A Brain Smashing Good Time
When the Giant Bomb crew was discussing Braid for possible game of the year, I thought they must be crazy. An arcade download? Game of the Year? They talked about it enough to get me to download the demo and by the end of my demo run I couldn't wait to buy the rest of the game.
Braid starts off slow and is a basic platformer at first. But within a little while of playing around with it, you will find yourself staring at some puzzle piece that you just cannot get to. Some of Braid's puzzles will have you thinking outside of the box, while you never really leave it. They present you with a simple solution, but that simple solution will have a complex problem in the way. It can get frustrating. I will not lie, but once you solve that problem you will feel like the smartest person in the world.
I have never had a game make me so frustrated and confused as Braid. At least not one that was working like it was supposed to (Broken games are the peak of frustration) . Braid has a few missions that made me think the game was broken. I was sure it was doing the wrong thing. Then I calmed down and took another look and saw that the game was doing everything exactly how it was supposed to. Then my problem really showed its ugly face.
On sections that seemed impossible, yet I still got around them, I wanted to run out of my house screaming "I'M A $%@#ING GENIUS!!!" Braid is the only game that has every gotten me so excited about solving problems like that.
If you like puzzle solving in any way, I recommend you try out the demo of Braid. My problem with the demo is that it only gives you a brief taste of the craziness that is to come. The best stuff in the demo is at the very end of World 2, then those little snippets they give you from World 3 and 4.
Braid is one of two arcade games that I have felt worthy of the 1200 point price. However I have not tried the Penny Arcade games yet, those might make my list hit four 1200 point games that I can stand paying those extra points on.
Braid is a brilliant game. I'm just going to leave it at that.
