@sweetz: I agree, that comes off as nonsense. But I also think it's worth pointing out that the interview you pulled that nonsense from is nearly 7 1/2 years old. I've read numerous really good, nonsense-free interviews from Blow in that time. And I think if any of us were interviewed and quoted as regularly as he is, we'd all get caught saying silly drivel like that at some point. Reductively calling him pretentious based on occasional pulls like that — and yes, sometimes people use it correctly, but no, it isn't misused sometimes, but nearly all the time in gaming circles — is selling him incredibly short.
And dismissing an apparently massively lengthy game as pretentious based on a 33-minute video — in which the game admirably avoids the pathetic info/cutscene dump most games clumsily and boringly puke out early on — is ludicrous. There's no false pretense in play here except the absurd notion that any game that isn't chock full of guns and a constant need to tell you what's happening is artsy bullshit.
That's all this is? A pretentious "art" puzzle game? Not worth $40 dollars; maybe I'd consider trying it when it goes on sale for $10 or less, but this is pretty unimpressive overall to me.
Where the hell are you getting the "pretentious art" part from? It's just a puzzle game set in a pretty world.
In gamerspeak, "pretentious" = anything where you don't shoot everything that moves and the story isn't hand-fed to you via a spoonful of crappy tutorials and cutscenes. It's an insult, lobbed about by people who do not even know what the word actually means, that's meant to automatically disparage anything that has aspirations of being even nakedly more thoughtful than the SyFy/WWE-level crap we typically accept as video game storytelling.
Some people need their hand held and cannot understand why a story that doesn't immediately vomit exposition can still be a story. It's best to let them throw their little tantrum and not let them sully your experience.
@billyok: I was going for cheeky, rather than snarky. Sorry bout that. @mub conveys my thoughts on it pretty well, for the most part. To say that I think the big reveal in Braid feels like a stretch would be a bit of an understatement. It's pretentious, but in an adolescent sort of way, if that makes sense.
Yeah, fair point. (And point taken about the cheeky vs. snarky.) I guess my enjoyment of it came from how it was illustrated in the way you played that last puzzle. On its own, without that, I'd agree it was unnecessary and wedged in. Mostly, I just never could see level with the notion that the ending was anything more than just a silly turn of things on its head. Always felt harmless and adolescent (to borrow your word) to me and I was always surprised that it was so divisive.
Hopefully the ending isn't another poorly written, amateurish, first-year-art-student-doesn't-it-like-make-you-really-think-man like Braid.
I don't know why people take this stance with Braid's ending or Braid's story in general. It was a surprising little twist, nothing more. And it was effectively illustrated in the context of the gameplay.
Vinny needs to stop apologizing, like he does every year, that by cutting games he does not mean that they're bad. We get it, dude.
Counterpoint: Never change, Vinny. I'd feel bad too if I felt like I was disparaging a great game even when that's not what's really happening. It's not disingenuous to apologize even if the apology isn't necessary.
I love the annual overdramatic take-my-ball-and-never-visit-this-site again comments that pop up during GOTY time. Some of you care way to much about these meaningless awards.
Honestly, they should just stick to personal top 10s from now on because these GOTY podcasts/lists are becoming a complete embarisment to this sites readers and its staff. The arguments made and the lack of experience about the games on a lot of these lists is cringworthy and quite honestly pathetic.
Why even continue to do these?
Because it's all for fun and not really a complete embarrassment to anyone, since it's all just for fun? The awards don't matter -- it's the entertainment that comes from listening to them unscientifically pile them together that is the whole point. I cannot fathom how you're a paid member of this site but somehow don't realize, 8 years in, what this site's intentions are by now.
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