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Braid, Anniversary Edition review – time to rewind-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

One of the most important indie games of all time returns with a remaster that adds more than a dozen new levels and revamped visuals.

Braid, Anniversary Edition – time flies when you’re having fun (Thekla)

One of the most important indie games of all time returns with a remaster that adds more than a dozen new levels and revamped visuals.

The Xbox 360 may have been the worst selling console of its generation but there are many good reasons why it’s considered the most influential format of its time. The Wii may have been more copied but its focus on motion controls and ultra-casual games has had little lasting impact. But the Xbox 360 was the console that made online an integral part of gaming, while also pushing concepts such as Achievements and Xbox Live Arcade.

Xbox Live Arcade is a largely forgotten phrase nowadays but back then the concept of buying and downloading smaller scale games and expansions directly from your console was still new, after a handful of early experiments on the original Xbox console.

By definition, indie gaming was responsible for the birth of video games, but it wasn’t until Xbox Live Arcade on the Xbox 360 was used to promote and sell games such as Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved and Castle Crashers that the term indie gaming entered the common vernacular. The other release key amongst these early pioneers was 2008’s Braid, which was not only an excellent game but something that could only exist as a downloadable indie title.

16 years later and it’s sad to say that Braid has become almost as forgotten as the Xbox Live Arcade branding which it helped to popularise. That’s largely because not only did it not get a sequel, or any kind of re-release until now, but it’s not a game that was widely copied in anything other than broad strokes. The only subsequent title by creator Jonathan Blow was The Witness, although apparently he is now working on a new, large scale game.

Since this remaster has not arrived in time for any important anniversary, it seems reasonable to assume this is simply to raise funds for his new game. As a sprite-based 2D platformer, there’s only so much remastering a game like Braid needs but as well as the original story campaign this remaster also adds a number of new levels, with extensive commentary meant to educate as well as just entertain.

Despite how influential the nature of Braid’s original release was, the game itself is something of a love letter to gaming’s past. The constant, unsubtle references to Super Mario – from princess-less castles to talking dinosaurs – make clear the game’s old school influences, while the gameplay has more in common with single-screen platformers such as Rodland and the original Donkey Kong.

You can rush through each level by simply getting to the exit, but the real goal is to collect special jigsaw pieces. At first this seems to be through fairly standard platform antics, until you realise you are working in three dimensions after all, except the third is time. Time controls aren’t unheard of in video games but here you can rewind as far back as you like at any time, although you rarely do so simply to undo being killed.

In the one true steal from Mario this basic tool is exploited and expanded in different ways in almost every new level. One of the first complications is magic objects, such as keys, which are immune to time controls and the basis of most early puzzles. Subsequent levels introduce more perception-distorting concepts, such as screens where walking right moves time forwards and going left reverses it. Then there’s the introduction of time wells and the level where you gain a ghostly shadow that repeats the last thing you did before rewinding.

As daunting as they may sound, especially for anyone that got stuck early on in The Witness, the only time the game threatens to overwhelm is with the unnecessarily high difficulty of the actual platforming. This never really seemed the point of the game and it still feels like a mistake to make it so difficult, especially when the puzzles are balanced very well.

Braid, Anniversary Edition – Donkey Kong may have been an influence here (Thekla)

The only other element that doesn’t really work is the text-based story, whose sixth form poetry style musings aren’t quite the melding of gameplay and philosophy intended. At the time there was much discussion as to what the story really means – with one popular theory revolving around J. Robert Oppenheimer – but it all comes across as somewhat pretentious.

The character designs are also fairly unappealing; although the watercolour-painted backdrops are attractive and the game still looks good today. Increasing the resolution is obviously welcome but all the backdrops have been redrawn as well and while they add more detail they also change quite a bit about the original designs. The end result is rarely better or worse, just different, but you can switch between the two alternatives whenever you want.

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