

Back in the Summer of 1998, my friend lent me his N64 when he left for a week-long Florida vacation--I didn't end up getting the system for myself until the combination of bargain-basement prices and Paper Mario forced my hand three years later. With my judgmental friend out of sight, I took this as a prime opportunity to rent some N64 games that were skewed for a demographic much younger than the average, mumbling 16 year-old male. My first stop was Yoshi's Story, a game I was excited to play after the world-changing Yoshi's Island. As with many other gamers out there, I gathered I was being punished for some great evil I had done.

An equally unexpected happening happened when I disposed of Yoshi's Story in a local fire and picked up Rare's then-new Banjo-Kazooie. Unexpectedly, I loved the game; and even though I'm much smarter and have a solid 8 years of Rare grudge resting on my shoulders, I can't help but anticipate the release of BK on XBox Live Arcade in a few weeks. See if this trailer will fill you in on my mental state:

Let's get some things out of the way: all of these characters are absolutely insipid. And there is a lot of collecting; though, from Donkey Kong 64 on, this problem increased tenfold. But the fundamental parts of BK--the platforming, the levels, the special moves--are actually pretty good. We're not talking Mario 64 caliber, here, but Banjo-Kazooie unfairly gets lumped in with utter crap like Croc: Legend of the Gobbos. I actually prefer the unfortunately-named sequel, Banjo-Tooie, if only for the fact that when things are collected, they stay collected (the original BK makes you get all of one item in a single run, like the purple coins in Mario Galaxy); thankfully, that's coming to XBLA early next year. In the meantime, I have to make sure that no rude, teenage boys can see into my apartment. They can be so cruel.

Related Links:

All Ages: Viva Piñata and Building Games For Children
Common: Rare Makes Bad Games
The Banjo Kazooie Text Debacle Part 3: Text Hard With a Vengeance

Vigilante 8: Twisted Metal's Cooler, Younger Brother

Bob Mackey — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

In the late 90s, car combat sims were en vogue; you might say they represented the in-your-face, totally-not-for-kids sentiment about video games that took off around the Playstation era. The genre eventually crashed and burned with 2001's Twisted Metal Black, which was probably for the best--by that point, the series was taking itself more seriously than a Tool poster hanging in the bedroom of a 15 year-old suburbanite. But before this swan song, there were certainly quite a few good games; my personal favorite is Interstate 76, a complex and brilliant car combat game that combined Mechwarrior with the visuals of Dire Straits' Money for Nothin' video. Unfortunately, I76 never made it to home consoles--but a stripped-down, spiritual successor by the name of Vigilante 8 did. And surprisingly, it wasn't crap.

What's even more surprising is that Vigilante 8 is now available for download on Microsoft's XBox Live service, and it's a damned good port of the Playstation original. When I first heard that V8 was headed over to the 360, I got excited--then I saw the new title of Vigilante 8: Arcade, and worried that they might've stripped out the single-player mode in favor of an exclusively multiplayer experience. My fears were soon put to rest when I realized that, yes, "quest" mode was still intact. It's basically multiplayer mode with bots, but still, it's the version of the game I'm most familiar with.

If you've never played V8, it's basically an ultra-clean, ultra-slick--I believe the PSX original ran at an alarmingly high frame-rate--super-arcadey version of Twisted Metal. And--to me, at least--it's a lot more fun. You can chalk some of that up to the game's retro leanings, which are far more enjoyable than the bleak worlds of Twisted Metal; you see, back in the 1990s, it was both hip and charming to reference the 1970s, which is very similar to our 80s nostalgia of today. For 800 Microsoft Points, Vigilante 8 a fun trip (no pun intended) back to a genre that might've overstayed its welcome--though I'd still kill for a Live Arcade version of Interstate 76. Someone, please make this happen.

Related Links:

One Crazy Summer of Arcade
Ports That Need To Be Made: iTouchRez
Duke Nukem 3D Was Actually a Great Game

Duke Nukem 3D Was Actually a Great Game

Bob Mackey — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:30:00 GMT

It may be hard to believe, but there was once a time when the phrase "Duke Nukem" didn't conjure up hoary old jokes by would-be Internet comedians who were known to say, "More like Duke Nukem ForNEVER, am I right!?" Well over a decade ago, Duke Nukem was actually relevant, and Duke Nukem 3D was a creative, tongue-in-cheek alternative to id's Doom series, the aesthetic of which could only come from people who read Spawn unironically. I might have been a 14 year-old boy back when 3D came out in 1996, but I was savvy enough to recognize that Duke's over-the-top masculinity was an insincere, tongue-in-cheek take on action heroes, a la The Simpsons' McBain. The question here is, will today's 14 year-olds--who weren't even multi-celled organisms during the original release of Duke Nukem 3D--get the joke? And will anyone else care?

All of this Nukem news is relevant because tomorrow the game will be available on the XBox Live Marketplace for the pauperly sum of 800 Microsoft Points. That's a tiny price for what amounts to a lot of game, but I'm not here to tell you about the 360's faaabulous deals. In fact, I'm not even going to buy the game; my old CD still works fine, and programs like EDuke ensure that the original files I once played on my Pentium 133 will work long into the future. The important thing to think about here is how Duke Nukem 3D was once innovative and unique; this is very hard to imagine after the franchise was left to fester with increasingly awful console ports and reimaginings, but it's true.

Though it would soon be beaten mercilessly by Quake six short months later, Duke Nukem 3D was the closest you could get to 3D without actually being 3D; yep, the game--made with the flexible, yet crashy, BUILD engine--was in that creepy, psuedo-3D world, but Duke's levels actually took advantage of the Y axis by forcing you to explore high and low on foot or jetpack (and hopefully you wouldn't vomit by looking at what was then known as a "skybox"). And with each set of levels taking place in a completely different environment, 3D was much more varied than its counterparts; it can be said that all of the best stuff in Duke was completely front-loaded, but even so, it still existed. Shooting pool balls, flushing toilets, running film projectors, tipping strippers, breaking fire hydrants and looking at surveillance camera footage might have all been irrelevant to the actual game, but 3d Realms succeeded in making a world much more detailed and fun than the dreary Doom series.

Of course, we also have Duke's variety of goofy weapons, and the equally-goofy enemies, which may or may not come with attached social commentary (the alien cops are pig-people). There's really too much to talk about, so at the risk of running this into another blog post, I'll stop. But reflecting upon Duke Nukem 3D, I can't stop thinking about how tragic it is that 3D Realms has never been able to get their shit together for a real sequel. Looking at how much Duke added to the FPS genre, you have to wonder if Duke Nukem Forever would have had the same innovative impact had it hit store shelves back in 2001 or whenever the hell it was first meant to be released. Whatever the case, it could be a good thing that a new generation is being introduced to Duke; but they'll have to come to old grandpa Bob to find out why the game once blew our minds as I tell them about sitting in freshman study hall reading my own printed-out copy of the BUILD engine user's guide. High school was very fun for me.

Related Links:

Duke Nukem Trilogy Trailer Sums Up E3 in 4 Minutes
One Crazy Summer of Arcade
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Jonathan Blow Your Mind

Bob Mackey — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

The Onion A.V. Club recently put up an extensive and excellent interview with Jonathan Blow that's sure to piss some people off and make others fall deeper in love with the outspoken game designer. I'm leaning more towards the latter, even though he mocks my chosen profession--hey, at least I was smart enough not to even attempt an analysis at Braid's storyline and pass my word off as law. Which is why the following inflammatory quote really doesn't bug me. Honest:

What’s interesting to me is that in terms of people who I feel are getting what it’s about – and here I’m not even talking about what the elements of the story mean, like, whatever symbolism and metaphors and things are in there. But even the structure of the game, like, there’s a fundamental structure and reasons in the way things are laid out, and parts of the game that are meant to draw people’s attention to certain things, regardless of what’s contained in that structure. And what’s interesting to me is that some people get that, and some people don’t. But that’s completely decorrelated from people’s claimed positions in the sphere of commentary. By which I mean, there are lots of random blog posters on places like Gamespot or NeoGAF or whatever who show a clearer understanding of the game than people who are all, “I’m all about games, and narrative and meaning, and I write a blog just to tell you about how I analyze all these things.” Those people have the same hit rate as your general forum poster. So that’s given me a cynical response to that whole community, which is just that, “Guys, are you sure you’re qualified to do this?” And that sounds asshole-ish, and mean and snarky, but that’s just how I’m feeling right now.

More good stuff: Blow mentions other variations of the time-altering mechanic that never made it to the final game:

There were some other levels, like a turn-based one, where the idea is that time is always paused until you make a decision, and then time goes forward by a second or two seconds based on what decision you made, and then time stops for another decision. So it’s like a turn-based strategy game, but in the same platformer world. That one I actually got as far as programming, and making a couple of levels for, and there were some neat consequences to it. But there weren’t 12 puzzles’ worth of neat consequences that were of the same quality as the other worlds. And I just decided it didn’t quite fit.

Go check out the whole thing here. And don't feel guilty if you come away from the interview thinking that Braid was thiiis close to being named after one of Neitzsche's books.

Related Links:

On Beating Braid
Yahtzee Says, Support Your Local Independent Developer (He's Right).

On Beating Braid

Bob Mackey — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

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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