"...you can make a wonderful film about nothing. Look at Fellini. The most important thing in a movie is the actor, and everything which is in front of the camera. And the decadence of the cinema, and we have a certain decadence, comes from the glorification of the director as...being not the servant of the actors, but his master...the job of the director is to discover in the actor something more than he knew he had. The job of the director is to choose what he sees. And to an extent, to create. But a great deal of what is applauded as creation is simply there. It was there, when you put the camera...that actor, that bit of scenery, that veil that hung over the river - it was there! And you're intelligent enough to shoot it...the director should be very intelligent, preferably not intellectual. Because the intellectual is the enemy of all the performing arts." - Orson Welles, 1982

When I think about braid I inevitably find myself thinking about Gilligan’s Island.

You know that popular anecdote that Gilligan’s Island is actually a parable about hell, and each character is punished for embodying one of the seven deadly sins? The Professor is Pride, Ginger is Lust, Mr Howell is Greed, etc etc?

You can watch Gilligan’s Island through this lens and it all fits and there might be some behind the scenes evidence to suggest that it was intentional on the part of the creators, that Gilligan’s Island, this goofy little trash comedy from the 60s has these intentional layers to it that reward close examination.

But does that make it worthy of close examination? Does that make it High Art? Does that make it a good show? No, dude, it makes it Gilligan’s Island.

I really wanted to like this game more than I do since I’ve heard so many great things about it but man I didn’t really enjoy my time with it (no it’s not because my brain is dumb shut up)

I really love the time travel mechanics and each unique world gimmick and the way they’re used in some puzzles are well enough especially when you have that eureka moment, but i feel the game should have been a bit longer and fully expanded on it’s gimmicks such as having longer levels and a better varied amount of enemies since I feel some puzzles are a bit cryptic for my liking, this also links to the twist while cool isn’t explained that well. Like I see there’s a good story here but it’s done in the worst way possible in the Super Mario World Speech Boxes, like why not have pictures to tell the plot like what the Puzzle Pieces do. Plus, I feel the game also controls not that well, Tim feels a bit too floaty and then just drops like a dime, I know it was to put emphasis on the time gimmicks but i feel they should done a better job as you’re not going to use Time Powers all the time.

I think the greatest thing about this game is the presentation, great classical music and the unique paint like aesthetic was great so it was the thing that keep me going throughout.

Aw man. It's ya boy, Soulja Boy, tell 'em. They got this game, right? For people who smoke or people who drink. Like, if you drink beer and you get drunk or if you smoke weed and you get high. And you just- anything, like if you- if you just be getting fucked up.

They got this game, right, oh no. This shit called Braid. What the fuck. Watch this shit. It's about this little guy in a- in a suit and he walk around. And he ain't got no point to the game, you just walk around jumping on shit. It look like Mario in the future. And there's Mario in the business suit with his hair dyed orange and a tie on. And he just walking around jumping and shit, but what's the funny part about it is you can do this right here, watch this.
(X)
YOOP!
Now if you didn't catch that, I just went back in time. For the whole game, he just be going back in time. Watch this shit. Like, if you about to die, he be like "AW SHIT, I'M GONNA DIE!"
(X)
"WOAAAAH!!!!!!!"

Não sou de fazer isso, mas me dei ao luxo de após a conclusão, ir em busca de opinião de outras pessoas, não por um estado de euforia que me fazia sentir necessidade de encontrar mais conteúdo da obra, apenas por pura curiosidade. Eu consigo entender perfeitamente o apelo de Braid pro pessoal, visuais agradáveis, música emocionante e uma narrativa mecânica, contudo, me soa que esse jogo apenas faz o básico.

Não desmereço o game, entretanto, me choca ao ver quanto um dos pontos mais altos citados pelas pessoas, é uma história que é fruto das mecânicas, sendo que devia ser algo comum e mínimo para qualquer obra narrativa numa mídia interativa. Além disso, o atordoamento de chamarem qualquer interpretação dos eventos, de teoria é algo que nunca vai me descer bem, "teoria", dá um tom de qualquer hipótese que não tange o literal e essa prisão pela literalidade, é algo bobo; entretanto, não é culpa do jogo.

O que quero dizer no fim do dia, é que Braid é divertido, mas é o arroz com feijão de sempre. Talvez dentro do contexto/época que ele tenha surgido, possa ter inovado, mas o meu eu de hoje, não consegue se surpreender ou se apaixonar por qualquer coisa aqui feita. Sim, a volta no tempo é excelente e cria puzzles genuinamente interessantes e alguns difíceis demais pra alguém como eu, é nesse âmbito que vem as coisas que me agradam de verdade, pois o resto acho básico.

It ain't got no point to the game.

It would be very simple to play Braid in 2023 entirely as a lark, an opportunity to travel back to the year 2008 and come back laughing over just how wrong everyone was. Now, to be fair, everyone was wrong. Braid getting all this high praise for elevating video games, bringing philosophy and deep thought to a commercial video game, and expanding the audience's understanding of games, it all sounds like horseshit nowadays. It throws decades of independent, challenging work under the bus simply because it wasn't on Xbox Live Arcade. There is value in bringing more non-conventional games to the mainstream the way Jonathan Blow was able to by having the game be promoted by a big platform holder, but Braid is not the first game to do that either. Any prestige over Braid being the first Anything might as well be thrown out of the window.

That all being said, I came to Braid with an open mind and left with both more and less than what I expected. First of all, the game looks like ass. It has these painterly backgrounds that look ok, some nice pieces of art for the puzzles, and then every sprite clashes with all of that. Tim looks like shit, he's over-animated to the point of being uncanny, and every other moving thing in the game looks about the same level of bad. It's so sloppily put together in terms of art that I wonder how intentional it is, as this along with the sound effects and library music gives off a general vibe of cheapness, like the game was hurriedly put together. Considering the way the game is a commentary on games, that could be the case, but Blow talking about the care he took into art direction in interviews, and the fact that the upcoming Anniversary Edition looks basically the same but sharper, maybe someone out there thinks this looks good.

The game references Mario constantly, and the physics feel like they’re attempting to mimic Mario World’s, which would be appropriate given the nature of Mario World romhacks at the time which often encouraged save states and rewinding. But it’s completely off. Jumping off enemies often requires multiple attempts, having to rewind constantly because you were one pixel off their needlessly small hitbox. Levels are bizarrely put together in such a way that you never have to engage with any puzzle to progress outside of a small number of required ones. Blow said in interviews that he did this to avoid the constant rewarding of coins or collectibles that games often engage in, but it leads to every level consisting of two or three usually separate puzzle sections just floating in the air, often not connected or progressing from each other. This leads to levels feeling sterile and unexciting, the art does it no favors in, again, looking like it was just put together ungracefully.

The art along with the constant references to Mario emphasize the video gamey-ness of the whole thing. It’s like the game is defying the idea of having to lean towards more conventional story-focused game genres, like it was made on a dare to make a Mario game that was About Something. This game is made up of five main worlds, each one having a unique mechanic that builds on the base mechanic of rewinding and forwarding through time. Before every world, you’re given several paragraphs of text that tell the “story” of the game. Ostensibly the game is about the main character Tim looking for a princess to save after having jeopardized his relationship with her, but eventually, the princess and his struggle to find her come to represent many things. The time mechanics become a commentary on the irreversible nature of our decisions, the desire to go back when we can’t, and the virtue of patience. One world introduces a mechanic where certain objects are not affected by time after the text beforehand explains how Tim attempted to live a life unaffected by the things around him out of fear. Another has a ring that can slow things around him after explaining that Tim still wears what is presumably an engagement ring despite the princess leaving him, and how all social interactions are affected by this ring in a way he must navigate carefully. It’s a unique system of storytelling, and I’m not going to act like the text is poorly written or anything. There are some passages that I found genuinely affecting, but it isn’t an elegant solution for merging storytelling and gameplay at all. I get wanting to avoid cutscenes, but at the end of the day, this mode of storytelling feels too detached and non-committal. As Poyfuh explained in her review, these kinds of readings could be applied to anything, it doesn’t necessarily make this a deeper game than any other platformer. If I wanted to be more generous though, it’s kind of a museum approach to game presentation, as if each level is presented with a plaque next to it. After all, each world is accompanied not only by text but also by a painting, one that is revealed after completing each level of the world. It’s an interesting exercise in how context really can be everything, so I don’t want to completely invalidate it.

A lot of people have pejoratively described Braid’s plot as being another story of a sad straight boy lamenting the fact that he can’t talk to women. This is true, but I have to admit that in multiple parts of my life, I have been the sad straight boy that can’t talk to women, so a lot of the passages hit home in places. Shaking off years of misguiding narratives surrounding romance, and unrealistic depictions of love from fiction, including games, was a tough process that involved a lot of brutal truths, and the way the protagonist is not able to break away from them, felt very relatable. Having to learn that people are not abstract concepts, and the world doesn’t revolve around you, these are all experiences I’ve been through. I was expecting the writing to be laughable, but I ended up seeing myself in it, and I’m willing to admit that despite how embarrassing that may be.

But that’s the problem with Braid. I just spent most of this review talking about the writing, all of which is separate from the game part. Sure, it may have changed my understanding of the gameplay to an extent, but at the end of the day, when I miss what should be a really simple jump on an enemy’s head and have to rewind for the 10th time because everything still controls like ass, it’s hard to always keep all of that information in my head. The gameplay and puzzle design are tuned just wrong enough that these two parts of the game can’t connect despite all attempts to have them do so. You end up with some kind of neat journal entries and a forgettable puzzle platformer. Braid is almost there, but the way people talked about it back then just seems disconnected from reality, much like Tim in the game itself, and much like Jonathan Blow is right now according to his Twitter account. Braid and its legacy ended up becoming another weird puzzle floating in the air, one no one is excited to navigate anymore, no matter how much preamble it’s given. Nothing requires you to beat it, you can just move on to the next level.

It ain’t got no point to the game.

Braid is the first video game on god's green earth bold enough to ask the question:

"What if Mario was an incel?"

Other esteemed creators such as Dorkly would stop at making a shoddily animated Youtube Short about this subject, but oh nonono, not the Alpha Male of game development, Jonny Blowe.

This is a bad video game made by one of the most high-profile indie developer shitheads out there. Yes, it was a trailblazer in 2008's XBOX Live Arcade, paving the path towards indie games being more overtly perceived as a legitimate (or at least sellable, lol) art form - but as a lot of trailblazers are, time hasn't been kind to it.
It frequently wastes your time and oftentimes mechanics are thrown in because they are fun to think about, not interesting to work with or play. Nice enough art direction, I suppose, but still, no need to revisit this one. Steer clear.

Seeing the game's developer, Jonathan Blow, dunk on Japanese-made games under the lead of Phil Fish, a similar mistake to indie gaming, raises some eyebrows when you look at the not-so-subtle influences this game took from other platformers. Talk about biting the hand that fed them.

As an aside, this is one of the worst designed puzzle platformers I've played and this is someone who loves puzzle platformers. Also, neither Jonathan Blow or Phil Fish are relevant anymore and the Japanese gaming industry is still booming. Who knew?