"It might be on the short side, but Braid is mindblowing, brilliant, and one of the most satisfying games ever made."

There are games that are fun to play, and then there are games that are so incredibly ingenious and exciting that you lack the vocabulary to describe it.

Braid fits in the latter category. It is, simply put, a game that needs to be experienced. If you had to define it, you'd use the words "puzzle platformer" - you run, jump and solve puzzles to reach a goal, only to solve more puzzles. But it's more than that, a game that feels constrained if you try to group it in with other genres, a game that blows you away with a gimmick that is incredibly fun to play with, level design that makes your jaw drop over and over, and ingenuity that will make you remember it for years to come.

Braid is an incredibly simple game. It is a platformer, but not one that asks you to make perfect jumps, not one that involves dying over and over, not one that even requires you to finish the level in order to progress to the next one. Braid features a jump button, and a button that lets you rewind time. There's no such thing as dying in Braid, as you simply rewind back to whatever point you wish to go. Rewinding time starts out simply as a means to avoid death, but it soon becomes much, much more.

Time manipulation is what separates Braid from every other game you've ever played. Each set of levels gives you a different ability: in one world, certain objects are time-immune, meaning you can rewind time without them being affected. Another world features the ability to slow down time. In another, a shadow of you appears. Time manipulation is fun and trippy and crazy, but it's the level design that sets Braid apart. There are dozens of times where you'll sit there going "how in the..", stare at it for five minutes, say "let me try this.... oh my god", and get this huge smile on your face. The single greatest strength of Braid is its ability to make you feel like an idiot. Braid overwhelms you by forcing you to think in ways you've never thought before. It makes you plan things backwards. It makes you fight bosses by hitting them with an object, rewinding and then hitting them with the same object again. It'll make you suicide to get an object where you want it. It makes you giggle when you're flying backwards through time at 8x speed. There is a sense of excitement to Braid that does not exist in other games.

Of course, simple puzzles don't make the game what it is alone. The artwork is stunning for a XBLA title - it doesn't look all that great from screenshots (or at least, I don't think so), but the art style really endears itself to you in motion. The main character, Tim, is really animated well, and the minimal storyline is very well done and appreciated. The music sets an amazing atmosphere. The sound effects are good, and you can't underestimate how cool the graphical effects are when you're manipulating time. Braid's aesthetics are really off the chart for a XBLA game. I would rank this as one of the more emotional games I've played. There's something about Braid's atmosphere that trumps most story-heavy games, and it's not even the focus of the game. It feels sad and powerful throughout.

There is, of course, a downside to Braid: its length. Braid is a 5 hour game if you've got good problem solving abilities - chances are a couple of puzzles will stump you, but you won't be playing this one for weeks and weeks. It also feels like there was a lot more that could be explored as far as time manipulation goes. There's a real "tip of the iceberg" feeling to it, like there is an infinite number of twists you could put on something that feels so fresh and exciting. Braid would be an absolutely amazing game if it featured a level editor that let people create and send levels to each other, but alas, there isn't one. It's really a shame, because there's a ridiculous amount of potential in Braid for some really sick, twisted levels that could leave people stumped for hours.

However, I've paid much more for games that gave me much less. Solving a puzzle that's been eating at me is one of the most exciting things I've ever done in a video game, and I would go as far as to say that Braid has the best level design in a platformer that I've ever seen. With a fantastic concept, mindblowing execution and an ending that has to be seen, Braid is a game that everyone should check out, even if it's just downloading the demo. For people that enjoy thinking, Braid is as good as platforming gets.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/11/08

Game Release: Braid (US, 08/06/08)