Braid: (Un)equivocal Recommendation

So, Braid’s finally arrived on Xbox Live, and shot straight to the top of the charts. Developer Jonathan Blow is rightly chuffed – he’s reporting in the region of 30,000 sales and counting, and I haven’t seen so many 10/10 scores in a long time. In fact, Braid is rated the 10th best Xbox 360 game ever and, to be honest, I’d say it was better than most of those anyway – though in a very different way.

Blow has a habit of coming over a bit preachy, but this release has pretty much justified every evil he may ever have done. The game – or at least, the gameplay – is a true triumph of design over budget, and, as Blow points out, goes further than most indie games to reinforce the idea that an independent game can be more than just another retro shooter.

Clearly, though, Blow has an advantage in Braid over the AAA titles – it’s one of simplicity. The core concepts of the game may be fresh, and the level design astounding, but nonetheless its relative simplicity compared to a Bioshock or an Oblivion make it somewhat easier to achieve those 10/10 scores.

The major flaw to the thing is its writing. Blow’s high aspirations are in full, overly verbose flow, and the abstract, intentionally murky story really undermines his lofty intentions – it’s as if he’s saying his story is so artistic it doesn’t need to make sense. For a time it looks like it’s going to go somewhere exciting, somewhere valuable for gaming as a whole, and then it drifts off into Lynchian obscurity, breeding endless discussions of what it all really means. There’s nothing wrong with a subtle piece of story telling and some healthy interpretation on the part of the reader, but hiding your big picture beneath endless layers of confusion doesn’t make you an artist, it just makes people think you are.

Still, it’s nice to see people trying, and I’d take Braid’s writing and plot over 99% of the crap that’s usually turned out by this industry. And I wouldn’t dismiss the gameplay’s quality for a moment – play this thing.