Braid (XBLA)

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mech
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Post by mech »

It is damn hard, even when you know the solution. A little too hard for my liking (being a DJ Fusion gamer and all). Still, I'll persevere.
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Post by whitespider »

This is GOTY. Furthermore, this is the best game on XBLA, and finally, this is the best game on xbox 360.

Hell, this might even be the best game ever made.

Definitely not for people who hate the idea of art and games as one. Definitely for the people who like the idea of art and games as one.

This game is a rare breed. It may be one of a kind. And yes - I am aware time traveling has been done before. That taken directly into consideration, my above point rings evermore true.

Fantastic, on not just one level. But lot's of levels. Both conceptually, practically, and.... emotionally, groundbreaking.

It's like poetry turned gaming, but neither the game, or the poetry, are taken lightly. It's also dealing with high concept ideas. Something I never thought I would say about a xbox live arcade game. The problem is, it will draw a conflict within people closed minded, or masked, into hating emotionally resonance, or arty, things. They will deny any kind of art, replacing it with "frustrating" and "pretentious". Or subliminally hate the conflict high concept brings to them because of closed mindedness, thus unknowingly tackle simple mechanics as a way to battle that.

So... in another words, it's not broad. It's beautiful, but that's not enough for it to be broad. Halo is broad, gta is broad. Wii cooking and Ds maths tutor, and sonic olympic games is broad.
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Post by Timbo »

I'll have what he's having.
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Post by Shaneus »

Hefty dose of acid, by the sounds of it! Or MDMA.
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Post by Gamma »

My copy of Braid has fucked itself somehow, and intermittently thinks it's the trial version. To the point where I've witnessed the option to download the full version appear/disappear while sitting inactive on the menu. Further, my save file is nowhere to be seen, so I can't access the speed runs even when it does decide to play along. Achievements are intact, but I assume they're saved in your profile or something.

Anyone had this sort of thing happen with an arcade game before? I'm guessing the solution is to delete the game and redownload it, but the save file's a real mystery. There's a couple of users on this 360, all the other files are fine and I don't suspect foul play. Bizarro.
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Post by t0mby »

Just delete and downoad again with the acount you piad for Braid with. It will know you've paid for it previously and you can get the full version again for nothing. Whether the save game is there or not depends on whether it is this trail game issue. A trial game wont have a game sva, but it might still be there.
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Post by Gamma »

I've looked through the save files on the HDD, mine has been replaced with a new one that must have been created automatically when I fired it up yesterday so I'm definitely fucked in that regard. By "all the others are fine", I meant other Braid saves under different users, not just saves in general. I've been singled out, that's what's so strange! I don't want to test it with the other accounts though in case it fucks them too. I'll see what happens after the redownload.

My first instinct was to hold down X and rewind time to before the game fucked up.
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Post by Shaneus »

Maybe try a cache flush as well? Can't remember exactly how you do it, but there could be some corrupted cache files that need to be cleared out.

Worth a crack, at least.
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Post by Gamma »

I'm not surprised you can't remember, it's a retarded procedure. Press X, X, LB, RB, X, X on the HDD details screen. How intuitive. :roll:

Anyway, I've redownloaded it and cleared the cache, and I'm still in Trial Mode. Fuck it's frustrating to see the "You have already downloaded this" message immediately after it prompts me to buy it. The only other factor I forgot to mention was that this is a different Xbox to the one I bought the game on, but it's the same account and HDD and this is the only game of over a dozen that's doing it. As far as I know the whole point of being able to download games again is to allow you to move all of your shit onto a different console in the event of console replacement or HDD upgrade, so I can't see why that would have anything to do with it.

I guess I'll call MicroCocks, I'm sure they'll have NFI what's going on but I'm fresh out of ideas.
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Post by jizzlobber »

you gotta be signed in to xbl... or even better still-

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/syste" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... efault.htm
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Post by Gamma »

I was signed in mate, I downloaded it again. Cheers for the link... I'd better see if I can get my dead 360 fixed under warranty before I migrate the licenses over to this one, it's not mine. I've just been lazy. Strange that it's only Braid though, and I swear I saw the "Unlock Full Game" option vanish and reappear before my eyes a couple of times. Unless I'm going crazy, which can never be safely ruled out.
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Post by Gamma »

This is so random, I was just showing Braid to a friend, got to the end of World 2, it carried on as though I had the trial version then allowed me to keep playing anyway. WTF.
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Post by Gamma »

Holy fuck, I only just discovered there's more to collect than puzzle pieces. This game just took on a whole new level of awesome. Speed Runs aside, have any of you guys "finished" it, in this sense? Anyone who found the puzzle pieces too difficult need not apply. This is all the motivation I need to get my Xbox repaired.

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Post by mech »

Way too hard to get the stars.
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Post by Gamma »

That's a pretty big spoiler for anyone that didn't resort to videos in the first place.

I've found two so far through a combination of wondering why seemingly useless aspects of the level design are there, and luck- I probably wouldn't have found one of them if this whole content license shite hadn't happened. I'm expecting it to take a long time to find them all.
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Post by Gamma »

Finished collecting everything yesterday. A couple of them were tricky, but overall I don't think they're as hard to get as people make out. In most cases there's more difficulty in initially finding them than there is in getting them; you wouldn't necessarily persevere if you didn't know you were on the right track. Well worth pursuing though, a lot of them extend the levels beyond what you play when getting all of the puzzle pieces, so you'll see more content. There's an alternate ending as well.

Just need to smash the full game speed run now, and stop trying to get the epilogue cloud to do something. I'm convinced it's there for a reason. I figure some freak has already tried it, but I might stand on the cloud and leave the Xbox on for a week and see if anything happens. Probably just get a RRoD.

Best game ever. No question.
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Post by Madmya »

I guess I should purchase this game.
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Post by GreyWizzard »

Seraph has done everything, all the stars, and the speed run.

Fuck that cloud thing... fucking almost two hours to get a star.
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Post by Seraph »

Note: in an effort to avoid ambiguity, when I refer to puzzles I'm talking about figuring out how to pass levels/collect the pieces/stars, and when I say jigsaws I'm referring to the pieces I'm collecting or putting together.

I bought the game when it was 800 points in that deal of the week thing, but didn't try it until early last week (Monday?). I knocked it over in a few hours (all jigsaw pieces), then found out that one of the 8 stars can't be obtained if you've beaten the game, so I played through it again so that I could collect the 8 stars and see the alternate ending.

Speed Run took me three attempts - a 1 hour 02 minutes on my first go, 55 minutes on the second attempt, and then 44:30 on the third.

I really loved the gameplay for the most part, though backtracking to get two of the jigsaw pieces in that stage in world 2, and being able to permanently miss a star were, I think, poor form.
Love the graphical style and music, but I thought the story was nothing special to be honest.

Really enjoyed it, but there are probably 3 or 4 things I'd have changed in it. Keep in mind that this contains spoilers on how to obtain some of the jigsaws, so read at your own risk.


1. In World 2 you have one or two levels, then you get to a level with 2 jigsaws you simply cannot collect. You have to go to the next level (or the one after that, either is fine), collect a jigsaw piece, and use that piece to create platforms in the earlier level to collect the jigsaws.

I thought that the idea of using a jigsaw piece to solve another puzzle was cool. However, I'd have put that jigsaw piece in the first level of the game, so that when you get to the level in question, you have all the tools you need to solve the puzzles. I wouldn't call it "cheap" that I didn't have what I needed to solve a puzzle, but it did mean that in my first playthrough, there were levels where if the solution didn't hit me pretty quickly, I simply moved on with the mindset that there's no point trying to figure out the puzzle when there's every chance that I have to come back with some other item for it.

So uh yeah, first thing I'd change is take one of the jigsaws from 2-4 or 2-5 and put them in 2-1 or 2-2.

2. Allow the player to disassemble a jigsaw. This I'd do purely to allow the player to collect the star that is currently missable. I can only imagine what it would be like for someone to be trying to figure out the quite cryptic solutions for some of the star puzzles, only to find out that the star they've been looking for, they missed at the one-third point of the game.

3. Open up every stand-alone level in the game as one that can be sped-run. I liked speedrunning both the entire game and the 5 selected stand-alone levels, but being able to stand-alone any level would be cool. Of course to do this they'd need to make the change I listed as my number 1, otherwise a standalone speedrun of World 2, Stage 3 is impossible.

4. Make the game a little more difficult in regards to puzzle-solving.
58 of the 60 jigsaw pieces have puzzles that are pretty straightforward. The other 2 are only "tricky" because when you get to them, you have little or no idea that they are impossible at that point in time. Then there's the 8 stars, and they fall into one of three categories - incrdibly tedious (sup, star in 2-3), limited by game progress (one can't be obtained if you've connected certain jigsaws together, and one is only obtainable when you have the other 7), and hidden off-screen in leap-of-faith situations. The 8 stars are meant to be sort of super-secrets (nothing in the game tips you off to them and there's no achievements for collecting them) so I don't mind the 5 tricky ones, and even the 8th one isn't so bad, but the tedious one and the one mentioned in point 2 are just poorly done.

5. Make it longer.
This is a pretty poor thing to be labelling as a "fault" really. I mean, if all you can say about a game is it's too short, you're basically saying it's great and you want more. Yeah the game's short, but it was 800 space points and gave me at least 10 hours of entertainment (and I'll probably speed-run it again in the next week or so). I can think of full-price games where the single player "campaign" is only about 10 hours of enjoyment.

tl;dr - great game with few flaws, would love a more challenging sequel.
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Post by unfnknblvbl »

it was well worth 800 points. I can't get all the puzzle pieces though ffs :(
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Post by Madmya »

I got it last night for 1200 pts ( :( ). I really like it though. I don't think the puzzles need to be harder, they're hard enough already. Some I have no idea, others I do but it's hard enough executing it like mech mentioned earlier. Still, I'm enjoying this.
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Post by GreyWizzard »

Only time I find the puzzles hard is when it is about timeing (eg I have worked it out but need to find the timing to jump onto something) or it's 3 am and my brain has switched off for the night.
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Post by Madmya »

That stupid key companion one in world 4, that took me a while to figure out. Other than that, all the ones I couldn't do late last night I did easily this morning. Strange.
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Post by jizzlobber »

i've had this for a while, I could appreciate it but my puzzle solving ability lead to me neglecting it.

I gave it a bash last night and worked out a few vital things which help a lot... now I am reaching jigsaw pieces and enjoying the game a lot more.

I liked how you use the platform in a jigsaw piece to reach a platform and move one of the gronks... although I DID find it by accident, could've been frustrating.

it's a very charming, clever little game... I couldn't be arsed with the story however.
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Post by Gamma »

Seraph wrote:Really enjoyed it, but there are probably 3 or 4 things I'd have changed in it. Keep in mind that this contains spoilers on how to obtain some of the jigsaws, so read at your own risk.
Spoilers here too, avert your eyes kiddies. I'm going to run with your puzzle/jigsaw descriptions.
Seraph wrote:1. In World 2 you have one or two levels, then you get to a level with 2 jigsaws you simply cannot collect. You have to go to the next level (or the one after that, either is fine), collect a jigsaw piece, and use that piece to create platforms in the earlier level to collect the jigsaws.

I thought that the idea of using a jigsaw piece to solve another puzzle was cool. However, I'd have put that jigsaw piece in the first level of the game, so that when you get to the level in question, you have all the tools you need to solve the puzzles. I wouldn't call it "cheap" that I didn't have what I needed to solve a puzzle, but it did mean that in my first playthrough, there were levels where if the solution didn't hit me pretty quickly, I simply moved on with the mindset that there's no point trying to figure out the puzzle when there's every chance that I have to come back with some other item for it.

So uh yeah, first thing I'd change is take one of the jigsaws from 2-4 or 2-5 and put them in 2-1 or 2-2.
That's exactly what happened to me as well. I thought I'd be revisiting that world with double jump or something. I didn't think that in itself was so bad, but like you say it introduced the idea that you could be non-suitably equipped to solve some puzzles, and fostered moving on when something was too hard. While I agree that that's less than ideal, it also meant there was a growing realisation that everything was possible with the basic moves- a great setup for many a "gaming moment". So while I agree with the jigsaw swap suggestion in principle, I was happy with the way it played out.

It would have been great if there was a way to communicate that subsequent puzzles didn't require backtracking, because otherwise I think it fits into the overall game really well. Those two jigsaw pieces are easy yet hard- until you realise you can mess with the painting they're impossible, as soon as you know that they're simple. I could see someone playing through the whole game getting everything except those two pieces, then continuing from World 1 to World 2 and realising. Knowing about the movable platform leads directly to wondering why there's a gap in the wall between the paintings of Worlds 2 and 3. If you're still thinking about the images in the paintings interacting with the gameworld, you're well on track to finding that star. Or at least you would be...
Seraph wrote:2. Allow the player to disassemble a jigsaw. This I'd do purely to allow the player to collect the star that is currently missable. I can only imagine what it would be like for someone to be trying to figure out the quite cryptic solutions for some of the star puzzles, only to find out that the star they've been looking for, they missed at the one-third point of the game.
Totally agree. The ability to disassemble would also subtly suggest there's more to the game than the jigsaw pieces, as you'd never need to disassemble any of the paintings through the normal course of the game, prompting the player to experiment. The star's a lot more obvious once you've completed the painting too I thought- the plate in the bottom right just looks dodgy. To play devil's advocate, the stars are secret enough that I don't know that having to restart such a relatively short game is that harsh a proposition for anyone that's that keen, but it's pretty indefensible when you consider how simple a disassemble option would have been to implement. You'd be pissed if it was the last one you found.
Seraph wrote:3. Open up every stand-alone level in the game as one that can be sped-run. I liked speedrunning both the entire game and the 5 selected stand-alone levels, but being able to stand-alone any level would be cool. Of course to do this they'd need to make the change I listed as my number 1, otherwise a standalone speedrun of World 2, Stage 3 is impossible
Excellent suggestion. It's something that I assume would be relatively easy to deliver in an update, and would greatly extend the lifespan of the title.
Seraph wrote:4. Make the game a little more difficult in regards to puzzle-solving.
58 of the 60 jigsaw pieces have puzzles that are pretty straightforward. The other 2 are only "tricky" because when you get to them, you have little or no idea that they are impossible at that point in time. Then there's the 8 stars, and they fall into one of three categories - incrdibly tedious (sup, star in 2-3), limited by game progress (one can't be obtained if you've connected certain jigsaws together, and one is only obtainable when you have the other 7), and hidden off-screen in leap-of-faith situations. The 8 stars are meant to be sort of super-secrets (nothing in the game tips you off to them and there's no achievements for collecting them) so I don't mind the 5 tricky ones, and even the 8th one isn't so bad, but the tedious one and the one mentioned in point 2 are just poorly done.
I think the difficulty's spot on. All of the puzzles are just that, it's very rare that you need to do any fancy footwork to solve them. It's a very fine balance, because if the platforming aspect was ever too hard it might have dissuaded some players from their approach when they're actually on the right track. As it stands, you've either solved the puzzle and know what you're doing or you haven't and don't, there's no "Oh, I've almost got it" unless you're just using trial and error (which you never have to). I rarely encountered difficulty in the execution, if it's hard then there's an easier solution. The thing I probably had the most difficulty getting used to was the need to just stand still and wait at times, placing a temporal marker of sorts so you could rewind quickly and accurately. The various time ideas were thoroughly explored, I can't really see how it could be made any harder without it being through old-school platforming requirements that would have made the game less accessible than it already is. Platforming isn't the defining quality of the game.

I'm surprised to read your and Grey's reaction to the slow-moving cloud. I thought it was a fantastic idea, taking the main gameplay element to its extreme. I'm sure it's tedious if you sit there watching it, I just flicked over to the PS3 and checked in every hour. It is frustrating if you don't think to plug in a play 'n' charge kit though, which I didn't the first time. All of the stars hiding places were suggested in the game- a seemingly useless platform here, a superfluous bunny there. Some of them were just an extension of what you had to do to get a jigsaw piece anyway (4-5 springs to mind). The house star's only negative is the inability to disassemble the painting, I thought it was great otherwise. I didn't mind that the 8th star was unique in requiring the others.
Seraph wrote:5. Make it longer.
This is a pretty poor thing to be labelling as a "fault" really. I mean, if all you can say about a game is it's too short, you're basically saying it's great and you want more. Yeah the game's short, but it was 800 space points and gave me at least 10 hours of entertainment (and I'll probably speed-run it again in the next week or so). I can think of full-price games where the single player "campaign" is only about 10 hours of enjoyment.
Yeah, I'm going to be a bit :( when I've finished the speed run. I admire the "no-filler" approach, but it does leave you gagging for more. I've never thought twice about the price or weighed it up against anything else, it was a unique experience. 1200pts is nothing when you get this much out of a game.

It's not flawless, but the problems pale in comparison to the quality of the rest of the game. For every part of me that would love a sequel, there's a part that's glad we'll almost certainly never see one.
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