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Braid is a puzzle-platformer, drawn in a painterly style, where the player manipulates the flow of time in strange and unusual ways.
From a house in the city, journey to a series of worlds and solve puzzles to rescue an abducted princess.
In each world, you have a different power to affect the way time behaves, and it is time's strangeness that creates the puzzles.
The time behaviors include: the ability to rewind, objects that are immune to being rewound, time that is tied to space, parallel realities, time dilation, and perhaps more.
Braid treats your time and attention as precious; there is no filler in this game.
Every puzzle shows you something new and interesting about the game world.
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 An absolutely unique game |
| Review Date: November 29, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Nona, CA United States |
Braid has been out on other platforms for about a year already, but has just recently been released for the PS3. Nothing significant has changed between the PS3 version and the original Xbox 360 version of the game, but if you haven't played this game yet you should seriously think about getting it.
Braid is a puzzle game set in the guise of a 2D platformer. If you are even vaguely familiar with classic Super Mario, then you will recognize all sorts of references to monsters, levels, and themes from those games. However, Braid's central mechanic is the ability to "rewind time", which lets you, among other things, undo mistakes that you might make, whether that be accidentally walking into an enemy or jumping into a pit full of spikes. As such, you can't really "die", and you can easily experiment without fear of failure. As you progress through the game, new mechanics (which all are based on manipulating time) are gradually introduced.
The main objective of this game is to collect various "puzzle pieces", and these form the core of the puzzle aspect of the game. To obtain these pieces, you will have to think about how you use the time-based mechanics to reach those pieces. By the end of the game, some of the puzzles are quite challenging, but because of the time-rewind mechanic, you can easily experiment with many different ideas without any downtime.
The art and music in the game are both wonderful. They compliment each other very nicely, and the music also interacts well with the time-rewind mechanic. The story of the game is actually quite mysterious, but I really shouldn't say anything more about that. If you are even remotely thinking about playing this game in the future, make sure you don't consult any Internet sources which could spoil the story for you - this not only includes game guides but also websites like Wikipedia.
I only have a few minor complaints about this game. I'm not sure if the Xbox 360 version has these minor problems, but I kept getting random errors after obtaining puzzle pieces, which thankfully don't crash the system and can be ignored with a click of a button. Also, the online ranking for speed runs seems to be somewhat buggy. Finally, the game is quite short. The length of the game obviously depends on your puzzle solving abilities; I was able to finish the game in about four hours without any outside assistance. However, the quality of the gameplay experience is so high that $15 is not an unreasonable price for the game. After all, going to the movies costs around $10 for a few hours of entertainment, and Braid is better than most movies out there. If there's one substantial negative about the game, it's the fact that it ends! |
Awesome
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| Review Date: December 4, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Keith, |
This is an awesome game. Definitely, try to make your way through without using any walkthroughs. The puzzles are all solvable if you take some time to think about them (and there is not much to the game other than the puzzles, so if you don't take the time to solve them you won't get anything out of the game)
My one complaint is that, despite being expensive for a PSN title (most games are in the $5 to $10 range; this is $15) is it really, really short. If you're good at puzzles, it should not take you more than a day or two to finish the game. Having said that, there is a little replay value -- the full-game speed run is not easy, and collecting all the stars is quite challenging if you don't use a walkthrough for them (and not that easy, even if you do)
It's an excellent game though, and if the extra $5 that you will spend (over other PSN titles) doesn't matter to you, it's worth it. It is definitely not "just another game". |
Great game, makes you really use your brain.
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| Review Date: December 31, 2009 |
| Reviewer: K. Verma, |
| this game makes you think. gets the whole family involved(at least for my case). everyone i have showed it to loved it. |
Mind-Eye Coordination
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| Review Date: January 27, 2010 |
| Reviewer: A. Dent, Minas Anor, GD |
Mind-eye coordination, curiosity and some sense of humor are what it takes to successfully travel Braid because that's the kind of journey Braid is. You don't need above-average reflexes or uncommon mastery of the dual-shock to beat this game even though such skills would help and beating the game is not ALL what the game is about. Braid is a good illustration of the belief that many quests are more about the journey you take to get there than what you get when you finally reach your destination.
The main objective seems to be saving the princess - not that she specifically asked you for help - because she seems to be bothered by some monster. But for reasons unclear, the princess doesn't seem to like you much. And so you move back and forth through half a dozen worlds of warped dimensions, stepping on bouncing heads and killer rabbits as you collect pieces of jigsaw puzzles and figure out clever - sometimes impossibly clever - ways to get the keys that take you from here to there.
And strange worlds they are: strictly two-dimensional as far as space goes, allowing you to move up or down and forward and back, where the lack of a third spacial dimension is more than compensated by time's strange behavior. Time is fully reversible and the good news is the you have as much control over time as you have over your two-dimensional jumps in game's flat space. When you die in Braid you don't get to use one of those silly 'extra lives' that many games give you. You simply go back in time, as far back as it takes, to a time where you were still alive, learn for your mistakes and simply try to do better next time - or is it the same time rewound? And time is different in the different worlds. In some worlds it's totally related to your movements, elsewhere it flows differently depending on where you are or your simple presence or actions may alter the flow of time - flowing more slowly near you and faster farther away. There is even a world where time's default movement is what we like to call 'backwards'.
Oh, I forgot, the objective... saving the princess, right? Well... we better don't go there. Or you go there and then see for yourself :) and getting there is ALL of the fun, trust me. Then, when it's all over, you spend a lot of 'time', if you can afford it, wondering what all that was about and what it really meant.
I hope I was able to give you a hint of what makes Braid such a fun game for some, fun AND intriguing for most who play it. Visually and in many ways mechanically, Braid may seem Little Big Planet's poor cousin and it could be played that way, only it couldn't because there's a bunch of puzzles to solve and it sometimes it takes a huge amount of brain power and thinking WAY out of the box to solve some of them. Unlike LBP, you don't get points or stickers and there's no top one-million. There isn't even a linear progression from 'easy' challenges to 'harder' - thankfully, you can bypass most of the puzzles you can't figure out when you encounter them for the first time and can come back later and try again. The satisfaction you get is that of 'beating' the game but proving yourself worthy to go farther and to get closer with each piece of the puzzle you collect to what you assume it's the final goal of saving the princess and, once you get to do that... ahh... better not talk about it.
I wouldn't call Braid 'a must have' game but, like it's sometimes the case with some of the downloadable little games you get at the PSN, it's a very original game and it can be an enjoyable game. Definitely worth a try and it won't cost you a mint.
For what it's worth, Braid was originally developed for the Xbox and, I believe, the PC and it's been one of the most popular if not THE most popular downloadable game in the Xbox universe. The PS3 version is as shiny and beautiful as the original, with stunning hand-painted backgrounds, simple but flawless animation and controls well mapped onto the dual-shock. |
Great gaming experience
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| Review Date: March 5, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Ban V. Tran, |
| This is one of the most creative puzzle games to date. It makes you really think. Once you figure out all the puzzles, however, there isn't much incentive to go back to replay the stages. For $10, it's definitely a must play game. |
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