Braid

[Parsifal]

Last count has the Braid Team at "We're not too far from breaking even, but we need to sell a lot more." the $15 price point seems to be doing a decent enough job of getting them that extra cash injection. Sales just need to remain strong for a while longer and they can sit back and actually look forward to profit. You've got to figure that, sure you're going to lose sales from people who don't want to push above the $10 mark, but as word of mouth grows consumers will be more willing to take the plunge. Each "unit" sold is a half sale over the $10 price. The fact that Castle Crashers is so anticipated /and/ coming out at a higher price point should help make the $15 seem like less of a gouge.

As for Psychonauts: I've followed Tim Schaffer and Ron Gilbert since the old school Lucasarts days, so I was immediately aware of it's existence. The problem was that there was no version for my then console of choice, the Gamecube. I had to finally say screw it and just buy the PC version (which I couldn't run) just for the sake of supporting the project.

[JohnP]

I <3 Braid It seems so simple after you fully understand it. Then again...

[trebuchet]

Just started playing it and I already think it's the best thing on Live. When you figure out a puzzle it's like, "Duuuuuuude! No way! That didn't even...when did I...duuuuuuude!"

[Mike]

I just beat it. Had fun... kinda left me with a feeling of "meh."

Story was neat... but yeah... meh.

at least it had quotes I used in papers when I was in 6th grade, lol.

[David Yun]

You quoted Oppenheimer and Mary Shelley in 6th grade?

[Mike]

And William Laurence.

I had a big crush on the Manhattan Project in elementary school. Dad made sure I read all the "right" books.

EDIT: I did have fun with the face value story and gaming... I wish that it wasn't so heavily compared to the greatness of Portal. At least no equiv. of "The Cake is a Lie" is coming out of it though.

[David Yun]

This was my first impression I wrote in the other thread:

"A review is forthcoming as soon as I finish it, but this is the first XBLA game I'm giving an S Rank to. It's a 2-D platformer/puzzler that's this year's Portal. It lacks the awesome, overt Glados humor, swapping it for a wistful, melancholy tone, but as a pure puzzler...it's even BETTER."

It's easy to bring up Portal when discussing Braid, because the two share the same sort of marketplace presence AND design structure. I've talked it over with Mike, and we're essentially in agreement. His stance is that Portal has more personality. Without a doubt! GLaDOS has WAAAY more personality, and humor is always more palatable.

But that's not what makes Braid great. Braid wouldn't work if it HAD a charismatic personality. I wrote that little blurb above even before I got to what I feel is the awesome mind fuck of Braid. You don't have to enjoy something for it to be good. This analogy is a bit of a stretch, but is there anyone here that enjoyed Schindler's List? Is there anyone here that would argue that it isn't a good film?

I wrote a goodly length about art and videogames, along with a light dissection of Braid over here:

click teh link: http://www.direman.com/direman/comic.php?comicID=383