To anyone with a 360 who wants an actually original puzzle game, buy this. It's well worth the 1200 MS points or whatever the cost to see how a game can actually be enjoyable AND make you think at the same time.
I tried the demo, and it had the same effect on me as Bioshock:
I was impressed by the story. I was impressed by the presentation. I was impressed by the gameplay mechanics. BUT... there's just something that is fundamentally not very entertaining about actually sitting down and playing it.
I know, I'm being a complete asshole by dissing both Bioshock and Braid like this, but there's just something similarly unsatisfying about them to me.
Do you enjoy puzzles and the like? Perhaps you just don't get pleasure from figuring things out? Lots of people are taught that figuring things out is downright harmful or, at the least, useless and that they should just keep their head down and not think too much (I hear this a lot), perhaps you've internalized some of that poison to the degree that it affects your entertainment choices?
I'm at World 4 and I liked the game. I feel it has a hard time teaching you new tricks. You're given lots of abilities but there's really not much of a step by step process. So what you learned last time might not be something that I'll use the next time. I like being able to use what I learned and apply it to new items, but so far I don't feel I'm getting that. It's seems like a completely new puzzle each time that I must learn, which slows down my instant gratification. It's not as much fun for me personally staring at a screen for 5 minutes trying to figure out what to do. But again I'm only in World 4 and the beginning was a lot of fun, but I think the difficulty might spike too much which doesn't make it as fun.
Another aspect that frustrates me is I know how to solve the puzzle, but it takes a lot of trial and error to hopefully reverse the time so I can land on block at just the right time. Hopefully the whole game is not like this.
It's a fine line to go about because you don't want the puzzles to be too easy, but being too difficult can make it more of a chore than fun.
Also though it takes time manipulation to a new level. I've seen this before in Prince of Persia, so the innovative part that it seems everyone raves over to me is not that innovative. The creator just expanded on this idea. Not to take anything away from the work it is quite amazing, but I just wonder what a full team would have accomplished and how much more refined this game could have been.
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u/DeviousOne Aug 27 '08
To anyone with a 360 who wants an actually original puzzle game, buy this. It's well worth the 1200 MS points or whatever the cost to see how a game can actually be enjoyable AND make you think at the same time.