Braid – The Geekscape Review

Hyperbole is often a problem in reviews. You often see reviewers speak in grand terms about the successes or failures of what are actually just middle of the road products, to the point that we as readers have been someone immunized to it. If we see reviews proclaiming a game to be brilliant, innovative, a masterpiece, or what have you, we just kind of shrug it off. These words don’t carry the weight that they should because of their overuse.

So, you may have heard of this game, Braid. You may have seen all these hyperbolic phrases being used to describe it. And you may have just shrugged it off as another overhyped game that will be forgotten in the weeks to come. Well, I am here to tell you that these reviews are not hyperbole in this case. Braid just really is that good.

At its core, Braid seems like a fairly straight forward old school puzzle platformer. The kind of stuff we have been playing since Mario Bros. But this is underselling the game to a great degree. Braid is the pinnacle of the genre. Everything about it is perfect. There is no filler, there is never a moment where you aren’t thinking and puzzle solving in ways you never have before. And the puzzles are so incredibly well thought out, they are challenging but never cheap and unfair. You can come to a logical solution on all of them if you just think clearly and remember the rules of the level. Yes, at times it seems impossible, at times you may get insanely frustrated and curse the difficulty of the game, but just take a break, come back, and you’ll find that the answer was right in front of you all along and it was never that hard to begin with.

It’s rare these days to feel a real sense of accomplishment in gaming. So much of the gameplay experience these days consists of just grinding your way through repetitive fights and fetch quest to get to the next plot point. It’s a test of patience rather than a test of skill. Braid is not a long game, only a few hours, and you aren’t clamoring to get the next part of the story because the story is abstract and non-linear and meant to be thought about as opposed to completed. It’s just a few hours of completely original gameplay that never ceases to challenge you and never stops paying off with a true feeling of accomplishment.

The unique gameplay twist in Braid is its use of time manipulation. Each world deals with this differently. In one you may have an object that can slow time for things within a certain radius, in another time may move forward or backward depending on the direction your character is moving. The only consistent ability you have is the ability to rewind time much in the same way as you could in Prince of Persia. So, for instance, if you fall to your death, no worries, just go back in time and try again. This is not just a way to correct mistakes however, it is an integral part to many puzzles.

In a lot of ways, Braid is this year’s Portal: a game that, in a short amount of time, provides you with more challenge and enjoyment than most big budget major releases. They both feature unique gameplay elements that force you to think in ways you never have before. And they both feature surprisingly compelling but very different stories. Portal made you laugh, Braid may very well make you cry, or at the very least, think.

It’s shocking to see such amazing writing and such powerful and groundbreaking storytelling in a downloadable arcade game. Braid tells the story of Tim, a man who is in search of his Princess. What the Princess is is open to interpretation. It could be a lost love, an ideal, a purpose, or a bomb. It may very well be all of these things, but Tim’s quest for it is driving him away from the people that love him. This story is told through fractured and poetic writing before each new world, and it culminates in one of the most unique and compelling endings to a game ever. You may not leave with a complete sense of closure or understanding, but you will think about it for a very long time and that is the highest compliment I can give the games story.

All of this is helped out by the wonderfully somber and violin heavy music, and the games unique and beautiful art style. Braid is presented as a living painting with subtly moving backgrounds and deceptively simple character animation. It’s truly one of the best looking and sounding games available on Xbox Live.

I think we are witnessing a gaming revolution that is the unexpected by-product of the inclusion of small downloadable games for the major consoles. It has given an outlet to unique, independent developers, who don’t have the budget of the major companies, to experiment and be rewarded for doing so. If we continue to see games of this quality on these services, we may begin to question why we should spend four times as much on games that don’t provide a quarter of the enjoyment.

In short, go download the game. You’ve got work to do. Your Princess is in another castle.