Braid is Awesome

Was turned onto Braid on XBLA this morning via a post by Xemu. This is the first time I've seen time travel as an effective game mechanic (unless you count Chrono Trigger, I guess?). I snagged it this morning and it made me late for work. When I got home, I played it non-stop until beating it. It is that much fun, and totally engrossing.

Part of the fun lays in that it offers so many variations on the time manipulation theme; you can reverse and fast-foward time, sometimes you control time by which way you walk, you can use your shadow from a previous time rewind to do things for you, and you can make a kind of time-slowing bubble. It's just a blast, and it's challenging, but not frustrating. Well, OK, 6-5 frustrated me just a bit (ok, a lot...).

The story is kind of thought provoking, with a wicked ending. Art's awesome as well. Normally I wouldn't do a game review — that's not what this blog is about — but I felt this game stood out because of the unique time manipulation stuff and off-beat story, so there you go. 5/5, 100%, etc. Well worth the 1200 points (or $15).

Oh, and oddly enough in relation to my last post, there are Mario references galore in this game.