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Braid is a hard title to review, because it packs so much into its gameplay that it’s easy to judge the sum of its parts rather than the whole game. I will say that from the minute I popped the disc into my 360 I realized that we’ve been given something special in this action-packed space shooter. Braid was created by Johnathan Blow, a man of many blogs and what most people would rightly call “a gigantic douche”. That said, the man is a genius game designer and his new opus hits it out of the park, delivering an action tour de force that raises the bar for XBLA and games in general.
You play as a small boy in Braid, and are forced to hop around shooting aliens and collecting pieces of pie for your mother, who’s stuck at home on her home planet. These pieces of pie represent “dessert” and collecting all pieces in a level whisks you back to Mother’s house across the galaxy for a delicious treat that comes after dinner (obviously!). he crux of the game is this pie-collecting, and to do so involves jumping, hopping, scooting, running, leaping, scurrying, bounding, and of course, stealth. This is all masterfully controlled with the RB button and the left analog stick entirely. Every move is context-sensitive and the ease of which you switch between these different moves is brilliant in its simplicity. The music in Braid is non-existent. It’s a stylized choice for sure, and one that’s surely going to rattle some cages of “traditional” videogame fans, but I for one welcomed the complete silence throughout the 40-60 hour campaign. In a year packed with AAA titles, Braid stands above them all as a testament to how blogging and being a solitary asshole can create something so important for the game industry. You owe it to yourself to pick this one up and experience it first hand.
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