Braid: Best Game Of The Year?

You may have heard of Braid and its "ridiculous" price of a whopping 1200 points on Xbox Live Arcade (that's just under $20 AUD) in a time when most other XBLA games cost only 800 points (around $13 AUD). Well, I'm here to tell you it's well worth it.

I finished the game last night and I must say I was mightily impressed, especially considering it's an XBLA game. It looks and sounds like nothing else and the gameplay, while appearing deceptively simple, is quite a brain buster.

At the time of writing, Braid is the highest rated XBLA game ever with a metascore of 92/100. But it doesn't stop there, it's the 10th highest rated Xbox 360 game ever. That's right, a $20 game kicks the butt of huge budget extravaganzas like Mass Effect and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfare.

The Story

Before I get into the nitty gritties I first have to mention the story in Braid. To quote Wikipedia, "Braid features Tim, a man searching for a princess. His relationship with this princess is vague at best, and the only clear part of this relationship is that Tim has made some sort of mistake which he hopes to reconcile or, if possible, erase. As one progresses through the six worlds in Braid, storyline text at the beginning of each world provides further insight into Tim's quest for his princess."

Yes, there's a princess and you play as the hero battling through the game to save her. But you're no knight in shining armour but just a guy in a suit and there's mention of locations in modern US cities and other less-than-fairy tale happenings that lead the player to believe this is Tim's glossing over of real world happenings.

The story progresses as you traverse the various worlds starting at World #2 and finishing at World #1. The final world is treated differently to the rest of the game leaving the player to just get through each area without worrying about picking up the jigsaw puzzle pieces. It also plays out in a rather ambiguous way leaving the player to decide what really happened to Tim in the real world.

The thing I like most about the story is it doesn't intrude one bit. You can just walk straight past all the story books and press the (A) button to shut the little dinosaur up at the end of each world. After playing through Halo 3 recently where cut scenes look like Hollywood movies and other characters in the game keep interrupting you while you're playing, Braid was a relief.

Gameplay and Game Mechanics

If there was one thing people who have played Braid will mention it's the ability to manipulate the flow of time. At any point during the game you hold down the (X) button and everything you've just done runs backwards. If you want to go back faster you can hit the left shoulder or trigger to speed it up. Having this mechanic in the game means you cannot die as you do in traditional platformers.

You may think this makes the game a cakewalk, well think again. Each area in each world presents you with a different and unique challenge which often requires you to use your ability to manipulate time just to make it through. Also, you find that each world obeys its own laws of time. For example the first world is a straight up platforming world where you only use the time-rewind to un-die but the second world introduces you to certain objects (they glow green) that don't obey your time manipulation. You need to use this objects to achieve your goals. Take a look at the screenshot (above/left) and guess how you might get that green glowing key over to the door. Another is a world where time stops if you stop, runs backwards if you move to the left of the screen and forward if you move to the right. Wikipedia has a complete list and short description of each of the worlds.

As you'd expect each progressive world gets more difficult than the previous but that's only if you want to solve the jigsaw puzzles. You can wander through each area of each world almost untouched to progress through the game. This is another example of letting the player choose how they wish to play... I'm looking at you console games with your checkpoints "just to make it more difficult".

So while appearing on the surface to be a regular old platformer Braid plays more like a puzzle solving game a la Portal than a red-overalled jumping and plumbing game.

The Visuals

As you can see from the screenshots and video below this game looks like a work of art. The painted backdrops are constantly changing and flowing giving you a wonderful sense of life while remaining abstract and "in" Tim's imagination. If there is one example you would look to in the argument of "can video games be art" it's Braid. I was so taken aback by the visuals that it took me a while to figure out that the opening title (seen at the top of this post) was actually part of the game where you had to run to the right of the screen.

The character design is very simple and keeps to the platformer roots of Braid where the animations only have a few frames each for different movements (if any). I enjoyed seeing the little pink rabbits go flying off the screen. The characters were redrawn (not redesigned) after the backdrop artist had done his work. Again, to quote Wikipedia, "The worlds and backgrounds were designed by David Hellman, who was responsible for the art in the critically-acclaimed webcomic A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible. The character visuals were originally created by Edmund Mcmillen, but were later redrawn by Hellman "to better match the now-predominant style of the backgrounds".

Personally I can't think of another game that even looks remotely like Braid and in doing so brings a much needed break from the overbearing "gritty realism" that seems to plague the current generation of games.

The Audio

The first thing that strikes you when listening to Braid is there's no huge orchestral score, no Matrix-esque techno soundtrack, not even a layer of Corporate Rock. What you get is music to match the visuals, calming, beautifully haunting celtic-like instrumentals (I'm not talking about Enya here). Each world has different music which plays in accordance with the current passage of time. This means if you rewind time the music plays in reverse or if you're in the world where time is backwards then when you reverse time the music plays forwards. The music was all licensed from Magnatune which has a complete list of the tracks used.

As with the character design the sound effects are kept to a minimum so as not to interfere with the mood of the game. Some of the more notable sounds are the pink rabbits that sound like cats (weird!), the clapping hand sound of the man-eating plants that appear out of Mario-esque green pipes and the strange groans the balloon-head guys make when they get knocked off platforms.

The music and sparse sound effects all come together to produce a very calming game that's wonderful just to sit and listen to.

The Problems

My only real problem with the game overall is Tim's pants. Yes, his pants. His pants are white and some ladders are white so in the heat of the moment your brain registers the edge of Tim as the bottom of his jacket rather than his feet. I don't know how many times I tried jumping off ladders too soon due to this issue but thanks to the very handy (X) button rewind it was just a matter of going back a few seconds and trying again.

One thing I'd like to see added to Braid is the ability to pause the game leaving the current level visible. As it stands when you press pause you're presented with the full screen menu screen hiding what you were just looking at. The reason I would like to see this is so you can study the layout of the land without fear of being blasted by a fireball or attacked by a pink rabbit. One way around this is to hit the (X) button then the right shoulder or trigger button which sets time to play forward at x0 speed, that is, standing still.

A very minor problem is the title of the game. I was originally put off by the name "Braid", which comes from the story's Princess whipping Tim in the face with her braid as she spins around to walk away from him, but I'm not sure what I would call it otherwise.

The last problem is that now I'll be expecting every game to incorporate the time rewind feature, it certainly acts as a sedative for gamer rage.

Overall

I'm not sure if the game is poking fun at or paying homage to classic platformer games which work in similar ways but punish you for hitting buttons at the wrong millisecond. What I am sure of is it was a beautiful breath of fresh air in a stale game market where every big game is just a sequel to a game we've already played.

All this for $20 AUD. Easily 4 hours of totally original gameplay costing me a whopping $5 an hour. It took me 8-odd hours to get through Halo 3 and that game costs around $100 so that's $12.50 an hour for gameplay almost identical to the previous 2 Halo games, just a bit prettier.

So, jump onto XBLA and spend your hard earned cash on what could be the best game of the year.