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Braid
17 years ago
Tried the demo, purchased the game last night.
Beat it this afternoon.
Absolutely gorgeous soundtrack, beautiful art style, enjoyable platform-gaming (outright Super Mario Brothers clone), clever gameplay twist (time-puzzles).
Complaints? Suffers from what I call "video game pretentiousness". That's when a game thinks far too much of it's own controls or gameplay, you see. In other words, it asks you to do very tricky things with the assumption that it's controls or mechanics are better than they really are.
It also has a bad habit of presenting puzzles where the solution lies in powers or gameplay mechanics that you never knew you had or had never had explained to you before that point. It's like being asked to solve a puzzle on a lock, and then when you go, "I can't figure it out," someone replies, "hurf durf, that's 'cause you need this key I was hiding in my pocket and never told you about!"
There's a story to the game, and it's very bittersweet and engaging, and touching and mysterious, but unfortunately the ending is also very ambiguous. I suspect the developer wanted to encourage interpretation; I fear he may just piss a lot of paying customer off instead.
If you own an Xbox 360, go download the demo now. I hear it's due to PC sometime this year as well.
Beat it this afternoon.
Absolutely gorgeous soundtrack, beautiful art style, enjoyable platform-gaming (outright Super Mario Brothers clone), clever gameplay twist (time-puzzles).
Complaints? Suffers from what I call "video game pretentiousness". That's when a game thinks far too much of it's own controls or gameplay, you see. In other words, it asks you to do very tricky things with the assumption that it's controls or mechanics are better than they really are.
It also has a bad habit of presenting puzzles where the solution lies in powers or gameplay mechanics that you never knew you had or had never had explained to you before that point. It's like being asked to solve a puzzle on a lock, and then when you go, "I can't figure it out," someone replies, "hurf durf, that's 'cause you need this key I was hiding in my pocket and never told you about!"
There's a story to the game, and it's very bittersweet and engaging, and touching and mysterious, but unfortunately the ending is also very ambiguous. I suspect the developer wanted to encourage interpretation; I fear he may just piss a lot of paying customer off instead.
If you own an Xbox 360, go download the demo now. I hear it's due to PC sometime this year as well.
I'd never really heard of it either. I'd seen a few beta shots about a year ago, and heard a few positive rumblings here and there. It wasn't until the game released and everyone started losing their minds over it that I decided to try it out.
The soundtrack is haunting. It's worth a play simply for the music.