i got a big soft spot for this game but it's undeniably sort of a mess. like so many games of its type, i wish i could revisit it but strip out all the gunplay. im just here for the goofy plot and fun meta bits.

just packed to the brim with Ideas. why don't games have bullet time in them as much any more? everyone stole it for a while but the last time i saw something like it was Superhot. anyway Max Payne is cool pew pew shoot gun fly thru window get sad do drugs shoot baddies. great.

god were they ever having fun with this one. max payne was doing all the meta Video Game Choice stuff well before bioshock and it did it better and it was funny, too. great, excellent, love it.

remedy games wear their influences on their sleeve, and when they line up with what i like, it's pure magic baby. this is SCP foundation and x-files and a bit of twin peaks and brutalism and it's just a delight.

this game is great, its formally great, the writing is good, its got a cool Mystery, and figuring out how to play it is Great

i love PT but it owes davey wreden money

funny and angry and confused and with something to say while thinking itself in knots. but still funny! and thats important

this felt so Timely when it came out even tho lots of games had been talking about similar stuff for a while at that point. davey wreden's games just resonate with me, and when you can feel yourself vibrating on the same wavelength as a creator then it's very special.

remember all the stupid fucking discourse around this game when it came out? anyway this is another one of those games which makes me want to make games. i know its not everyones Cup Of Tea but it is precisely mine and i adore it and the way it hurt my heart was very welcome.

this the type of shit i adore. some worlds to go get lost in, why not! that feeling of someone showing you around something they made. unpretentious but meaningful.

real gamers scroll thru their indie games folder and find weird old test games and are like "yeah i'll log that, i remember that being cool." it was cool. if you dont fuck w prototypes then i dont fuck w you!

didnt go quite as hard on this one as i did SF4 but that just means i only played like 200hrs instead of 500.

played this til i thought i was hot shit, went to a single arcade and discovered i wasnt. there was a time when i thought i liked fighting games but i have realised over the years that i really just like street fighter, and thats fine.

i played a bunch of this waiting for it to Click but it never really did with me, on account of im bad at platformers

weird to think about this, 13 years later. the period between Braid's release and Gamergate makes me think about the wave speech from Fear & Loathing, as corny and stupid as that is. a main era, in cultural terms, and that feeling when the wave finally broke and rolled back....

anyway braid is cool and its genuinely very good.