Remember back in the 50s when they'd record like Elvis singing YOU AIN'T NOTHIN BUT A HOUND DOG and then they'd turn the record over and reverse it and it was all NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP and people were all like, "That is actually the voice of Satan coming from that song."
Even my patience has its limits. I just can't leave it to you any longer. I'll do the fighting! You can just go home!
I have had this exactdiscussion so many times since Spec Ops came out.
you really just
you have no idea
*cries*
It's actually one of the reasons I left IJBM. Because half of their video game thread is just people wanking about how totally awesome and deep and meaningful Spec Ops is.
Remember back in the 50s when they'd record like Elvis singing YOU AIN'T NOTHIN BUT A HOUND DOG and then they'd turn the record over and reverse it and it was all NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP and people were all like, "That is actually the voice of Satan coming from that song."
I had a discussion with one of my sister's friends about the Great Gatsby a while back. Which was last night. She didn't like the book because she found the plot to be disorganized and the characters to be unrealistic. Looking back, after seeing this discussion, I think she did what Naney mentioned. Associated the failures of the characters with a failure of the story.
---
I think $30 is a reasonable price for a deconstructionist shooter game, considering that the Call of Battlefield genre generally bats $50-60 per game. Not that I'd buy it. I'd just get the latest Skyrim DLC and spend the rest on a small indie game.
charging money for such a satire in game form—that is, something that consciously fails to live up to its purpose to make a point—is highly dubious.
How so?
When a game is built to fail as a game, one can only gain enjoyment from it on a meta level—as a satirical artefact—particularly when it is so dangerously on the nose. This is entirely unlike an artistic parody, wherein the only thing asked of the audience is time. A game requires time and effort alike; providing such a scant reward for that strikes me as unfair. To design a (weak) parody game is often simply to design a bad game, albeit an intentionally bad one, and while I think one should be free to spend one's money how one chooses, it feels like a disingenuous manoeuvre to sell such a thing as a legitimate product.
Well, by now anyone who would be buying the game would know something of it's nature.
Also you seem to be suggesting that enjoyment can only be derived from game through victory, which seems rather suspect to me.
It doesn't seem built to fail as a game, rather it seems to be built to result in failure for the character. Which is entirely unrelated to enjoyment of the experience.
That's actually not what I meant to imply at all. Rather, I was going by the line of logic that a game's interior mechanics are consciously designed to be faulty to make a point, then the gameplay itself is going to be diminished in terms of enjoyability. To my mind, making a journey less pleasant in a situation where the journey is the whole point to make another point seems counterintuitive.
Now, if that last part is true, then I have far fewer problems with it in principle than I would otherwise.
our neighbor said that the storm is caused by gay marriage passing
and now my sis says that i'm "like a fabulous airbender or something"
The Pink Wind?
Wouldn't it be nice if all games provoked so much discussion?
NO.
In fact I would be totally happy if no game ever provoked this much discussion again, ever, in the history of the medium.
Honestly, even though the game had a good critical reception (I think it has an average of 80-something on metacritic) I only ever hear about it personally from people in the ex-TVTropes circle. It's kinda weird.
I think $30 is a reasonable price for a deconstructionist shooter game, considering that the Call of Battlefield genre generally bats $50-60 per game. Not that I'd buy it. I'd just get the latest Skyrim DLC and spend the rest on a small indie game.
most indie games on Steam are between $10-20, is the thing. $30 is like discount triple A games.
from what i watched in the video it seems that it's not that the mechanics are faulty as much as they are deliberately unrealistic and behind-the-times. i.e. they work more like these games did back 4 or 5 years ago
Yeah, Braid's pretty overrated IMO. It's kind of like Angry Birds for me, in that I had already seen a free flash version of it on Kongregate or something and I didn't see the need to get a pricier one.
----
And while we're still here, why did the OFF fandom mandate Zacherie as the memetic sex god?
It's freaking Off. The main characters are a one-track batter, a cat, and a guy in a mask. There's nothing in there that evokes sexuality (besides Sucre, who's rarely in the sexual fanart anyways) You might as well do the same thing with The Brave Little Toaster!
Yeah, Braid's pretty overrated IMO. It's kind of like Angry Birds for me, in that I had already seen a free flash version of it on Kongregate or something and I didn't see the need to get a pricier one.
I actually wasted money on Braid and it was the most profoundly boring piece of shit I have ever played.
I actually got more enjoyment out of my $1 purchase of Angry Birds in Space, speaking of.
And while we're still here, why did the OFF fandom mandate Zacherie as the memetic sex god?
It's freaking Off. The main characters are a one-track batter, a cat, and a guy in a mask. You might as well do the same thing with The Brave Little Toaster!
fandoms do fandom things to the things they fandom for.
It's just a thing people do, like some folks have it in their head that they can't like something without being "in the fandom" for it, and when you get something that doesn't fulfill all the standard fandom tickboxes (shipping, AUs, etc.) people will make them up out of whole cloth.
So, another game that's going to provoke a nasty argument: Monopoly!
I get to be the top hat.
Monopoly is an awful and boring game that was originally the first half of an overly-didactic critique of the Gilded Age but then got turned into an awful and boring family board game.
Yeah, Braid's pretty overrated IMO. It's kind of like Angry Birds for me, in that I had already seen a free flash version of it on Kongregate or something and I didn't see the need to get a pricier one.
I actually wasted money on Braid and it was the most profoundly boring piece of shit I have ever played.
I actually got more enjoyment out of my $1 purchase of Angry Birds in Space, speaking of.
And while we're still here, why did the OFF fandom mandate Zacherie as the memetic sex god?
It's freaking Off. The main characters are a one-track batter, a cat, and a guy in a mask. You might as well do the same thing with The Brave Little Toaster!
fandoms do fandom things to the things they fandom for.
It's just a thing people do, like some folks have it in their head that they can't like something without being "in the fandom" for it, and when you get something that doesn't fulfill all the standard fandom tickboxes (shipping, AUs, etc.) people will make them up out of whole cloth.
In fact I would be totally happy if no game ever provoked this much discussion again, ever, in the history of the medium.
God damn that is some choice anti-intellectualism.
I was exaggerating.
And so we finally arrive at Braid: the most critically and commercially successful "indie" game ever, and — as the entire journlolistic and pseudo-intellectual cartel would like to make us believe — the most "artistic" videogame of all time (andconsequently the most valuable).
It's an outrageously offensive claim. The game's entire reputation is based on so little substance and such absurdly overblown amounts of hype, that I could well cite the opinions of two COMPLETE OUTSIDERS to the videogame industry, both of whom found the game, not simply bad, bututterly laughable, and leave it at that. I am referring of course to film critic Roger Ebert, who wrote that Braid's narrative is "on the level of a wordy fortune cookie", and rapper Soulja Boy (who amusingly enough seems to be employing the Insomnia rating scheme...), whose reaction to Braid's mechanics was simply "lol". The fact that two complete outsiders can debunk so swiftly and so contemptuously what this industry considers (or has been brainwashed to consider...) as its supreme achievement is proof positive of the Orwellian levels of falsity, disinformation and manipulation that now generally obtain. The coup de grâceis that neither Ebert nor Soulja Boy know the first thing about videogames, and yet they can spot and call out the overblown hype immediately, on first sight, without even bothering to play the game, let alone having any standards or reference points whatever — AND NO ONE SEEMS ABLE TO REFUTE THEM. Ebert's article and Soulja Boy's video have by now been linked on every single gaming blog and forum on the planet, and have been discussed in editorials and articles ad nauseam, YET THEIR OBJECTIONS ARE STILL STANDING THERE, AS FULL OF CERTAINTY AND ARROGANT SELF-CONFIDENCE AS IF THEY'D JUST BEEN UTTERED. To gain some perspective and realize the immensity of the affair, just imagine some kid from /v/ writing in to, say Total Film magazine, with something to the effect that "Citizen Kains sux becose it is teh gay lol", and then the magazine FOR SOME REASON PRINTING THIS (as the videogame press abundantly reproduced Ebert's and Soulja Boy's remarks...), WITHOUT ANYONE ACROSS THE ENTIRE FILM INDUSTRY BEING ABLE TO COME FORWARD WITH ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY RESEMBLING A CONVINCING REBUTTAL. — And this, dear readers, is the level of wretchedness to which the combined effects of PR money and pseudo-intellectualism have finally managed to sink our beloved hobby.
Enter icycalm into this scene. What the hell am I even doing with this game? or with any other botched attempt at an elaborate "indie" screensaver for that matter? After all, if even Ebert and Soulja Boy can debunk Braid, it must mean that even your little sister can do it. And if even your little sister can do it, this means that I AM SO ABSURDLY OVERQUALIFIED TO REVIEW THIS TRIPE THAT IT SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A CRIME TO SPEND ANY OF MY TIME WITH IT. I mean, if I even deign to review games at all any more, I should be reviewing games ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF COMPLEXITY for christsake, not struggling student projects that even a dumb rapper or over-the-hill film critic can tear apart and dismiss with a couple of off-hand comments.
But yeah. Someone has to fight these goons, and if no one else's going to do it I guess it'll just have to be me. So without further ado, then, let's settle down to taking apart and debunking Braid. Start at the beginning. Ostensibly a "puzzle-platformer", Braid is, in fact, for all intents and purposes a pure puzzle game. Let's try to understand why this is so. A platform game is defined, first and foremost, as an action game — i.e. a game in which progress is predicated on reflexes. But Braid's chief mechanic is a time-rewind feature which can be used throughout with impunity, effectively eliminating any requirement for reflexes. This is one step further along the design philosophy of "save-states every other screen" that is so popular with the indie bums, here taken to its most absurd extreme BY ELIMINATING THE VERY NEED FOR SAVE-STATES IN THE FIRST PLACE (since there's no longer any reason for you to die) — notwithstanding the fact that the game KEEPS THE SAVE-STATES ANYWAY. Now it could be argued that many action games, especially FPSes on the PC, feature a quick-save option that practically has the same effect asBraid's rewind mechanic. THOSE games, however, COMPENSATE for this by generally being difficult enough so that, regardless of how much you might abuse the quick-save feature, you are still going to have to develop some game-specific action skills to get through the adventure. Braid's action aspect, on the other hand, is so easy that even WITHOUT the rewind feature the game would be a cakewalk; WITH IT there's practically no game there at all. This is why I am saying that, though TECHNICALLY I am obliged to classify the game as a "puzzle-platformer" (— since you do, after all, hop around some platforms in it which are populated here and there with the occasional enemy —) it's nevertheless practically a pure puzzle game. One step ahead in this logic and you have something like Lup Salad, where, though the game at first glance LOOKS like a puzzle-platformer, since the stages are depicted in a side-view perspective, and you interact with the blocks by pushing them around with your little sprite, the game is nevertheless a pure puzzler since there are no enemies or precision maneuvers to perform, and it is impossible to lose due to a reflex-error.
Is everybody following here? — this shit isn't exactly rocket science. Moreover, not only is Braid's action aspect extremely easy and ultimately pointless, it's also extremely crude, as zinger has already correctly noted in the forum: "basically Mario 1 with goombas only and without the ability to run", as he called it. So without too much exaggeration one could say that the function of most of the length ofBraid's stages is to serve as a means of navigation BETWEEN the game's major puzzles; think of them as a cross between for example Knytt and, say Chu Chu Rocket, where to reach each stage of the latter you first have to walk down a few screens of the former. An exaggeration, like I said, but not very far from the truth if you are capable of pulling back from the game for a second and seriously contemplating what your actions basically amount to.
Yeah, Braid's pretty overrated IMO. It's kind of like Angry Birds for me, in that I had already seen a free flash version of it on Kongregate or something and I didn't see the need to get a pricier one.
I actually wasted money on Braid and it was the most profoundly boring piece of shit I have ever played.
I actually got more enjoyment out of my $1 purchase of Angry Birds in Space, speaking of.
And while we're still here, why did the OFF fandom mandate Zacherie as the memetic sex god?
It's freaking Off. The main characters are a one-track batter, a cat, and a guy in a mask. You might as well do the same thing with The Brave Little Toaster!
fandoms do fandom things to the things they fandom for.
It's just a thing people do, like some folks have it in their head that they can't like something without being "in the fandom" for it, and when you get something that doesn't fulfill all the standard fandom tickboxes (shipping, AUs, etc.) people will make them up out of whole cloth.
In fact I would be totally happy if no game ever provoked this much discussion again, ever, in the history of the medium.
God damn that is some choice anti-intellectualism.
I was exaggerating.
And so we finally arrive at Braid: the most critically and commercially successful "indie" game ever, and — as the entire journlolistic and pseudo-intellectual cartel would like to make us believe — the most "artistic" videogame of all time (andconsequently the most valuable).
It's an outrageously offensive claim. The game's entire reputation is based on so little substance and such absurdly overblown amounts of hype, that I could well cite the opinions of two COMPLETE OUTSIDERS to the videogame industry, both of whom found the game, not simply bad, bututterly laughable, and leave it at that. I am referring of course to film critic Roger Ebert, who wrote that Braid's narrative is "on the level of a wordy fortune cookie", and rapper Soulja Boy (who amusingly enough seems to be employing the Insomnia rating scheme...), whose reaction to Braid's mechanics was simply "lol". The fact that two complete outsiders can debunk so swiftly and so contemptuously what this industry considers (or has been brainwashed to consider...) as its supreme achievement is proof positive of the Orwellian levels of falsity, disinformation and manipulation that now generally obtain. The coup de grâceis that neither Ebert nor Soulja Boy know the first thing about videogames, and yet they can spot and call out the overblown hype immediately, on first sight, without even bothering to play the game, let alone having any standards or reference points whatever — AND NO ONE SEEMS ABLE TO REFUTE THEM. Ebert's article and Soulja Boy's video have by now been linked on every single gaming blog and forum on the planet, and have been discussed in editorials and articles ad nauseam, YET THEIR OBJECTIONS ARE STILL STANDING THERE, AS FULL OF CERTAINTY AND ARROGANT SELF-CONFIDENCE AS IF THEY'D JUST BEEN UTTERED. To gain some perspective and realize the immensity of the affair, just imagine some kid from /v/ writing in to, say Total Film magazine, with something to the effect that "Citizen Kains sux becose it is teh gay lol", and then the magazine FOR SOME REASON PRINTING THIS (as the videogame press abundantly reproduced Ebert's and Soulja Boy's remarks...), WITHOUT ANYONE ACROSS THE ENTIRE FILM INDUSTRY BEING ABLE TO COME FORWARD WITH ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY RESEMBLING A CONVINCING REBUTTAL. — And this, dear readers, is the level of wretchedness to which the combined effects of PR money and pseudo-intellectualism have finally managed to sink our beloved hobby.
Enter icycalm into this scene. What the hell am I even doing with this game? or with any other botched attempt at an elaborate "indie" screensaver for that matter? After all, if even Ebert and Soulja Boy can debunk Braid, it must mean that even your little sister can do it. And if even your little sister can do it, this means that I AM SO ABSURDLY OVERQUALIFIED TO REVIEW THIS TRIPE THAT IT SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A CRIME TO SPEND ANY OF MY TIME WITH IT. I mean, if I even deign to review games at all any more, I should be reviewing games ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF COMPLEXITY for christsake, not struggling student projects that even a dumb rapper or over-the-hill film critic can tear apart and dismiss with a couple of off-hand comments.
But yeah. Someone has to fight these goons, and if no one else's going to do it I guess it'll just have to be me. So without further ado, then, let's settle down to taking apart and debunking Braid. Start at the beginning. Ostensibly a "puzzle-platformer", Braid is, in fact, for all intents and purposes a pure puzzle game. Let's try to understand why this is so. A platform game is defined, first and foremost, as an action game — i.e. a game in which progress is predicated on reflexes. But Braid's chief mechanic is a time-rewind feature which can be used throughout with impunity, effectively eliminating any requirement for reflexes. This is one step further along the design philosophy of "save-states every other screen" that is so popular with the indie bums, here taken to its most absurd extreme BY ELIMINATING THE VERY NEED FOR SAVE-STATES IN THE FIRST PLACE (since there's no longer any reason for you to die) — notwithstanding the fact that the game KEEPS THE SAVE-STATES ANYWAY. Now it could be argued that many action games, especially FPSes on the PC, feature a quick-save option that practically has the same effect asBraid's rewind mechanic. THOSE games, however, COMPENSATE for this by generally being difficult enough so that, regardless of how much you might abuse the quick-save feature, you are still going to have to develop some game-specific action skills to get through the adventure. Braid's action aspect, on the other hand, is so easy that even WITHOUT the rewind feature the game would be a cakewalk; WITH IT there's practically no game there at all. This is why I am saying that, though TECHNICALLY I am obliged to classify the game as a "puzzle-platformer" (— since you do, after all, hop around some platforms in it which are populated here and there with the occasional enemy —) it's nevertheless practically a pure puzzle game. One step ahead in this logic and you have something like Lup Salad, where, though the game at first glance LOOKS like a puzzle-platformer, since the stages are depicted in a side-view perspective, and you interact with the blocks by pushing them around with your little sprite, the game is nevertheless a pure puzzler since there are no enemies or precision maneuvers to perform, and it is impossible to lose due to a reflex-error.
Is everybody following here? — this shit isn't exactly rocket science. Moreover, not only is Braid's action aspect extremely easy and ultimately pointless, it's also extremely crude, as zinger has already correctly noted in the forum: "basically Mario 1 with goombas only and without the ability to run", as he called it. So without too much exaggeration one could say that the function of most of the length ofBraid's stages is to serve as a means of navigation BETWEEN the game's major puzzles; think of them as a cross between for example Knytt and, say Chu Chu Rocket, where to reach each stage of the latter you first have to walk down a few screens of the former. An exaggeration, like I said, but not very far from the truth if you are capable of pulling back from the game for a second and seriously contemplating what your actions basically amount to.
It's good to discuss games, but I can see how you lost your tolerance for it.
I am totally up for discussing games. Specific games, even. I am just tired of discussing that game in particular to the point where I am annoyed pretty thoroughly any time it's brought up.
So, another game that's going to provoke a nasty argument: Monopoly!
I get to be the top hat.
Monopoly is an awful and boring game that was originally the first half of an overly-didactic critique of the Gilded Age but then got turned into an awful and boring family board game.
I don't hate Monopoly, but it does turn me into a borderline sociopath for short spans of time, so...
Remember back in the 50s when they'd record like Elvis singing YOU AIN'T NOTHIN BUT A HOUND DOG and then they'd turn the record over and reverse it and it was all NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP and people were all like, "That is actually the voice of Satan coming from that song."
imagine some kid from /v/ writing in to, say Total Film magazine, with something to the effect that "Citizen Kains sux becose it is teh gay lol", and then the magazine FOR SOME REASON PRINTING THIS (as the videogame press abundantly reproduced Ebert's and Soulja Boy's remarks...), WITHOUT ANYONE ACROSS THE ENTIRE FILM INDUSTRY BEING ABLE TO COME FORWARD WITH ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY RESEMBLING A CONVINCING REBUTTAL.
i'm not defending Braid, but how on earth could one debunk the claim that "Citizen Kains sux becose it is teh gay lol"
it's a claim that is without substance, so there is no way to really refute it, y'know?
oh, another game that critiques its genre of choice better (imo) than Spec Ops would be Little Inferno (in that particular game's case, it's timewaster Facebook games), though that has the same problem of costing money. That said you don't really need to actually playLittle Inferno to get the point, just watch a Lets Play if you can't afford it/don't want to buy it.
say what ye will of Spec Ops and Middens and Off and CoD and etc etc
but
I think we can all agree that the series I've recently developed a rabid obsession with is pretty baller
Rayman's coasting on it's popularity in the earlier generations, the Regular Show's coasting on the popularity of Adventure Time, which is, in itself, a cleaner version of the gross-out shows that dominated CN in the mid-2000s. All derivative material with nothing to provide on their own merits. Oh, and Daft Punk didn't need to come out of retirement.
Comments
also there is a storm
our neighbor said that the storm is caused by gay marriage passing
and now my sis says that i'm "like a fabulous airbender or something"
first weddings happen august first
I have had this exact discussion so many times since Spec Ops came out.
you really just
you have no idea
*cries*
It's actually one of the reasons I left IJBM. Because half of their video game thread is just people wanking about how totally awesome and deep and meaningful Spec Ops is.
It would be comical if it weren't annoying.
The Pink Wind?Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
---
I think $30 is a reasonable price for a deconstructionist shooter game, considering that the Call of Battlefield genre generally bats $50-60 per game. Not that I'd buy it. I'd just get the latest Skyrim DLC and spend the rest on a small indie game.
NO.
In fact I would be totally happy if no game ever provoked this much discussion again, ever, in the history of the medium.
Honestly, even though the game had a good critical reception (I think it has an average of 80-something on metacritic) I only ever hear about it personally from people in the ex-TVTropes circle. It's kinda weird.
most indie games on Steam are between $10-20, is the thing. $30 is like discount triple A games. let's talk about another game that I think is overrated and not very good while we're at it.I get to be the top hat.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
----
And while we're still here, why did the OFF fandom mandate Zacherie as the memetic sex god?
It's freaking Off. The main characters are a one-track batter, a cat, and a guy in a mask. There's nothing in there that evokes sexuality (besides Sucre, who's rarely in the sexual fanart anyways) You might as well do the same thing with The Brave Little Toaster!
I actually wasted money on Braid and it was the most profoundly boring piece of shit I have ever played.
I actually got more enjoyment out of my $1 purchase of Angry Birds in Space, speaking of.
fandoms do fandom things to the things they fandom for.
It's just a thing people do, like some folks have it in their head that they can't like something without being "in the fandom" for it, and when you get something that doesn't fulfill all the standard fandom tickboxes (shipping, AUs, etc.) people will make them up out of whole cloth.
I was exaggerating.
And so we finally arrive at Braid: the most critically and commercially successful "indie" game ever, and — as the entire journlolistic and pseudo-intellectual cartel would like to make us believe — the most "artistic" videogame of all time (andconsequently the most valuable).
It's an outrageously offensive claim. The game's entire reputation is based on so little substance and such absurdly overblown amounts of hype, that I could well cite the opinions of two COMPLETE OUTSIDERS to the videogame industry, both of whom found the game, not simply bad, bututterly laughable, and leave it at that. I am referring of course to film critic Roger Ebert, who wrote that Braid's narrative is "on the level of a wordy fortune cookie", and rapper Soulja Boy (who amusingly enough seems to be employing the Insomnia rating scheme...), whose reaction to Braid's mechanics was simply "lol". The fact that two complete outsiders can debunk so swiftly and so contemptuously what this industry considers (or has been brainwashed to consider...) as its supreme achievement is proof positive of the Orwellian levels of falsity, disinformation and manipulation that now generally obtain. The coup de grâceis that neither Ebert nor Soulja Boy know the first thing about videogames, and yet they can spot and call out the overblown hype immediately, on first sight, without even bothering to play the game, let alone having any standards or reference points whatever — AND NO ONE SEEMS ABLE TO REFUTE THEM. Ebert's article and Soulja Boy's video have by now been linked on every single gaming blog and forum on the planet, and have been discussed in editorials and articles ad nauseam, YET THEIR OBJECTIONS ARE STILL STANDING THERE, AS FULL OF CERTAINTY AND ARROGANT SELF-CONFIDENCE AS IF THEY'D JUST BEEN UTTERED. To gain some perspective and realize the immensity of the affair, just imagine some kid from /v/ writing in to, say Total Film magazine, with something to the effect that "Citizen Kains sux becose it is teh gay lol", and then the magazine FOR SOME REASON PRINTING THIS (as the videogame press abundantly reproduced Ebert's and Soulja Boy's remarks...), WITHOUT ANYONE ACROSS THE ENTIRE FILM INDUSTRY BEING ABLE TO COME FORWARD WITH ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY RESEMBLING A CONVINCING REBUTTAL. — And this, dear readers, is the level of wretchedness to which the combined effects of PR money and pseudo-intellectualism have finally managed to sink our beloved hobby.
But yeah. Someone has to fight these goons, and if no one else's going to do it I guess it'll just have to be me. So without further ado, then, let's settle down to taking apart and debunking Braid. Start at the beginning. Ostensibly a "puzzle-platformer", Braid is, in fact, for all intents and purposes a pure puzzle game. Let's try to understand why this is so. A platform game is defined, first and foremost, as an action game — i.e. a game in which progress is predicated on reflexes. But Braid's chief mechanic is a time-rewind feature which can be used throughout with impunity, effectively eliminating any requirement for reflexes. This is one step further along the design philosophy of "save-states every other screen" that is so popular with the indie bums, here taken to its most absurd extreme BY ELIMINATING THE VERY NEED FOR SAVE-STATES IN THE FIRST PLACE (since there's no longer any reason for you to die) — notwithstanding the fact that the game KEEPS THE SAVE-STATES ANYWAY. Now it could be argued that many action games, especially FPSes on the PC, feature a quick-save option that practically has the same effect asBraid's rewind mechanic. THOSE games, however, COMPENSATE for this by generally being difficult enough so that, regardless of how much you might abuse the quick-save feature, you are still going to have to develop some game-specific action skills to get through the adventure. Braid's action aspect, on the other hand, is so easy that even WITHOUT the rewind feature the game would be a cakewalk; WITH IT there's practically no game there at all. This is why I am saying that, though TECHNICALLY I am obliged to classify the game as a "puzzle-platformer" (— since you do, after all, hop around some platforms in it which are populated here and there with the occasional enemy —) it's nevertheless practically a pure puzzle game. One step ahead in this logic and you have something like Lup Salad, where, though the game at first glance LOOKS like a puzzle-platformer, since the stages are depicted in a side-view perspective, and you interact with the blocks by pushing them around with your little sprite, the game is nevertheless a pure puzzler since there are no enemies or precision maneuvers to perform, and it is impossible to lose due to a reflex-error.
Is everybody following here? — this shit isn't exactly rocket science. Moreover, not only is Braid's action aspect extremely easy and ultimately pointless, it's also extremely crude, as zinger has already correctly noted in the forum: "basically Mario 1 with goombas only and without the ability to run", as he called it. So without too much exaggeration one could say that the function of most of the length ofBraid's stages is to serve as a means of navigation BETWEEN the game's major puzzles; think of them as a cross between for example Knytt and, say Chu Chu Rocket, where to reach each stage of the latter you first have to walk down a few screens of the former. An exaggeration, like I said, but not very far from the truth if you are capable of pulling back from the game for a second and seriously contemplating what your actions basically amount to.
Monopoly has one of the strangest histories of any game ever.
Also it has a ton of really bad computer ports.
Also, yes
Super High-School Level Soundtrack Poster
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Also
Bejeweled does what it intends to perfectly fine.
Not exactly a 10/10 must-buy by any means, but y'know, if you're into match threes, why not I guess.
here's a hint: #rayman
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
I don't think I've played a Rayman game since the Game Cube days.
Assuming that was even a Nintendo property, I don't really remember.
it's a claim that is without substance, so there is no way to really refute it, y'know?
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
-scrubs mouth with soap-