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tucked away between the folds of time, safe (or: Braid)
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helicopterp
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:02 am    Post subject: tucked away between the folds of time, safe (or: Braid) Reply with quote

I haven't made it very far yet. Just as far as to be inside world 2, but I adore it.

Perhaps I'm a sucker for tone: between the lovely art and the superb score, it had me hooked from the start. Even the layering of the background scenery (a la Yoshi's Island, but here much more intricate) contributes to the kind of lush environment that is tough to resist.

But more than the visual panache (by the way, David Hellman, great work)--this is a complicated idea presented underneath a veneer of the most rote game in games history. The goomba-ish creatures, the piranha plants, the (almost too painfully) obvious "Your princess is in another castle.


Has anyone else figured out how to get the way high up piece in "Cloud Bridge" (world 2, stage 2)? It's positively brilliant, but it takes some doing and some figuring.




Oh! And a speed-run leaderboard!
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Continuing from other thread: oh, I know the pieces you mean. The lower one does take some thought. Though if you've solved the top one...

Yeah, having played the game extensively before, it's kind of like Portal in that once you know what you're doing it's a one-sitting game. Which is fine! Desirable, even. That said, I think they slightly changed a couple of solutions since the last version I played...
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 1:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was wondering how you got to 60 so quickly!

I hit 46 pieces today and I'm at a wall. Jumpman and Elevator Action are great stages, and very polite nods.


And do the "Pit" stages seem to hypothesize a different version of the atari E.T.?




Oh, and I did figure out the second puzzle piece on Cloud Bridges (before I read your post, thank you). I had been on the right track earlier, but it was finnicky on the placement.


Come to think of it, precision has become more of an issue than I thought it would be.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 3:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is one of those few games where I've been pretty psyched for it since I first heard about it a couple months before GDC'07. I've since missed about three oppertunities to play the game, yet somehow I'm still pretty excited about the game.

I was up when the game was released so I grabbed it. I like it, quite a bit. The game is consistently gorgeous, the music is brilliant, and the puzzles are clever if not a bit frustrating at times. It's actually more straight forward than I expected.

I have one however: I don't particularly care for the sound effects. I don't know what it is about them but they can be completely jarring and don't really meld well with the game sometimes.

I'm hesitant to say much more though as I only have about 25 pieces and still haven't seen the last two worlds at all.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 4:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I rushed through all the worlds just to check them out, then went back and solved World 2. The solution for the last two pieces was incredibly wonderful. The sound effects do bother me, though, as Shaper said. They feel out of place, cheesy. Looking forward to figuring out the rest of the game, for sure.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 5:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

JasonMoses wrote:
The sound effects do bother me, though, as Shaper said. They feel out of place, cheesy.

Cool, I thought I may be alone on this one because no one else had said it. They feel cheap to me, considering the level of attention everything else got it seems like they just ended up using their placeholder sounds for the final sound effects. It really reminds me of java/flash game sounds, like something I'd expect to hear in Puzzle Quest or something.

EDIT: I hate to be so critical of something like this because it's really a small thing. Also, I haven't made many other comments because, well, I haven't finished it yet.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 5:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shaper, you are not complaining about the "emo prose" or the "lack of value in a game that I'll only play once in 3-5 hours," so I think you're ok.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 5:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

helicopterp wrote:
I was wondering how you got to 60 so quickly!

Check out the credits.

Even so, that last level still hits me like a brick.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 5:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I like how the menu works; more games should do that.

...As you can see, I'm not very far yet! I think this might be a good game to wait and play at night.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 6:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, that's something I've done in a few games I've designed. To hell with titles and introductions. If there are any, they can come after the game is established.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 11:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I just tried the game again and managed to blast through the first world (grabbed all puzzle pieces). Cute... while also kinda annoying. I'm not sure if I'm more or less interested in buying the full game now. I guess I'll try to solve the rest of the trail and find out.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 11:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, finished the demo! I feel cheated by some of the solutions. I still don't know whether I should shell out for it... too much good stuff on XBLA and I don't know if the PC version will have any advantages...
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 10:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

played braid.

i have most of the puzzle pieces, though the remaining ones feel well out of my grasp.

most of my thoughts on the lack of bullshit in the game are here.

i do, however, like the way the game uses tropes of the platform genre - super mario bros. in particular - and gives them an emotional context. it's a game about changing the past, which reflects the protagonist's desire to right the mistakes which caused the princess to become distant from him.
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 3:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

most of the puzzles felt beyond my ability the first time i encountered them; by spending a little bit of time, though, i was able to work through all of them. i admire this design.

the ending is an epiphany.
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 3:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i still feel cheated by a few of the puzzles :/
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 3:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

you still hate portal for not being lode runner.
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 3:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm pretty certain that wasn't my reason for thinking it's over-rated!
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 6:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've claimed one star, found another, and have suspicions about a third...
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 7:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Being three puzzle pieces away from the top makes me feel crappy.
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 1:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just don't get it. Is the entire thing about trampoline enemies?
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 3:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yep. Every last bit.
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 7:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I can't tell if you're trying to be a snot or not. However the demo was basically just that. I heard there are some puzzles that use the time manipulation interestingly (like a ramp that extends but isn't effected by the rewind so you rewind yourself back to it). but I wish the demo tried to wow me with puzzles.
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 10:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very minor spoilers in this response to Worm.

Is the demo just the first available world? Because if so, yeah, that's easily the least interesting world in terms of concept. It's just a traditional platforming game that, depending on your patience and deliberate use of rewidning, you can play "perfectly" on your first attempt. It doesn't advance conceptually beyond Prince of Persia.

Later worlds go much, much further.

But yes, the properties of enemies do play a big part--the fact that they move in a specific way, the fact that they can pick up keys, the fact that you bounce higher off an enemy than you jumped initially. All the straightforward mechanics of Mario-like platformers transform into something new when viewed through the lens of Braid's morphing temporal rules. The second world introduces the "green aura" property (of items, of obstacles, of enemies, or of the protagonist himself) which signifies an item continues moving forward in time regardless of the player's use of the X button. The third world forces everything but the player to move forward or backward in time proportionally to the player's movement right or left; so it's impossible to unlock a door from the right, because the attempt to move through it from the right returns it to the state of being locked. Et cetera.
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Worm wrote:
I can't tell if you're trying to be a snot or not.

Your question was rather ambiguous.

If Braid is about anything, it's blinding obsession.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CByBMKiiHtA

I've not played the demo, actually. What does it consist of? World 2 and a couple of later levels? I keep hearing it's not very illustrative.

Jon Blow wanted the demo to be more representative of the full game, but Microsoft told him off for giving away too much for free.
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 11:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dessgeega wrote:
the ending is an epiphany.


Now I realize how literally you meant that.



The end encourages a very skeptical view of the six worlds: aside from the overworld, the player's actions occur in cryptic outsized dreamscapes, all of which only exist in relation to their contrived puzzles: pastoral; full of pillows and home furnishings; ruined castle foundations. The grand disillusion in the finale*, then, draws attention to the sheer absurdity of these stages, which the player takes for granted because it feels so familiar as a game experience. I read the worlds and puzzles as hopeless projections: daring mental exercises, to be certain, but major products of Tim's Humbertesque (in scale more than style) delusion. The worlds' aesthetic origins in the overworld--they are, essentially, extrapolations of real places and memories--further strengthen this reading. In this light, the bathroom acquires a degree of heft that no other room in the house enjoys. It is a funny space in which to anchor the real.



What a rich game.


The two puzzle pieces that had held me up for a day finally yielded to my efforts, but in very different ways. In one, I discovered a lever that I had not seen previously. It was quite easy. In the other, my tinkering accidentally led me to a fuller understanding of a play mechanic, and the little light switch in my head clicked. It felt wonderful.



*as well as the mention of Canal St in the epilogue.
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 11:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

on selectbutton i compared the game to victor gijsbers's the baron, another game i admire greatly, in that the true resolution of both games involves rejecting the tradtional hero / damsel fantasy in which the games open - the fantasy in which most of the games medium is trapped.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 5:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Everytime I hear people talk about the game I want to play it less and less.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 8:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was disappointed that the game's puzzles were so linear, all the way up to the very end. I never really felt like I was working through anything, it just felt like I had finally guessed what Jon Blow wanted me to do. There was so much more of a sense of discovery and experimentation in Portal.

I'd still recommend the game to someone, though. Just a little disappointed is all.

(Also, some of the writing is really kinda bad. Creative writing club in high school bad.)
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 9:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

really? you felt braid's puzzles were linear but not portal's focus-tested non-puzzles? i guess my experience was the opposite of yours: i felt like i actually had to figure out how the game worlds worked to get through the puzzles, and i appreciated that they were actually hard. portal never felt like i was actually discovering anything. the way valve seems to approach level design with a labcoat and tweezers kind of puts me off.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 9:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

ooh, i like their lab tests and focus tweezers. that's how Team Fortress 2 got to be so good.

but I'm with dess on this issue: most of Portal's puzzles were more about sequencing, and could be solved with a lot of hard-nosed trial-and-error; Braid's really made me feel as if I were learning something most of the time.


I'm sure you're right about having to figure out just what Jonathan Blow wants you to do. but is that a bad thing? it can be much more interesting/more fun/more useful to relinquish some of your authority to a guiding force, especially in a game like this.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 10:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Haha, yeah, I can see what you're saying about 'labcoat' level design from Valve, but wouldn't that kind of work in Portal?

I guess for me when I approached a puzzle in Braid I either knew exactly what to do or was absolutely stuck. It's that old point-and-click adventure game problem. Not that that's always bad, I guess I was just expecting something different.

With Portal I felt like there was much more of a sense of attacking the puzzles from different angles until you found one that worked. Watching my friend play Portal, he came up with ways through it that had never occurred to me. I don't think that would be true of Braid, but I should probably test that.

I don't mean to say that Portal is the only game that has done this, but it's the example I thought of.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 10:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

kuzdu wrote:
With Portal I felt like there was much more of a sense of attacking the puzzles from different angles until you found one that worked. Watching my friend play Portal, he came up with ways through it that had never occurred to me. I don't think that would be true of Braid, but I should probably test that.

When you try to beat the default time attack times, you'll realize that you were probably doing all of the puzzles very inefficiently and you might even remember that on several you solved them by sheer dumb luck and it will take you a while to remember how to solve it/figure it out again. The solutions required for time attack are almost an entirely different solution from what you did the first time through.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 11:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hmm, see, I started in on the speedruns right after I got all the stars and found that the solutions were the same, I just had to be more efficient with my time. It's true that this sometimes forced me to come up with different sequences in which I did the puzzles, but after that I didn't feel like there was much more to explore. Mark my words, I think we'll see the rock-bottom times for those puzzles pretty soon.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 11:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

aderack wrote:
I've claimed one star, found another, and have suspicions about a third...



kuzdu wrote:
I got all the stars




wait, what?
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 11:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are 8 stars to find that fill in the constellation outside the house. They're basically super-tough puzzles that almost all involve getting up past the edge of the screen on particular levels.

If that's what you're asking. If not, then I apologize for sounding condescending.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 12:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What's kind of fun about the stars is that they are a practical joke on the player. They're the real "fuck you for thinking like a gamer" part of the game.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 9:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

By the way, has everyone seen David Hellman's blogpost about screen size in Braid?

http://www.davidhellman.net/blog/screen-size/

Apparently I was missing a lot of the framing when I played. Makes me want to fix it and play through again.

That's actually one of my favorite things about Braid, that it's short enough to where I can reasonably play it more than once!
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 9:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

kuzdu wrote:
If that's what you're asking.



It was! Thanks.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 1:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, it's kind of creepy that people keep going after the stars even after they find out that one of them requires you to sit around doing nothing for two hours. Seriously! I've read some seriously skewed perspectives on the game (basically that it's obtuse and arbitrary) that are a direct result of thinking that getting the stars is desirable.

I had an incredible moment after finishing Braid. After you complete the epilogue, it tosses you out into the opening scene again. I didn't really take notice of this, and proceeded to wander back into the house. There I was faced with five enormous shrines to meaningless tasks now completed -- the room-filling puzzles looking uneasily like my own living room entertainment units packed floor-to-ceiling with videogames -- and nothing left for me to do.

So for the first time since starting the game, I left the house. Walking to the left from my doorstep, I noticed the world get brighter and more beautiful. And then, at the far left, just off the screen from where you started the game, I noticed a room with a door. It's the door to the epilogue; in fact, the game had dropped me off right beside it after I finished, but I'd completely ignored it -- I'd already forgotten that I hadn't just appeared in the house at the completion of the game.

After that, the only thing that seemed right to do was to leave my own house and go look at the actual stars for a while.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 6:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

To be fair, a lot of the folks who went after the stars at first didn't know whether or not it added anything to the game (which it does).

Also, the two hour wait isn't half as bad as the star that you actually can't get if you've finished the game, requiring you to start all over!
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 6:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

haha

that's totally great.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 6:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, I went through closely examining the levels for secret places I thought I might be able to explore. That was rewarding for a star or two, mostly in that it satisfied my curiosity. I'm just not motivated to pick any further. I mean, I wasn't, as soon as I realized getting any more was going to be a massive time and energy sink of the kind that I loathe.

Speaking of which: yashichi!

You know the other week I only just managed to pull off the minus world trick in SMB1?
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 6:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i havn't played this since i finished it and i'm not really inclined to.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 7:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dessgeega wrote:
really? you felt braid's puzzles were linear but not portal's focus-tested non-puzzles?

Maybe testing and craftsmanship make things better? I mean an organic process doesn't mean organic puzzles and a focused process doesn't mean focused puzzles.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 7:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

maybe!

i feel like valve focus-tested portal until the puzzles had no creative spark in them anymore: until there was no place for actual experimentation and discovery; passing one is just a matter of spotting the trail of landmarks the developers left, realizing what they intended you to do, and repeating it. there's no figuring out. in braid i feel like i'm actually interacting with the world and learning its rules, and that knowledge helps me work toward a solution.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 7:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

are any of you mooks going to the braid release party tomorrow
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 8:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dessgeega wrote:
maybe!

i feel like valve focus-tested portal until the puzzles had no creative spark in them anymore: until there was no place for actual experimentation and discovery; passing one is just a matter of spotting the trail of landmarks the developers left, realizing what they intended you to do, and repeating it. there's no figuring out.


Ah-ha, but don't forget that the huge portion of Portal that's outside the lab is full of puzzles too, and they aren't so easily signposted.
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aderack
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Joined: 15 Jun 2005
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 9:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dessgeega wrote:
i havn't played this since i finished it and i'm not really inclined to.

My afterplaying, which does not amount to much, is about the same as my Riven afterplaying: I go and I wander around and look at stuff.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 10:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

daphaknee wrote:
are any of you mooks going to the braid release party tomorrow

Hell, it was my idea!

Jon Blow didn't want to hold one because he assumed no one would come.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 10:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i would go but i live on the other side of the planet :/
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