Buy this fucking game. I know that's saved for the bottom of a review, but I can't hold it in any longer. Get Microsoft Points however you have to, get a 360 however you have to, and buy this fucking game. Buy it, support Jonathan Blow, fuck the whole pricing debate, fuck how you feel about Microsoft's price gauging, if you support games with a meaning, if you don't want FPS' and minigames exclusively from here on out, buy this game.

I suppose I actually have to talk about the game too though, so I will do my best. One of the questions people seem to be asking the most is, what exactly is Braid? Braid is, at the core, a platformer. It can be played as such, without too much brain damage. You can tell Braid had a large influence from the original Super Mario Bros. Your main attack is jumping on enemies heads, there are green pincers that come out of green pipes, reminiscent of the Pirahna Plants, even though in Braid the pipes are flush with the ground. At the end of each world you come across a castle only to be told "The princess is in another castle", however for much different reasons than SMB, and there are even some level design parts that completely mirror the first level of Donkey Kong.

However, to really get the themes and the most out of Braid, you will be utilizing the reversal techniques a lot. I've seen some people calling the feature "going back in time", but I feel that is inaccurate, as it's closer to the fact that you're undoing your mistakes rather than traveling back in time. There's more than pressing the reversal button, the X button by the way. Throughout the different worlds different mechanics are introduced, though rarely stacked. In one world, the enemies only move in tandem with you, in one you can slow down a small portion of the level, and so on.

As you have probably heard, you cannot die in Braid. This is true. Normally this would be lame, such as the upcoming Prince of Persia game, and would sap the game of all challenge. However, it doesn't as the game is designed for you to have to use the reversal mechanic a lot. I would compare the difficulty to an old Mega Man game, not difficult due to faulty design, but more of a trial-and-error difficult, one that forces you to learn from your mistakes. The infinite retry mechanic, combined with the difficulty, work beautifully in conjunction, where if either of them had been in a game by themselves, would have been annoying at best.



If amazing gameplay isn't your cup of tea, let me say that Braid is one of the most beautiful games I've played in years, visually and audibly. From what I can tell all of the graphics are hand drawn and the animations are fluid. The soundtrack is fully instrumental and sets a perfect mood for the flow of the game.

This is where I was thinking about typing "Braid's story is what really makes it shine", but the story really doesn't outmatch the gameplay, which isn't a bad thing for the story, it's a testament to the gameplay, because the way the story is presented is fucking amazing. The game is narrated through text excerpts that precede every world, which you can go back and view at any time. When I started the game I was unimpressed by this, thinking it was due to laziness, and that they should have done it through a cutscene or some other storytelling technique. However, by the time I finished the game, I realized why it was set up this way. Braid's story and messages come across on several levels, and it is often necessary to go back and read the previous entries to fully understand what you know at the end of the game.

To show what I mean about the complexity of the narration, I've abridged some of the text from the first world, all of this you can read in the demo, I'm not spoiling anything, trust me. "Tim made a mistake. Not just one. He made many mistakes during the time they spent together. Such a mistake will change a relationship irreversibly, even if we have learned from the mistake and would never repeat it. If we've learned from a mistake and become better for it, shouldn't we be rewarded for the learning, rather than punished for the mistake? What if our world worked differently? We could remove the damage but still be wiser for the experience." At this point, I could tell you that this is in reference to the gameplay mechanics, the game's storyline, or an observation of human nature, and any of them would be correct.



Unfortunately, I cannot fully analyze the story as I do not know how it ends. Yes folks, I am sad to tell you that you are reading impressions of an unbeaten game, which brings me to what possibly might be my only complaint about the game. After presenting such a thought-provoking tale, you can't actually see the ending until you collect every puzzle piece in every level. The puzzle pieces are presented as an optional collectible, but the reality of the matter is that they are a very large portion of the game. In the first levels, you have to figure out a few puzzles to get from the beginning of the level to the end, and the really hard challenges are saved for the puzzle pieces. By the end of the game, you can practically walk through the worlds, straight from point A to point B, and all the puzzles are reserved for the pieces.

Anyways, as I was saying, to see the ending of the game, not the "true ending", just any resolution at all, you must get every puzzle piece, and let me tell you, some of them are fucking hard to get. Like, Portal advanced maps hard. I downloaded the game at 3 am and had gotten past all the worlds by 5 am, having only 100% World 2 (which is actually the first world). But apparently I'm not of the highest intellect, as our good Reverend Anthony started and finished the game at the same times as me, and he had 100% the entire game, so I'm sure he will discuss the ending in his review of the game, which I am quite looking forward to, since he actually saw it unlike me. Now I'm not saying I have given up on those remaining puzzle pieces, just that they won't be gotten today, tomorrow, or any other time soon.

If Xbox Live Arcade was a radio station, Braid would be the Stairway to Heaven, the Freebird, the Beethoven's 9th played among all the Fall Out Boy songs. Please buy Braid.