Game Review: Braid (Third version)

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Pretentious? Moi? Then perhaps I shall reverse the flow of time and undo these pretentions? Mwa ha ha I'm so clever.
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This is not the first lengthy blog / review on the subject 'Is Braid Art?' and it will not be the last.

It is, however, the first game review here at Fanfiction Shenanigans AKA Buch and Knight's Old-Fashioned Fan-fiction Pub.

EDIT: This is the updated, less angry version, after I had calmed down and finally 'got' how the game works.

EDIT EDIT: I also added a bit at the end, after I finished the game.

"Braid" is a downloadable, short, 2D platform/puzzle game on the Xbox 360 and I believe now you can get it for PC.

This started as a thread where I was venting in the ME fanfic forums. It became so long that I thought I'd put it up here on the blog, and just leave a clipped version at the forum.
The version I posted was very angry at the pretention the game has - and it really does, but I had barely played the game itself, so annoyed was I by its narcissistic style.

I just bought it, and at first I was very impressed... but a couple of hours in, I think I hate it as much as any game I've ever hated, albeit for completely new and original reasons. It's not just that I sucked at it - I really sucked at it for that first hour or so (and the game makes no attempt to ease you in) - it's also that it seems to present itself so proudly and arrogantly that I'd like to punch the creator in the face.

On the official site, there is an 'official walkthorugh', written by said creator, which starts off by painstakingly walking you through every step of the easy intro stage - and then tells you not to use a walkthrough, and ends.

This did not help with my frustrarion.

http://braid-game.com/walkthrough/walkthrough.html

It says you will spoil the game if you use a walkthrough, and promises that if you just try to solve the 'not unreasonable' puzzles, then you will feel clever and great. I just wanted to punch this website in the face.
The front page of this site has a list of grand boasts, like "Every puzzle in Braid is unique. There is no filler" and "Braid is a platform game in a painterly style..." (wow, you know a long word. I bow before you. Please accept 1200 microsoft points as tribute oh mighty Creator) and "Braid does everything it can to give you a mind-expanding experience." So far it had given me a wallet-shrinking and curse-word-vocabulary-expanding experience.

This game has a 9.5 out of ten at Gamespot, very positive reviews all round. I've read up on it and discovered that there is a very, very good ending to the poetic, dreamlike story (wish I hadn't spoiled it by reading ahead) and even a rather nice political subtext.

But all of this is presented with such arrogance and such contempt for the player, that I can't stand it. The levels are preceeded by blocks of text which set up a vague but good story about a relationship breakup in deeper and deeper layers. But the little passages read like an angsty poem by a school kid who just got dumped yesterday. Big, sweeping mixed metaphors and words that have been found in a thesaurus and shoved awkwardly in the middle of sentences that don't quite make sense because they're so poetic and whimsical. At first I thought the game must just be so damn good that it was above me. I was awed and intimidated, which I suspect is the point of the game. Then I concentrated, re-read the lines and realised that no, sometimes they just don't make sense.

It's little things like this. I got this quote from the wikipedia page-

He [the author, Johnathon Blow] has also said that he "would not be capable" of explaining the whole story of the game, and stated that the central idea is "something big and subtle and resists being looked at directly.

Oh fuck off and give me a real walkthrough.

Several hours later I felt the need to amend this review with a list of things that are undeniably excellent about the game -
- The music is lovely and haunting.
- The art is impressive, even if it does know it.
- The attempt to take the classic platform game hero (esentially this is based on Super Mario - there are lots of unsubtle homages) and show him as a human being, albeit an angsty, poetic one - what would his motivations be in rescuing this Princess? How did he come here? What is he becoming? etc.

Then I got to playing, determinded to give it a second chance, and I actually won a couple of levels.

Now I kinda like this game. And I am dreadfully embarrassed by my earlier tirade.

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Real men, and real game reviewers, are not ashamed to admit their mistakes.

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However. Let me say this. Braid and its writer are so unbelievably full of themselves that you will find it a challenge not to hate them at times. If I meet this guy at some convention or whatever, I'm punching him.

It's a unique and story-driven platform puzzler. That is all. It's not art. And its writing leaves a lot to be desired.
It is, however, testament to the game that whenever I pressed 'backspace' during the writing of this amended article, I got a little trippy and felt that I was reversing time with the button.

(That could also because I haven't slept since yesterday.)

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FINAL UPDATE:

I finished the game. It was fun, although the last few stages were ridiculously hard and I had to use a walkthrough. Shockingly, this walkthrough did not ruin the game as warned. Indeed all the statements on the website turned out to be bullshit - there was quite a bit of filler, for instance.)

The last level was very, very good in terms of the story and how it presents it. There's a little gimic relating to reversing time which made me want to applaud. Then you have to read a lot more bad poetry while the themes are made more vague for no reason, and the story of the game is compared needlessly to the creation of the nuclear bomb. That bizarre comparison really jarred with the rest of the game, making it seem a bit awkward.

The ending was going beautifully - better than anything you see in games and genuinely expanding the medium..... until it got too far up its own bum and became deliberately inpenetrable.
The rest of the game was just the same.
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Three pretentious faux-watercolour backdrops out of five.