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    Braid

    Game » consists of 11 releases. Released Aug 06, 2008

    Manipulate time to complete puzzles in this 2D platform game made by indie developer Jonathan Blow.

    rateoforange's Braid (Xbox 360 Games Store) review

    Avatar image for rateoforange

    Singular artistic vision

    If all Jonathan Blow ever publishes is this game, he has still succeeded in making his mark on the industry. I have played platformers that made vague stabs at updating the genre, but they fell short in comparison to Braid; the presentation, the music, and the mechanics all speak volumes of the thought and effort that went into this title. Braid is the first modern 2d platformer.

    Braid begins simply. It offers no menus or cheesy logos, or anything to even indicate you are already playing except a bit of text telling you the left stick is move. Your avatar is silhouetted against a painterly burning city on the first screen and a starry skied cul-de-sac on the next.  A melancholy story of loss greets you at the outset of level 2, the first you are given access to. As it is sometimes in life, the 'villain' of Braid appears to be your own past mistakes.

    The metaphorical plot of the game is that by reliving your mistake, you will be able to move on. A poignant analog for the time-based gameplay, and an origin story that hearkens back to another masterpiece: Planescape: Torment. Unlike even the great Torment, Braid offers us something exceedingly rare and perhaps even singular in games--an artistic statement that is inseparable from the game itself.

    There is a strong undercurrent of anti-intellectualism in video games. Every day we are presented with images, stories, and gameplay mechanics that insult our intelligence. Games can be abusive and insulting on many levels, and we endure it because there is something there we still enjoy long after outgrowing the rest. We are regularly asked to husk games, carefully separating the juicy parts from the inedible garbage.

    Because of this, games are a guilty pleasure for many of us. When we play them in front of others we feel tempted to qualify our approval. Braid requires no qualifications, never underestimates us, and constantly provides us with new challenges rather than empty filler content. We should, like we did with Portal, hold it up to the light and show everyone what games can be.

    Other reviews for Braid (Xbox 360 Games Store)

      You are your own Castle. 0

      I want to rewind time. I want to be able to go back to this morning, to forget everything that happened in the past 12 hours. I want to play Braid again, to have those same revelations, those same discoveries all over again. I want to find the solutions to those devious puzzles, to see the bizarre creatures, to delve into every unique mechanic the game has to offer. Just once more, from the top. But I can't. The least I can do, however, is to help you see those revelations for yourself. Braid is...

      19 out of 21 found this review helpful.

      A haunting, memorable, interpretative piece of art. 0

      I don’t know where to begin. I guess I’ll start at the beginning. Or at least the beginning of my experience with Braid. I didn’t know anything about this title when I downloaded the demo off of live arcade. I never followed a single preview. I was completely in the dark all things Braid, but five minutes in to the demo I realized that this was something amazing. At first I thought I understood Braid. A simple platformer with a fantastically implemented time mechanic. In Braid you play as Tim,...

      9 out of 9 found this review helpful.

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