Breaking out of the hardened mold can be a hard task nowadays.  Going through recent games  you can see a trend has started and is not going anywhere for some time:  rehash FPS games, year after year sports games, twenty crappy clones of one good game, etc.  It would seem those little jewels can get swallowed up by the immense plethora of games that follow these formulas; but developers press on.  The latter games only get released every so often, and when this happens, they start to turn heads.  Portal is a title that gamers begin to think of in terms of innovation, but that last year’s news.  This year belongs to none other but a XBLA game.  Braid boils down to one unique idea, puzzles.  Is it challenging? Yes.  Is it innovating?  Yes.  These two adverbs come together to form one great game.  I’m going to try to not reveal too many ideas, because as much as I say about it, you won’t get the full experience until you play it.

          Braid is a plat forming-puzzle game crafted from the mind of Jonathan Blow.  You control a guy named Tim who is searching for the princess with unclear intentions.  One of the games’ features is the ability to rewind time, which basically means the frustration is minimal (excluding some of the puzzles). Did that monster just hit you; well just rewind time and try to jump over it.  While playing this game, you’ll get a sense of familiarity with the Super Mario Bros. games; not so much of the plat forming portion, but just the overall aesthetic.  With completion of a stage, you get a message from a dinosaur claiming the princess is in another castle (if you don’t know what that’s from, break out your NES please).

          Does this remind you of anything?

          As I compare this to a Mario game, this one is far from the average plat former.  There are seven different worlds each containing similar time puzzles.  At times, I caught myself staring at the answer not realizing what to do.  Frustration can sit in every so often, but great satisfaction sweeps over once you discover the answer.  The overall message is to just try to figure it out for yourself.  If you cannot figure it out, then move on to the next one.  There is no punishment for not solving a certain part.  The shoulder buttons are used to speed up or slow down time which is needed to get past some of these crafty puzzles.  It took me a while to realize the shoulder buttons were used; this got a little annoying (my fault).  A quick tutorial could have helped out a little, but that’s just another part for you to discover yourself.  So with all the time puzzles, what exactly do you collect?  None other than puzzle pieces, but even they are used to solve some of the puzzles.  A level is complete once you collect all the puzzle pieces and construct the puzzle.

          The background looks just like a painting.  The overall look of the game is simple but has a calming feel to it.  The graphics don’t seem to matter; they look great and fit into this style.  This is aided by the calm music and the overall peaceful mood of the game.  You’ll run into a stage that has a gorilla rolling enemies across the platform (throwback to the original Donkey Kong).  The music and mood of this game comes together to help keep you calm trying to figure out these puzzles.  I’ve said that before, but wrapping your head around some of these puzzles will have you thinking outside of the box.

          The princess is in another castle

          This crafty puzzler will not appeal to everyone, but it shouldn’t be missed if you’re into innovative titles.  It’s great to see original titles like this one; it just shows there are still great ideas to explore (and on a plat former among all things).  Some people might squawk at the $15 price point, but consider yourself fortunate; these games are few and far between.  To be receiving new ideas into this market means this one a must to check out.