Braid

I've been wanting to write this review for ages, because I have a lot of things to get off my chest about this game and the various opinions regarding it.

Braid is an indie darling to put it simply. It was initially developed by Jonathan Blow after he had come up with the concept back in 2004. He did his rounds rounds with the game for a few years going to indie contests and so on before managing to sign various agreements with the relevant companies to bring the game to the Xbox, PS3 and PC around 2008 to 2009. I honestly don't remember when I bought the game on Steam, but I know I only played it fairly recently.

I know that I might lose +Ahmed Jadaa as a friend as a result of this review since he has some pretty strong emotions regarding the game. This feeling is also shared by many people across the world who shower the game with praise regarding its narrative, its merging of story and mechanics and its place as an academic piece worth studying. But, I can't honestly say that I feel the same way. Braid was a mediocre experience for me at best and that is being forgiving since it has some very obvious and major flaws.

It being a puzzle platformer pretty much didn't do it any favors in my book since that is by definition the stalest and oldest genre in videogames. There really wasn't anything that unique about the mechanics in the game either. Yes, you are given the ability to reverse time, but that isn't new, a very prominent recent example would be the 'Prince of Persia' series which used the control of time as one of its main selling points. The fact you had to time jumps to solve puzzles in the levels is not unique, people have had to pull off timed jumps off of enemies since platformers came into existence and if you watch any speed run of these old platformers these timed jumps are key to actually completing the levels. Mechanically, Braid was boring, it brought nothing new to the table, in fact it used mechanics that had already been standards in the industry and took them a step back by either slowing them down or taking them from a three dimensional setting to a two dimensional setting.

Visually and musically the game also has nothing new to offer. The worlds and enemies are clearly derived from older platformers like the Sonic and Mario games. The quality of the art is decent, but again, its not that special, comparing it to 'The Banner Saga' which is another hand drawn game there is a massive gap between the two in terms of the quality of the artwork that is on display. Before getting into the music in the game I just wanted to say that musically I consider myself functionally illiterate or whatever the music equivalent is so I can't really discuss the composition. But, what I can mention is due to the fact that the music reverses when you reverse time in the game meaning that you will find yourself listening to same couple of seconds of music over and over and over again as you try to solve level making you feel like you are trapped in some kind of Kafkaesque nightmare.

Going on to the last remaining piece of the game, the narrative, I can't honestly call it anything but a joke. This isn't entire due to the content, its was written a fine enough manner. This is due to the manner in which the player is subjected to it, because unlike most game you don't experience the narrative as the game goes on you are punished with it at the end of each world as it hits you in the form of a wall of text void of any voice over or any possible convenience to help convey the narrative that have been perfected by the videogame industry over the last fifty years. The game is in fact one the most if not the most disconnected game when it comes to its narrative and gameplay, it is literally like they exist in two world separated from each other due to the terrible design choice to exclusively tell the player to read the narrative in huge chunks between each world where not even the font is make to be entertaining to ease the boredom of the experience. Hell, even the twist in the end where the Princess is actually shown to be running away from you instead of towards you to rescue her isn't even that substantial of a plot twist because by the end of it all I could care less about anything that was going on in the game. I just wanted it to be over.

This game deserves none of the praise its been given. The narrative is displayed terribly, the level and enemy design is derivative and music is nothing to write home about. To me this game is the videogame equivalent of Duchamp's submission of the urinal as a piece of art back in 1917. But unlike the urinal and Duchamp's this work right here isn't designed to insult and challenge anyone to rethink current trends. It is just a mediocre work pretending to be something great which it isn't in any manner whatsoever, but enough people bought into it to allow that to happen but I guess that is what makes it more similar to modern art than anything else.