Braid: Anniversary Edition Review (NotAbsolutelySure)
Braid is, by all accounts, a "smart" game.
Genuinely, as someone playing this for the first time in 2024, I've been told over and over by video essayists and the gaming community at large that Braid is a "smart" game, and it is.
But, how far does that get you?
This is a really unfortunate situation because this Anniversary edition of Braid might have actually made it so Jonathan Blow has to shut down his studio, which is a really sad reality of the current games market. That being said, I really feel as though making a remaster of Braid with a GDC talk hidden inside was kinda a misread on the current market.
Beyond the game itself, the big selling point of this edition of Braid is the commentary world, which is a clever way to include developer commentary, but it has a few flaws that make it difficult to enjoy. First of all, its split up and segmented, which is nice, but I can't pause a dev comment or listen to the commentary on my way to work like I could with any of the many GDC talks that Jonathan Blow has given. The commentary here *is* interesting, but having to go step by step in order to hear game design ideology within Braid is a bit tedious compared to a Youtube video. An inconvenient GDC talk isn't really a great selling point, which is one of the many reasons I imagine this didn't sell particularly well.
I picked this up on sale for 5$ and I imagine thats where a lot of the sales for this edition of Braid come from, because as interesting as Braid is for a first playthrough, this does not strike me as the kind of game that you replay over and over again.
"What if Mario was an incel" is an interesting twist, but there are some parts of this that are just very much, in the words of a friend of mine, Blow attempting very hard to be seen as an auteur developer capable of creating games that mean something. I think do a degree he has cultivated that image for himself, but he also goes and argues with people in comments sections he doesn't belong in which doesn't help when people call him a pretentious asshole. The clip of Soulja Boy laughing at Braid while Blow sits in a black room from that documentary lives rent free in my head. Soulja Boy might not have fully understood Braid, but I don't think there's a ton to miss out on here.
The time rewinding mechanic is interesting, and at the time this originally came out I imagine it was really top of the line, but in 2024, clever only gets you so far. I think the one thing that Blow kinda miscalculated with this is that, while interesting in theory and fun to talk about, Braid isn't a ton of fun to play past a certain point. There are some puzzle piece solutions (collectible extras) that are legitimately just stupid ways of manipulating the mechanics in ways that are not only not obvious, but also borderline absurd to even consider, and yet they are the solution to the puzzle. One in particular where you have to somehow know that your shadow version of yourself jumps a little further than you really do in order to bait it into opening a door so you can save your own key for the door behind it is... well its a bit annoying. With zero shame, I had to google some of the solutions and genuinely never would've gotten them had I not.
Braid is, by all accounts, a "smart" game. I'm just not all that sure its fun. Worth a pickup for the experience, but buyer beware of a bloviating Blow-hard.
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42143664/