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Braid Completed

Just finished Braid.

The last world (perversely named "World 1") sucks a bit unfortunately. Up to then I had more or less ignored the nonsensical storyline and concentrated on the clever puzzles. In the last world the clever puzzles take a back seat and the nonsensical storyline gets rammed down your throat. Well I finished it and I read every word of text in the game and all I can say about the story is: "It's nonsensical".

Its a pity that the game ends on such a downer because it really is a beautiful piece of work.

In the interest of honesty I must admit to having cheated twice. I read hints for two jigsaw pieces. I'm not proud of it but I ran out of patience. One of the times was a head slapping "Aghhh ... I should have known that" moment but the other was one of the trickiest puzzles in the game (the middle puzzle piece in the "elevator action" level). I don't know if I would ever have spotted the trick left to myself.

Edit: I have just read a bit more about the game and I realise that there are a few easter eggs including a secondary ending. Apparently you can only get that if you find some hidden stars before you complete the third world which means that it is completely blocked once you finish game normally. Bizarre game design. I certainly amn't going to replay the game just to see it.
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Comments

Thallian said…
fascinating... a "un-replayable-by-deisgn game" :) shows the developers had an odd sense of humor, eh?
12:00 am
mbp said…
Hi "Thalian" unrepeatable is not quite correct because you can wipe your game and start over. You would want to be pretty dedicated though.

You are right about the odd sense of humour though. It was only about half way through the game I discovered that there is a "save game" feature. It is quite obtuse and is hidden in a "settings" menu.
7:41 am
Tesh said…
For all the talk about Braid being something special, I'm just not seeing it. I did go ahead and get it when Steam had it for $5, but that's purely for the interesting gameplay. The story is annoying, and there are some dumb design decisions like the "save game" bit that bug me a bit. It's a half decent game, to be sure, but it's not all it's cracked up to be.
6:02 pm
mbp said…
The story and arty bullshit does get annoying Tesh but I really liked the puzzles. Since finishing the game I have read a bit more about the back story. Apparently its all about the Atomic Bomb??????
7:41 pm
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