Game Cryer Review: Braid
Braid is a game available on Xbox 360 via Live Arcade, as well as on PC, MAC, and now Linux. Developed by independent software developer Jonathan Blow, Braid is a blending of side-scrolling platformer – with its cliché and over-used aspects you’ve seen a hundred times – and puzzle game. By combining these aspects, the game succeeds at blending into a gaming experience completely unlike any other I’ve ever had.
This game has taken everything I expected from a platformer and turned it on its side. Braid manages to be creative, innovative, challenging, and surprisingly cerebral. Playing the game through from start to finish, taking your pleasure from simply reaching the next level is simple, giving little, if any, challenge. The real game exists in the puzzles, and some will have you baffled for ages as you attempt to manipulate time itself to position yourself, your enemies, and even aspects of the terrain where you need them at just the perfect moment to make everything line up like a well thought out action scene in some over budget, under written Hollywood “masterpiece.” If you like puzzles and old-school plat formers then I’d recommend this for you, as I will be going back to play it again after I finish this review
