Zero Punctuation: Braid
escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctua...Posted Aug 27, 2008, 3:58 PM UTC
367137
escapistmagazine.com
Vote me down but, I still hate the shitty intro music.
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I mostly don't like that we miss out on two additional jokes per installment in favor of the shitty intro music.
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I can deal with the shitty intro music, but that epilepsy-inducing, referenceathon video that goes with it is worse than when Yahtzee makes video appearances.
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I was hammering the down arrow, until I realised you didn't mean Braid's into music! Phew.
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I reminds me of the music in [Painkiller](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painkiller_(game\)).
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Well, i understand why he did it... but... it's not as good as the old style.
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If you insist /
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"Nicest Beaches Tax"
Perfect ending.
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also we can travel freely without telling people we're canadian.
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No no, to fake being Canadian, you just have to end all your sentences in eh, eh?
Fools 'em EVERY time!
Eh.
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That only works in the US my friend.
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my friend.
You really must be Canadian, buddy.
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That was a joke.
Eh?
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To anyone with a 360 who wants an actually original puzzle game, buy this. It's well worth the 1200 MS points or whatever the cost to see how a game can actually be enjoyable AND make you think at the same time.
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I tried the demo, and it had the same effect on me as Bioshock:
I was impressed by the story. I was impressed by the presentation. I was impressed by the gameplay mechanics. BUT... there's just something that is fundamentally not very entertaining about actually sitting down and playing it.
I know, I'm being a complete asshole by dissing both Bioshock and Braid like this, but there's just something similarly unsatisfying about them to me.
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Actually I feel the same about Bioshock at least. If I were a 'official game reviewer,' I would probably score it an A or A-, but my personal enjoyment of of the game was a low B.
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Here's another one. The whole false morality and seemingly endless lives in Bioshock just... fuck it. I played for all of 4 or 5 hours before I put it down forever.
Haven't felt particularly compelled to return.
I found Braid to be enjoyable, even with the pretentious "importance" of the story.
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I feel like that's the only part of Bioshock they really fucked up. If there's no consequence for dying, it makes you less cautious, less aware of ammo / items, and less interested in moving slowly and exploring.
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You didn't really miss anything. The final boss is a terrible joke, and the story is entirely predictable after the mid-game cutscene with the golf club.
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I think that is totally fair and in that moment just comes down to a matter of taste. Some people really love that style and some don't.
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I know exactly how you feel. I played through Portal and thought the game play was new and interesting and I really liked the humor in the game, but overall I felt unsatisfied and bored through the game. It felt like a chore to finish it.
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You're not alone, at least in regards to bioshock.
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I felt that way about Bioshock (except I was much less enamored by the presentation and mechanics). I might take your advice on Braid.
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if i could upmod you twice i would. this is how i feel about bioshock as well and i couldn't really put my finger on why i don't like it
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I can guess why: No pacing differentials.
The entire game, although full of action and things that go boom, is an astonishingly passive experience due to you essentially wandering through the levels and stumbling upon bad guys. There is no tension at all. At nearly every enemy encounter, you can simply walk away and continue you wanderings elsewhere
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There's that and (this could just be me) when I play games that let you wander around my OCD freaks and I MUST explore all possible options, which leads to endless walking and I eventually get bored.
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Do you enjoy puzzles and the like? Perhaps you just don't get pleasure from figuring things out? Lots of people are taught that figuring things out is downright harmful or, at the least, useless and that they should just keep their head down and not think too much (I hear this a lot), perhaps you've internalized some of that poison to the degree that it affects your entertainment choices?
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Well, Mr. Armchair Psychoanalyst, I guess you have me all figured out based on three paragraphs on text. Kudos, sir. You should turn professional!
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I'm at World 4 and I liked the game. I feel it has a hard time teaching you new tricks. You're given lots of abilities but there's really not much of a step by step process. So what you learned last time might not be something that I'll use the next time. I like being able to use what I learned and apply it to new items, but so far I don't feel I'm getting that. It's seems like a completely new puzzle each time that I must learn, which slows down my instant gratification. It's not as much fun for me personally staring at a screen for 5 minutes trying to figure out what to do. But again I'm only in World 4 and the beginning was a lot of fun, but I think the difficulty might spike too much which doesn't make it as fun.
Another aspect that frustrates me is I know how to solve the puzzle, but it takes a lot of trial and error to hopefully reverse the time so I can land on block at just the right time. Hopefully the whole game is not like this.
It's a fine line to go about because you don't want the puzzles to be too easy, but being too difficult can make it more of a chore than fun.
Also though it takes time manipulation to a new level. I've seen this before in Prince of Persia, so the innovative part that it seems everyone raves over to me is not that innovative. The creator just expanded on this idea. Not to take anything away from the work it is quite amazing, but I just wonder what a full team would have accomplished and how much more refined this game could have been.
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Absolutely agree. Regarding the review: Not mentioning PoP is exactly right, but only for the reason that time manipulation wasn't exactly a real part of Prince of Persia's gameplay. It was a neat idea to replace quicksave, it was in no way actually something that was incorporated in the puzzles, the fights or the way you would play the game. You could play the whole game through without using rewind (yes, you could slow down time, but how is that original?)
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You could play the whole game through without using rewind
Sure, you COULD. But where's the fun in that? I'm sure there are plenty of games that you CAN play through without doing X or Y. Hell, you can play all the way through Fallout without ever once engaging in combat.
The point of the time manipulation in PoP was optimization. You know how, in the movies, the heroes always seem to know exactly how long a bad guy will take to get from point A to point B, so he has just enough time to kill bad guy C and whip his body around to act as a shield from the bullets from bad guy D coming at his back, before ducking and letting them hit bad guy E sneaking up... etc etc.
Prince of Persia lets you DO THAT. And unless you are The fragging One, you're not going to do it without rewinding. You can pull off some truly spectacular chains of attacks with judicious use of the rewind feature, so you'll know where bad guys are going to be and when.
You just have to be able to take a step "back" from the game and imagine how cool what you're doing looks to the bad guys who are experiencing it for the first time.
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And unless you are The fragging One...
I am.
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If you want original slowdown, Viewtiful Joe 1/2 did it best. 2 is really annoying with its Guide Dang It moments though.
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There's also the fact that if he mentioned PoP in that review (which he did!)... it'd be about the 4th time he's mentioned that game series as an aside while reviewing a different game.
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Sounds like it suffers from Portal syndrome, totally awesome never before seen gameplay elements that you only get to use for about 2 hours and it's over.
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That was one of Portal's appeals, for me. Perfect length.
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That's the same reason why the ladies love me
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totally awesome never before seen gameplay elements that you only get to use for about 2 hours and it's over.
That's why the ladies love me.
EDIT: Ok, in all honesty, two minutes.
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Sorry. You're not a companion cube.
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I'm a companion cylinder
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2 hours is perfect length? Excuse me?
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Yes, I was starting to get bored. I get bored easily. Hell, I found your comment a bit too long!
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TL;DR
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The advanced puzzles add a lot. I was bashing my brains out on the final advanced map for close to an hour.
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Agreed agreed agreed. The main game was excellent. The advanced levels and the challenge ones are amazing.
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Better to quit while you're ahead.
Besides, you get plenty for the price.
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While he mentioned shockingly little about the game itself i still think this episode is a return to form and neatly sums up lots of the problems with games today.
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Yeah, this definitely was a bash on big title games, but I was looking forward to hearing more about Braid. My friend just got it and its all he talks about now.
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You know, not all big title games are bad. Hell, they're usually the cream of the crop when you look at all the other shit that gets pushed out of these companies rectums.
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His art discussion -> joke explaining analogy was probably the deepest thing I've heard from Yahtzee to date.
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It's zero punctuation, but there's punctuation in the title. hahaha, im so original.
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Reading this post each week feels like a big hug from an old friend I haven't seen in a while.
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Show me on the doll where he touched you...
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[deleted]
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This is a much older reference than ASiP, but it is an appreciated one, nevertheless.
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Well played, sir. Upmodded for sparkling originality, as always.
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It's about time this comment got a plus score people.
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hahaha! DEMON
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Today is vote up jdfong day.
C'mon, just this once.
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Wrong, it's opposite day.
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There was punctuation in the video as well. Commas. I think I saw two of them.
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For me, it's already a meta-joke. Congratz. Upmoded.
-1
Unfortunately the first minute or so is a pretty good description of how most game development occurs and how a lot of game developers feel.
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Except in my experience, the 'designers' are just as clueless as the suits.
designer: 'Can you make it 1000 player multiplayer online?'
dev : 'no, it can't be done'
designer: 'but... do it, please!'
dev : 'it's not technically feasible, the maximum amount of updates you could ...'
designer: 'don't give me technical mumbo jumbo, just implement it'
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So true. It's really a problem born out of a lack of good direction or leadership at a producer level or higher. Too much development happens in a linear fashion which trains people to believe that they have to make unrealistic demands in order to get their "vision" implemented. Vision needs to be proven before it can be implemented.
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I liked them both, but Lost Winds doesn't compare at all to Braid.
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Thanks, I'll check it out.
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Another marvelously creative game from an indie creator! PSN and Wii should both learn from this and open up their platforms and lower the bar to entry (which, unfortuantely for them, is quite high due to the nature of their platforms).
I'll cross my fingers that he won't get a job out of this. I hate to see these indie guys get sucked up into big uncreative monolithic corporations that put them to work on Redundant Sequel 45 or Guaranteed Profit Movie Title 17. I hope he makes enough cash off of this that he doesn't have to do ANYTHING if he doesn't want to and can live comfortably for a decade or two.
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He has worked in big corporations before.
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There are some creative things on PSN, like Echohrome, Flow, Flower, etc.
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Well he got a few points right. But I expected a more favorable review on the fantastic execution of the game's given mechanics.
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It's a two, three tops, hour long game where a lot of the levels are just copy and paste from previous levels.
If they didn't perfect the mechanics that developer would never be allowed to show a game to a company again.
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I can almost forgive him for his Soul Caliber review now.
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*Calibre
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Technically we are both wrong. I knew it was spelled different but its calibur. You obviously haven't seen the review.
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No. In his review he says calibur should be spelled the British way, Calibre.
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The rare counter-pwn. It must be a blue moon.
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spoiler alert
The breaking keys isn't a dick move. You can't bring keys back into the past; they have to move forward in time to open doors.
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Wrong. There are keys that are exempt from time manipulation. They have the green sparkly effect to them. These keys if used on an incorrect door are now permanently broken. The only way to reset them if this happens is to leave the level and come back in.
I had this happen to me once or twice and it did rather piss me off. You can't just rewind time to undo it, the key stays broken. It was one of the few instances where you couldn't just rewind time or walk to the left to reset something and try it over again.
The moving green sparkly platforms you sometimes had to block within so much time being the other, but those were fairly obvious. The broken keys pissed me off because there was no indication that using it in a door would break it and not open a door. it should have somehow signified which key matched which doors, or not break a key when it couldn't open a door.
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But you can still tell which doors are incorrect. On the "move to reverse time" levels if you moved from right to left to open the door, the door couldn't open because time was reversing as you moved to the left. If you opened the doors moving left to right time would move normally and the door would be able to open.
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Yep, it was a fair puzzle. By the time you encounter it, you should have experienced jumping on enemies while moving left, which doesn't kill them. Likewise, a cautious player should have been able to deduce that unlocking a door while moving left would not open it. Having 2 locked doors leading to the same piece should have been a hint to the player to think through a solution, rather than using trial-and-error.
Understanding the consequences of the time mechanic leads immediately to the correct solution.
That said, I tried the wrong door first.
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HA HA. Hey at least you figured out why that door did that. I only just now understood it as you told it to me. Makes perfect sense now but in the gaming world... come on that thought isn't going to run through your head. Key goes in door, you jump to it and... broken. Fuck.
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I don't recall any "incorrect doors." You just can't bring a key from right to left on the reverse time stages.
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I think he means the puzzle where you have 3 doors but only two keys. One of the keys is magical and one of the doors is too and you have to combine them the right way. Obviously he didn't pay attention to the sparkling magic stuff.
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I disagree, solely because when I played through I understood my mistake on the puzzle you describe, but NOT why the key didn't work in the situation spez describes. It wasn't nearly clear to me why the key suddenly seems to break in that puzzle until much later, once I started working on speed runs.
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I actually fully understood that puzzle but it took me 4 damn tries because I kept making mistakes even though I knew the exact order in how to do the damn thing.
1
After only relying on zero punctuation for my video game reviews I have found that I can barely read any other reviews. The only place I can find anything close to it is /vg/.
and this is why I am pessimistic and no longer as human as the rest of you.
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What's wrong with plain 'ol /v/?
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/v/ is filled with faggotry. The only /v/ I know of is in 4chan and it is WAY more concerned about shitty memes than talking about games.
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Yeah, that's whats wrong. My mistake, I always think of /vg/ as 7chan's /v/.
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7chan is also full of fail; less so in /vg/ though.
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I cannot possibly agree more with him on who to blame for the deluge of shitty games. You are to blame, all of you. Including me, so I guess that makes it us. If shitty games were not profitable EA would not exist. Everyone from the douche that bought Halo 3 and Force Unleashed, to the pirates who can't be bothered to pay for and support Psychonauts and Ico.
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Fuck you, I'm buying Force Unleashed the moment it hits the market. That demo was fun as hell.
But no, I don't play Halo. FPS are boring as shit, give me a good 3rdPS if I have to play one. They're more tactical and interesting then jumping around like a twat constantly firing in circles.
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I played the demo yesterday and everything about Force Unleashed is fucking awesome, except, well, the fighting mechanics. Which is one of the most important things about a game like this. It just doesn't feel right. The force grip is clumsy, all the animations are too fast, it's hard to lock on the target you want. I will probably still buy it, but it's sad because it's a wasted opportunity to make the awesomest game evar.
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Yeah I did notice that the force grip was a little... nontargeting? I guess would be the word. I know there is a lock on feature, but it didn't work all that well for me.
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Does anyone know what Yahtzee has against Gears. I mean, he mentions it a lot but he's never done a full in depth reason as to why he doesn't like it.
Oh and "Good I hate that guy" was one of the best damn build up jokes he's done. He's been having a lot of them recently since the "clap clap OI"
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My name's adrian...
Well thanks for fucking up game design for the rest of us, Adrian.
Yea, you cockslap!
Thanks a lot, you prick!
Everyone get your torches and pitchforks..
Me too, I was scared for a moment, that he WAS speaking directly to me.
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