Games of the decade: Braid

Part of a series of subjective looks at my favorite games of the decade.

Braid
(2008, Xbox Live Arcade; 2009, PlayStation Network and PC)

Games are terrific at evoking certain strong emotions, such as excitement and fear, which they seem to do over and over. What they don't usually do such a good job of is elicting more subtle, complex, or ambiguous feelings, like sadness or regret. Braid is ambitious in many ways, none more so than its commitment to explore areas that games would usually rather ignore.

In contrast to the sometimes full-contact style of its creator, Jonathan Blow, Braid is a delicate game. The text that serves as a bridge between levels is written in such a way to suggest a mood, and not necessarily to convey facts. The symphonic music, too, doesn't underline the action but instead alludes to something happening out of sight. Even the painterly visuals suggest something missing in between the brush strokes. Much of Braid occurs by implication.

Then there are the rightly lauded puzzles. Braid is astoundingly difficult, though nearly always fair (I'll be honest, I had to look up the one where you had to bounce off an enemy that was itself bouncing off your time shadow). If the only purpose of the game was to show how games could challenge players without stifling them, then it would still be a success. That such thrilling and innovative gameplay could be wrapped up in such an affecting package -- and almost all the work of one man -- is nearly miraculous.

More on Braid:

• Braid review
• Lead, follow, or get out of the way

Friday afternoon tidbits

The nation is reeling from the sudden, tragic death of my PlayStation 3. We'll try to soldier on, somehow. Some links might help with that.

-Magical Wasteland previews English literature's crowning achievement in the style of a video game publication. Spot on. The only thing missing is the Game Informer-style conclusion, "We can't wait to get our hands on this one." Some good comments on the post, too.

-I just love Jonathan Blow. He has a way of cutting through the bullshit. In an interview with Press Pause to Reflect, here's what he has to say about finding meaning in games, which I have to assume is aimed at everybody who clamored for an explanation of Braid: "If I can just say what the point is, then we don't need games in the first place." I love it.

-Here's a new experiment, from Ben Abraham, that's setting the blogosphere on fire: permanent death in Far Cry 2. "The rules: Normal difficulty; fortunes DLC installed. When I die, that’s it. Game over." Both part 1 and part 2 make for some entertaining, NGJ-style reading. A couple other entries come from Michel McBride and Nels Anderson. All serve as stark reminders that Far Cry 2 was incredible.

-Okay, we can't avoid a little discussion of Michael Jackson. Clearly, the Internet has laid waste to the concept of "too soon." It's gotten to the point that when a celebrity dies, or a disaster happens, I'm not only expecting to see jokes, but I'm disappointed if there aren't any. Maybe that's another sign that our civilization is nearing its doom, but I'm serious when I say that I hope I matter enough someday for people to joke about my death on the Internet. I'll be disappointed if it doesn't happen.

Also, here are three good MJ eulogies from some unlikely sources: Roger Ebert, Joe Posnanski, and Ray Smuckles.

-One more non-gaming link, but it might be the most important thing you read this week: /film interviews Andrew W.K. about his new show DestroyBuildDestroy, plus his profound insights on the nature of existence.

Request hour: It begins

Yesterday, I solicited questions to answer in future posts, and, uh, you guys weren't messing around. I was expecting more along the lines of "What's your favorite game ever," but there's some heavy-duty stuff in here. Let's plow right ahead with it. I'll answer in the order they were posted, and try to get as many as I can into each post. (By the way, feel free to keep adding new questions in comments to the original post.)

Krystian Majewski had two questions. I'll split them up.

What is the meaning of Braid?

(I knew this was a bad idea.)

My reading on it isn't necessarily that "it was all a dream," but rather that the game is a metaphor for Tim's anguish and regret. I never really did get the whole "atomic bomb" interpretation. I thought it was about a girl. Either way, my take is that the game takes place in a fantasy world, in which time is malleable and the usual standards of cause and effect don't apply. I saw it as a fairly straightforward lament -- wouldn't it be nice we could do the things in this game in real life, too? But we can't. It's impossible. And if you spend too much time thinking about it, you'll only end up depressed.

What is the difference between games and literature?

A reader has less control of a work of literature than a player has of a game. The author has more control of a work of literature than a developer does of a game. A book is a finished product. A game, to varying degrees, is a framework. You can't read the words in a book out of order, but a game that has no room for player choice is usually not going to be a good one. Even a linear platformer -- say, Super Mario Bros. -- can be played successfully in any number of ways, while a book can only be read from front to back.

You could make the argument that a reader does bring his own frame of reference to a book, and you'd be right, but it's an order of magnitude less than what a player brings to a game. Reading a book doesn't make you a co-author, but playing a game does, in a very real sense, make you a co-creator. The act of playing dictates what a game is, much moreso than the act of reading dictates what a book is.

Nels Anderson goes for the money:

It's been a year-ish since your Gamer Taxonomy opus. I'd like to hear a follow-up, discussing observations made about its applicability and if you feel the taxonomy is still accurate.

Nothing I've seen or heard has made me doubt the accuracy of the types I described, but I have become even more convinced of its incompleteness. One thing I missed completely was the distinction between content creators and content consumers -- something PC gamers have known about for years, but which really came into focus for console players with the release of LittleBigPlanet. Marek Bronstring wrote a good essay at GameSetWatch about "The Four Types of Player/Creators," which covers some of this ground.

There were a lot of good comments on the original piece that pointed out some further areas for exploration, such as the difference between gamers who pursue developer-defined goals and those who pursue player-defined ones. There are also gamers who want new, innovative experiences, and those wedded to the old paradigms. One commenter even suggested a further distinction between tourists: "those who tour for the cool vignettes and highlights, and those who tour for the narrative interaction." So, clearly, there's a lot of unexplored territory here.

As for how applicable it is, I couldn't say. I haven't even applied these ideas to most of the game reviews I've written in the past year. But something about it did strike a chord, so if nothing else I hope it spurred people to explore the real reasons they enjoy playing games. Is that really worth much? I'm not sure. I hope so.

Also, on a side note, I realized that although the "Skill Player vs. Tourist" thing seemed to resonate with a lot of people, the sections about financial considerations didn't gain much traction. Not sure why that was.

Anonymous asked:

Are games becoming like cinema in the sense that we have "quality" games adored by the serious critics and "mass" games selling millions units? Is that a good thing? Will we have some the Cannes and the Oscars of games fighting between them?

My sense is that the opposite is true -- that critical favorites and commercial successes are one and the same. Looking at Metacritic's top games of 2008, you see that, with few exceptions, the top-rated games were also the tentpole, "event" games. Braid and World of Goo might be good candidates for the "critical darling" honor, but if anything, they outperformed most independent games precisely because of critical adulation. (I don't know what the hell that MaBoShi thing is for the Wii, btw. That could be the real sleeper on there.) Compare this to the world of movies, where for every Slumdog Millionaire that comes along, a bunch of critics are shouting to an unreceptive readership about the greatness of Happy-Go-Lucky.

I think it is good if there is a vibrant outsider or independent scene. There's always been one on PCs, and it's nice to see some of the console makers extending that opportunity to their users, too. Although I've got to admit that my personal tastes always seem to run to the slickly produced shoot-'em-ups.

Thanks for the questions! I'll post more tomorrow.

Friday afternoon tidbits

Ah, long weekends. I'll be spending mine with extreme sports, both actual and virtual. Snowboarding on Monday, weather permitting, and Skate 2 before that.

-Speaking of Skate 2, Gus Mastrapa wonders why the game so explicitly favors male avatars. In Gus's formulation, "if you chose to play with a female avatar in Skate 2, you're not playing a natural-born woman, so much as a post-operative transsexual." It's easy for me, a white, male gamer, not to notice these things, but lots of games make the assumption that the people playing are just like me. That is a little odd.

-I was surprised to see that Giant Bomb readers chose Metal Gear Solid 4 as their game of the year, and not just because it seemed absent from almost every top 10 list I read. It's just that, given the ongoing commercial struggles of the PlayStation 3, it's amazing that enough people even played it to box out some Xbox 360 titles. Then again, maybe the 360 vote was split, while PS3 owners had only this one game to rally around. (Although LittleBigPlanet also placed.)

-Two great write-ups about Braid came down the transom on the same day this week. Julian Murdoch at Gamers With Jobs writes about his inability to separate the work from its author. L.B. Jeffries at PopMatters defends the only universally maligned aspect of the game, its inter-level textual interludes. I'm glad people are still playing and thinking about this game.

-In the 1980s, only Galaga could provide a soft landing for a cocaine-addled Alec Baldwin.

-From Time's Karen Tumulty: "The metaphor came from our TV screens. On the day that George W. Bush gave his farewell address, the image that got the nation's attention was one of relieved survivors scrambling out of a jet that was sinking into icy water."

The Year in Review: The Best Games of 2008

Above: This is the one.
(Note to Harmonix: "This Is the One" would make excellent DLC.)

We're wrapping up our recap of the year that was. Today: the best games of 2008.

If you want to read the blurbs, you'll have to read the feature at thephoenix.com. But for discussion, here's my list of the top 10 of 2008:

1. Rock Band 2
2. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
3. Braid
4. Far Cry 2
5. Left 4 Dead
6. Fallout 3
   
7. No More Heroes
8. Grand Theft Auto IV
9. Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2
10. Yakuza 2
    

A couple things should go without saying. First, yes, I am aware these were my favorite games of the year and not objectively the best. Second, there were more than a few 2008 releases that I missed, although thanks to my cram session I think Fable 2 might be the only serious contender there. But who knows, maybe I would have loved something that got tepid reviews elsewhere, like The Force Unleashed.

I do feel that 2007 was a much better year for games overall. Not that it matters what the calendar says. You could reframe the debate and come out with a much different-looking list, as Iroquois Pliskin does in suggesting that video games completed the Tiger Slam from August 2007 through August 2008. What the heck -- we all enjoy these year-end lists, even if bitching about them is also fashionable. It's nice to take a minute and reflect on what we already have, before rushing headlong onto the next thing. Isn't that what the holidays are all about?

With that, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

(Posting is likely to be light until January 5.)

The Year in Review: Year-End Superlatives

Above: A winner is you, everyone.

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: year-end superlatives.

Today, we're handing out accolades to the games, systems, and people who made the year so interesting.

Welcome Trend: Downloadable Content for Consoles

Downloadable content is nothing new, but 2008 was the year it matured. If you wanted to play the most interesting and innovative games, you had to download them. The Wii finally branched out from Virtual Console re-hashes and offered original content like the charming LostWinds, the much-loved World of Goo, and Mega Man 9, which I couldn't in good conscience have played on any other system. Sony continued to quietly turn the PlayStation Network into a high-end boutique with games like PixelJunk Eden, Echochrome, and Wipeout HD. And, of course, Xbox Live Arcade was the videogame equivalent of the 1927 Yankees when they released Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2, Braid, Bionic Commando, and Castle Crashers all in one month's time.

Noble Failure of the Year: Mirror's Edge

But we're not talking about this anymore.

PR Knucklehead of the Year: Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard

As quoted in MTV Multiplayer:

The games Activision Blizzard didn’t pick up, he said, “don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises. … I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus… on the products that have those attributes and characteristics, the products that we know [that] if we release them today, we’ll be working on them 10 years from now.”

Not that it's anything we didn't know already, but usually they're a bit more tactful than that. Get ready for more awful Guitar Hero games, everybody!

On the other hand, maybe we should be giving this guy points for honesty.

The Donut Hole Award: Fairway Solitaire

Ineligible for this year's top 10 list because it was a 2007 release, and left out of last year's because I didn't play it in time, Fairway Solitaire was nevertheless one of the most fun and addictive games to come down the pike in quite some time. You really need to try this one. I guarantee that the 60-minute demo will convince you to buy the full game.

Game Blog of the Year: Hit Self-Destruct

Put simply, nobody else I know of is doing what Duncan Fyfe is doing at Hit Self-Destruct. He's a superb writer, whose narrative approach to writing about games is insightful and often very funny. He can take a subject like the old practice of naming your save files and make it sound both wistful and hilarious, while still making a good point about the player's role as co-author of the gameplay experience.

Publisher of the Year: Microsoft Game Studios

I say this not because of its major console releases, although Gears 2 was very good and an awful lot of people seemed to love Fable 2. In a year when Xbox Live Arcade beat the doors down, Microsoft deserves a little love. They published Braid and Castle Crashers, both independent productions made with a lot of love by their creators. Surely these weren't massive expenditures, but it still shows their appreciation for a creative vision. (Bonus points: Microsoft even put up with Dennis Dyack, which is prize-worthy all on its own.)

Developer of the Year: Harmonix

Rock Band and its sequel are both spectacular right on the disc, but Harmonix is special because of its commitment to supporting their games after its retail release. The breadth and quality -- not to mention the value -- of Rock Band's ever-expanding DLC is staggering. This company treats its property, and its customers, with care and respect.

Console of the Year: Xbox 360

Hey, didn't the Xbox 360 win this last year? Yep, well, there was no clear alternative for 2008. The Wii phenomenon is well beyond the limits of my understanding at this point, but a same-old, same-old sequel and a fitness trainer are not what I'm looking for out of my game console. The PS3 did better for itself than in years past, but its biggest exclusive title was a massive disappointment. Even the 360's exclusives weren't quite as great as in years past, but it did have more of them, and better, too. It continues to be the system you've got to have if you self-identify as a serious gamer.

(Oh hey, remember when the most consistently innovative games were coming out for the Nintendo DS? What happened there?)

Monday: 2008 honorable mentions.

Friday afternoon tidbits

Rest well: It's Labor Day! We'll all miss summer, but there are a lot of games to look forward to this fall. To start your long weekend, here are some of the most interesting things I read this week.

-Game Boy "De-Makes": What if you ported today's biggest games onto the original Game Boy hardware? The results might look a little something like this. (Thanks, Jim.)

-You have to read Chris Dahlen's interview with Jonathan Blow in the A.V. Club. Blow is such a fascinating guy. I guess he rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but I think with Braid he's earned the benefit of the doubt. When I read interviews with him, I get the impression that he really has sat down and thought about everything he's talking about. And I think it bothers him that other people don't do the same.

(Also, I'm terrified as to who Blow was targeting with this quote: "By which I mean, there are lots of random blog posters on places like Gamespot or NeoGAF or whatever who show a clearer understanding of the game than people who are all, “I’m all about games, and narrative and meaning, and I write a blog just to tell you about how I analyze all these things.” Those people have the same hit rate as your general forum poster.")

-Speaking of interviews, you may remember that Mike Walbridge interviewed me awhile ago for a piece he was working on for GameSetWatch. At his personal blog, he's posted a longer entry about that interview and others. My suspicions have been confirmed: I am a boring conversationalist. That's why I write!

-Bill Harris wonders what's up with 1up.com's review scores. I don't know why I thought they were one of the tougher graders out there -- maybe because they do such a good job with features -- but it turns out they're the most lax! I thought IGN had that honor. Also surprising is that Gamespot is the toughest reviewer of the biggest sites, particularly given Gerstmann-gate.

-Tom Chick lists the 10 most ridiculous lines of dialogue from Too Human. Although you could pick any 10 lines at random from the game and it would be equally silly.

Braid review

Here I go again, reviewing a game weeks after everybody's already done with it. Still, I was pretty happy with this Braid review, at least until I started reading other reviews of Braid and realized that I hadn't said anything new or particularly insightful.

Gotta say, though, it seemed like most reviewers were inspired to try a bit harder on this one, which was nice to see. They tried to explain what the game means! Imagine that. No reason why similar scrutiny couldn't be applied to more games.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way

A fascinating conversation has developed over at The Brainy Gamer in a post about non-gamers' reactions to Braid. There are a couple of disparate strands running through it, one of which is the old debate about whether great art needs to be accessible to a wide audience, whether anything accessible to a wide audience is therefore not art, and just whether the hell we're even supposed to be enjoying art in the first place.

I'd first say that, at bottom, accessibility is irrelevant to questions of quality. I say this as a vigorous defender of Michael Bay, clearly the most skillful filmmaker of his type working today. Great art shouldn't pander to the masses, but there's no reason the snootiest, most discerning critic can't also appreciate great trash. Once you start wondering what other people will think about the game you're playing, you've taken leave of your critical senses.

There seems to be a continuum of reactions to Braid, from people who liked and admired it, to people who admired it but didn't like it, to people who thought it was pretentious piffle. All of these are legitimate stances to take. If anything, the range of reactions and the vigor of the conversations about the game are a positive development. Even if people didn't like the ideas, they're engaging the game on that higher level. They're not dismissing meta-textual considerations as they so often do. That's a big step.

Michael's concern is that when a game like Braid comes along -- a game that seems unique and maybe even important -- it still alienates non-gamers. If you've played it, then you know how hard Braid is. The problems it poses, and the solutions to those problems, all take advantage of the player's numerous built-in assumptions about how games work. Without those assumptions, you're sunk. This is what Nintendo has tapped into with the Wii. They've made games that people can pick up and understand immediately, without having to rely on a foundation of gaming knowledge that's taken decades to construct. But they're not really making games for those of us who do know these things.

There's a good point raised in the thread by Jonathan Blow and others, who point out that we don't press the masterworks of literature into the hands of illiterates and demand that they learn to read right now, dammit! You learn to read by starting small. You recognize the shapes of letters and their associated sounds. You piece together basic words. After a decade or two, maybe you're ready to try James Joyce. (God knows I'm not there yet. Joyce makes me want to tear my hair out.)

In the Brainy Gamer thread, I argued that Braid's time-altering techniques were much simpler than people seemed to be giving them credit for, comparing them to the similarly constrictive rules of movement that govern chess. I still think that's true. There's nothing overly complicated about a ring that slows down the timeline within a certain radius, or a doppelganger that repeats your movements. By the time you've cleared the first stage in any world, you understand the rules. What the level design does with those rules is astonishing, but it's always logical, fair, and consistent. The game doesn't cheat.

I missed something important, however. For a non-gamer, understanding the temporal mechanics of Braid isn't the equivalent of learning how the pieces move in chess. A better analogy is learning to push the A button to make your character jump. Or that jumping on an enemy will kill it. Or that jumping on an enemy will bounce you as though you'd landed on a trampoline. The more you think about it, the more you start to notice all of the ingrained assumptions we have as gamers. It's even more basic than chess: for non-gamers, this is like learning the alphabet all over again.

Michael laments that his non-gaming friends feel shut out by the very process of playing a game. He wants them to appreciate the artistic and dramatic possibilities of the medium, but how can they do that when they can't even use the controller? Ultimately, they're going to have to work for it. Hey, it takes effort to read a great book. It takes careful attention to watch a subtle, nuanced -- maybe even subtitled! -- movie. Most of us couldn't do these things until we'd first read easier books and watched easier movies. We work to improve our appreciation for art because we know the results are worth it.

Let's not overlook what did happen: these people gave it a try. I bet they wouldn't have done that a few years ago. What we're seeing here, I think, is just another sign that games have yet to achieve the level of cultural penetration people like Michael and I would like to see. That's okay. That's what we're doing this for. Give them a few more years.

PixelJunk Braiden Retro Evolved

Above: PixelJunk Eden really doesn't look too good in screenshots.

We may end up remembering 2008 as the year that downloadable console games finally took hold. They've been helped to this point by a lackluster slate of disc-based games -- the year's two highest-profile releases so far have met expectations, at best, and massively underperformed them, at worst.

No, this year, if you want to play great games, you have to download them. I've nothing left to say on the subject of Geometry Wars 2. In fact, this weekend I made the difficult decision to delete it from my system in order to save both my productivity and emotional wellbeing. They say if you love something, you should set it free.

But that freed me up to try a couple of other downloadable games I've been itching to play. First was the surprisingly robust PixelJunk Eden demo. I kept expecting it to cut me off. Instead, it kept sending me back into the first garden to collect more and more bright shiny objects. Others have expounded at length about this game's curious appeal, which was more than evident in the demo. Given my brief playtime, I don't want to say anything definitive. But it struck me just how unlike major releases this game seemed to be in terms of aesthetics and gameplay, and how stale most of the disc-based games I've played this year have seemed in comparison.

And then there's Braid. What can I say about Braid? Very little, in fact, because I don't want to scoop my own review. I can say this: It's not the best game I've played this year, but without question it's the most original -- dare I say the most important? I don't know. Takes some time to sort out a question like that. In this moment, though, Braid certainly feels important. And it feels alive in a way that Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid IV, and any other bigger, better, and more badass sequel has yet this year.