The game might be brilliant, but I hate every platformer but the Castlevania series.
Should I bother with Braid? I’m NOT a fan of Mario.
This review is further proof of Tom’s clear anti-retard agenda. What did tards ever do to hurt you, Tom?
I was enjoying it but but girlfriend made me turn it off because she said the music was annoying the shit out of her. Specifically, when it played backward and weird when time traveling. I don’t think I’m allowed to play it when she’s around anymore.
The Director of the Special Olympics is on line 1, yelling something about Ben Stiller…
The sound annoyed me too, really the only complaint I have. I’ve been hearing those goddamn cat sounds in my sleep…
Perhaps most importantly, I’ve heard developer Jonathan Blow give a talk in which he explained the ending, which is one of the most brilliant computer game endings I’ve ever seen.
Can I get a link to this for easy reference after I finish the game?
I found it easier to adapt to the controls than the Flash ports I’ve played, like Alien Hominid or N+. I think maybe the graphics helped in that area, it was easier for me to visualize the “hitbox” when the pixels are rendered so beautifully, unlike hideously spastic oscillating vector outlines which always give me trouble.
I don’t really understand how anyone can perceive the game as such a disparate experience, once you figure out the time mechanic and the door system everything opens up and the pure puzzle elements take over. It seems to me that you’d have to consciously reinforce the idea that it should be played a certain way to be bewildered to the point of imagining it requires “pixel perfect precision”. Personally, this is saying a lot, because I loathe puzzle games and I am probably going to snap this up right quick when I have the time to lay into it.
It seems that the majority of the pleasantries offered by Braid would be nonexistent were it not for the open atmosphere and the freedom of discovery, none of which are applicable to oldschool platformers - memorize enemy patterns, memorize level layout, repeat, memorize boss patterns, repeat. If you are looking up level guides and playing with your friends chattering in your ear I can understand how you’d perceive that experience as being relatively fruitless.
“'I took mushrooms and went to Astroworld and had a really bad time”
I’m going to consider this whole review as a bit of an exercise in that area. Let a man dream!
Wow, it’s just like having Toddy back.
P.S. Anyway this cake is great.
It’s so delicious and moist
The closest things I ever found that needed pixel precision were things I was doing slightly wrong.
edit, since this is a braid review thread, let me throw my own pseudo review in here:
I think i understood the quote without problems. Portal has some mind-bending mechanics so a lot of players will feel like he a genius after completing some levels, but really, Portal (at least the ‘story mode’, the challenge levels are another story) is fucking easy, the first 70% is like an extended tutorial and the rest is more or less also easy. For being a puzzle game (or something like that, first person puzzler platformer?), it wasn’t a very cerebral puzzle game, i can’t remember any level where i had to sit down and thing for a few minutes and try a few things. The game tries so hard (and have success) to guide the players and show them how it’s done to evade frustrations to the average shooter player that while it’s a blast to play it for the first time thanks to the humor, the setting and the original portal system, it’s not a “hard but rewarding” game.
PD: Tom didn’t lke Watchmen? Wow, he keeps failing. :P
When did Tom first read Watchmen? If it was recent, yeah it isn’t the same as it was in the early 80s. DC comics were still around the level of the Superfriends cartoons and then Watchmen came out. It was as if you watched nothing but the Brady Bunch all you life and then someone sat you in front of Fight Club…
I’m happy to fail at whatever ranking system you’re using. I hated Watchmen.
I’ve started reading Watchmen. Never been big into comics at all. Just graphic novels. Watchmen seems like one of them graphic novels with superheroes in it. Might be why I don’t understand the fuss.
“Ruh. Ror. Ror. Rorschach!
Please don’t kill anybody.”
Surely this was heady, powerful stuff before the new wave of Darker and Edgier anti-heroes of the late 80s and early 90s.
What’s with this Watchmen hate? I read it recently and very much enjoyed it. It’s certainly not a typical superhero book. In fact, there isn’t much superheroism going on at all. It’s sort of just referenced as past events. I admit, the book is pretty slow moving, but it’s very good in my opinion. I think it will actually benefit in the film adaptation if they’ve tightened it up a bit.
I am an impatient PC gamer, so tweaking these things sounds great to me.
There was stuff in the 60s but that got shut down by the comics code. There were also some indie black & white books in the 70s but none were as well made, thought out, or even read as much as the Watchmen.
It’s the deconstructionz, I tells ya.
J
On the Watchmen side-railing: I read it the first time sometime in the late 90s. I’d never been a comics fan beyond knowing the cultural icons from them, had no grounding in the pre-“dark” comics state–and it was still a good read and good story. Deconstruction didn’t really enter into it–I can see that’s a facet of it, but seems to me people lay way too much import onto such things.
Similarly, I was never a platformer guy, having largely skipped the experience of every console between the Atari 2600 and the first playstation, so that framework in Braid doesn’t enter into it, leaving just a brainbending puzzle game. (Slowly picking away into World 6 now.)
I dunno. I think some folks see talk of deconstruction and artsiness flying about, and get their berets all twisted. It’s a great little puzzle game; any other high-falutin’ aspects are just extra spice, but not the spice.
Oh, see that’s exactly what I’d hoped he wasn’t saying, because that’s kind of dumb and I completely disagree.