Braid |brad|
noun 1 A videogame in which you play a man named Tim, who may or may not be using the powers of time and space to save a princess in another castle.
Dude, Braid is the best fifteen bucks you could ever spend. Don't even read this review, just go buy it. Well, maybe not if you only like Halo and Madden. If that's the case, this might be a little too high-brow for your tastes. By the way, minor spoilers on the puzzle mechanics in Braid.
Braid is better than Portal. That's right, I said it. There are a few reasons that I say that. Portal does have style and ironic humor and a catchy song at the end of the game. Portal was the most imaginative puzzle game ever conceived. Braid is not necessarily more imaginative in the base puzzle solving sense. Prince of Persia showed us time reversal. What Braid has done that is more imaginative than Prince of Persia or Portal is the variety of ways in which your core ability is used.
You braid time. You layer timeline upon timeline in order to reach your objective. Wrap your mind around that sentence for a minute.
Just think about that. It is hard to even conceive, let alone execute within a game. You have to see it to truly grasp the meaning of it. It is generally timeline "A" which is your actions and the actions of your surroundings. Then there's timeline "B" which varies from world to world. Sometimes walking forward and backwards moves time back and forth. Sometimes it is a mimic timeline. Sometimes it only goes in reverse. And in a later world you get a time slowing ability. This is not your typical bullet time. This is a bubble that affects time in relation to its proximity. The closer an object is to it, the slower it moves. Then there are the smattering of objects immune to any form of time manipulation, which I will call timeline "C".
Each puzzle is comprised of trying to reach point "A" to point "B" with the variables of collecting literal puzzle pieces. You always have timeline "A" but there are smattering of timeline "C" in world one and there is always a timeline "B" in the later worlds.
Then there is the strange narrative. It sounds like Tim was a normal guy that stumbled into this very strange world. I won't reveal anything, but the end sequence is phenomenal.
The game clocks in about eight hours if you try to collect everything. Apparently if you skip everything, you can beat the game in 45 minutes. The real meat of the game is really finishing it.
Buy Braid or you are an idiot.
Unless you only don't have a 360. Sorry. You just miss out.
