Monday, August 11, 2008

Braid

Here’s me, jumping on the OMG Braid!!1! bandwagon, but seriously… if you haven’t even played the demo, and consider yourself a gamer, you owe it to yourself to stop whatever you’re doing and go get it. For some reason, my credit card was being blocked from buying the full version after playing the demo, but I actually got off my ass, drove to the movie rental / game shop place in town, and bought a 1400 point card to come back home and unlock the full game with.

It’s worth it.

There isn’t too much I can say without giving too much away, but the creators were influenced by the Prince of Persia and Blinx the Time Sweeper. Both of those titles use time manipulation in different ways, but for the most part, the time controlling aspect is limited in one way or another. PoP uses ‘time sand’, and Blinx was so awful I’ve blocked any gameplay experiences I had with it out. Braid takes the approach that ‘why not just have it at your disposal all the time, and you can go as far back in time as you want, none of this ten second burst shit?’ Then it takes it a step further, and changes the rules for each ‘world’.

That’s all I’m going to say. The game thrives on the end user’s sense of exploration and experimentation, and unless you’re a complete asshole that hates enjoying games, you won’t go wrong to just purchase it outright and even skip the demo altogether.

Also, still images don’t do the engine any justice. The backgrounds bloom and shift and change constantly, while moving forward and backward in time. It’s fucking awesome. Go get it.

No comments: