Done Playing: Braid (XBLA)
By now I’m sure you all know plenty about the game, have bought it yourself (or at least tried it) and are either satisfied or disappointed with your purchase. So I’ll forgo the usual gameplay/graphics/sound talk and head into Artsy territory.
Just a year ago I never would’ve imagined that a game like Braid could exist anywhere outside of a Flash-enabled web browser. With increasingly poor titles being certified on Xbox Live Arcade and promising ones being shuffled off the release list, I’m even more amazed that Braid exists. Digital distribution is moving forward at a seemingly exponential rate this year and it’s going to take some time for everyone — from players to publishers — to get comfortable with everything from play time to pricing.
Honestly, Braid is more of an experience than a game. If you’re looking for a similar action/platform puzzle game try the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series or load up a ROM of Flashback or Out of this World. Video games are an art form, you’ll get no argument from me, but Braid is like an art exhibition. An installation, built on your Xbox 360 and consuming only a few hours of your time. You look, you read, you feel something, and then you decompress and leave. For me it’s usually stopping outside of an exhibit, looking around and taking a deep breath, clinging for one last moment to the emotion and experience before filing it away in my mind and heading for lunch.
I admit, I was initially put off by the $15 price like most everyone else. There are plenty of cheaper Arcade titles that offer many more hours of gameplay that I’ve never thought twice about purchasing. But sometimes it’s not about how many hours you can spend in a game for the money. It’s not how many features or levels you get. It’s really about the experience and if the trial game has piqued your interest like an art exhibit flyer plastered a hundred times over on a boarded up doorway downtown, then think of the $15 as the price of admission.
If you need more justification break it down like many $60 retail games. Fifteen bucks really is an appropriate price point for a few days or hours of play time, especially if you cut out the excess grinding and scavenger hunts built into many of today’s mega-releases.
Yes, Braid is short and I’d love to puzzle away a whole month looking at more gorgeous artwork and straining my brain to solve more time-sensitive riddles but it’s perfect just the way it is. Ambiguous and touching, the brief story leaves me feeling more emotion than any game before. And it’s not just “wow, what a sad ending” or “wow, what a twist!”, I feel just as melancholy, just as uncertain and longing as Tim does, and it’s great!
The gameplay isn’t for everyone and the story may be too emo for some, but the basis of the game is what we need to get used to. The industry is slowly moving towards shorter games and the Independent developers have unique stories to tell and experiences to present that don’t require “Over Forty Hours of Playtime™” or “Immense Worlds to Explore©”.
Despite honestly feeling all that I’ve just described it’s still hard to think that I’ll probably never revisit Braid. My only respite is that the things I saw and felt reach beyond the bounds of a controller and a TV screen like no other game has. And that’s worth much more than fifteen bucks, at least to me.
