Site, after site...after site praises the glory of Braid aside some of the worst screens of a game I've ever seen. The colors looked muddled, the game play generic. Now before you flip on me saying that I have committed the crimes of a thought criminal, I would like to remind you that many, many games in this world receive an inadequate amount of hype when their actual game play is taken into consideration.
My biggest example is that beautiful death Assassin's Creed, that was so bright you could fry something on your television the poor unit was working so hard, and the game play was really not standing up to the ridiculously bright world you run around in. I remember screens being something I could not really determine, the world too bright, too 'detailed' in a sense. I knew that Altaire had a fantastic outfit, but beyond this it is not really something digestible.
For Braid the reaction was similar, at least on the screen shots side of it all. Any screen I saw of Braid was a mixture of color to the point I could barely find the character, and the backgrounds had a weird transition appearance to them. There was something off about it in my mind. I could not see the brilliance, and I doubted any picture would give me the evidence I needed to combat the waves of praise the game seemed to create.
Demos are very useful tools. They can show you how well an idea on paper transitions, especially if you are like most of the gaming public that live vicariously through journalists. Braid has a demo on live, so I bit.
A demo can give you the entire atmosphere of the game, something a picture and a fanatic description cannot. The first thing I realized was the beautiful transitioning of color, something that left the screens looking muddled. The color and its usage is something that had my jaw hitting the floor, my eyes lost in the viciously bright backgrounds of world 2 that somehow seemed less harsh than Assassin's Creed.
Though I praise demos for their uses, I am forever hesitant about their accuracy in delivering a good feel for a game. Too Human bombarded me with the overall complexity the game seems to be designed around and was not particularly enjoyable. I was not left with a desire to buy Too Human after watching poorly animated expressions and faces with curious color pallets. As if in an effort to completely dispel Too Human, the demo of Braid trapped me in its world, in its blinding brightness and the excellence of the music. From presentation alone I was nearly completely sold on the game.
I love Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for the sands rewind feature. When Braid based its game play on the concept of being able to rewind through the puzzle levels I was dancing for joy. And the near unlimited rewind is a wonderful function and makes the puzzle-solving gameplay much, much, much more practical and enjoyable. My only problem is how the rewind function distorts the beautiful music.
Braid is brilliant, adorable, intelligent and excellent for its price. Considering that like games with its level of complexity and craft would cost much more, I do not understand the complaints at the price.
For those who are doing similar things with Braid, as in saying the screens are horrible and the game play looks childish, give the demo a shot. It is ridiculous now, looking back at all the negative feedback the game is raking in from the uninformed. I was not going to write a thing here until I was sure of what I thought of the game.
Now I know it is certainly worth its price, if for nothing more than the precious little dinosaur that talks to you.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Evolution. And Pokemon...
On a whim, and a suggestion from Cameron, I've picked up E.V.O. Search for Eden
on the SNES. What I am amazed by is how just... overlooked it seems to be. Of course if you own a copy you know that it is not overlooked by those who wish for you to pay them for it. In fact...
A complete*version of the game is selling for $199.99 on the bays of E at the moment. Such a fickle gathering of bays. The cheapest copy is running for 59.
The E.V.O. of the title goes a long way to suggest what the game is about, the Search for Eden addition is not simply to let the game get by in this anti-evolution reality we live in. The game has you starting off as a fish who must devour other fish to gain evo points with which you....evolve parts of your body. Oh no! there goes the head of people who claim evolution is a no go.
Despite them, I find the customization of your little animal to be interesting. You move from the ocean to the life of an amphibian, then to something decidedly more land-based, then air-based, pretty much moving through an odd mis-matched evolutionary ladder. All the while you can choose what of your animal you will customize and what of it you will not. Each customization comes with pluses and minuses, which is something completely addictive to me in games. Soul Calibur hits this the best with me, and the armor and weapon pluses and minuses are similar to giving your fishie rock jaws or a sword fish horn.
Having played through E.V.O. I can see how a copy of the game would rightfully cost you over $50. the game is an odd gem in the SNES world, and something I've decided is incredibly rare. Once I lived and breathed the SNES gospel, but looking back there are very, very few games that stand up to the test of time. E.V.O. is just a delightful oddity that I think could be successfully adapted for...oh wait. Spore. Sigh...
In other news: Gamestop employees get miffed when some girl knows more about their potential August 17th inventory than they do. Or: The new POKEMON DS is coming here. I am pretty excited since it will be a while before I can make my happy way to the Pokemon Center in New York or Japan. What I am annoyed with here is that I wanted this DS to launch here first. This is the ultra not so flash Pikachu Edition, and over in the shined out bottom right-hand corner there is a little etching of the current re-styled slim pikachu. I don't know why Pikachu had to be slimmed down, but that does not make me want this any less. Some day I might own this glowing object of excellence, but I am fore sure going to get another of the Pokemon Center DS lites, the one Japan thinks American kids would eat up.
I guess we do tend to export Japan's monsters frequently, or at least those capable of destroying the world or existence. This is the DS coming to your local unfriendly Gamestop this weekend (hopefully), and one you will see in my hot little hands. I like the black DS for how sleek it appears compared to the white or pink, and now that is supports two awesome monsters it is just that much more awesome. What makes this DS particularly cool to own is not that spiffy graphic, but the Pokemon Dungeon short that comes in the bundle, the carrying case, and the rumored Gamestop t-shirt. Christmas has come early to pokemon nerds who know they should focus on buying text books over a shiny bit of plastic. In my defense, this is an awesome shiny bit of plastic!
on the SNES. What I am amazed by is how just... overlooked it seems to be. Of course if you own a copy you know that it is not overlooked by those who wish for you to pay them for it. In fact...A complete*version of the game is selling for $199.99 on the bays of E at the moment. Such a fickle gathering of bays. The cheapest copy is running for 59.
The E.V.O. of the title goes a long way to suggest what the game is about, the Search for Eden addition is not simply to let the game get by in this anti-evolution reality we live in. The game has you starting off as a fish who must devour other fish to gain evo points with which you....evolve parts of your body. Oh no! there goes the head of people who claim evolution is a no go.
Despite them, I find the customization of your little animal to be interesting. You move from the ocean to the life of an amphibian, then to something decidedly more land-based, then air-based, pretty much moving through an odd mis-matched evolutionary ladder. All the while you can choose what of your animal you will customize and what of it you will not. Each customization comes with pluses and minuses, which is something completely addictive to me in games. Soul Calibur hits this the best with me, and the armor and weapon pluses and minuses are similar to giving your fishie rock jaws or a sword fish horn.Having played through E.V.O. I can see how a copy of the game would rightfully cost you over $50. the game is an odd gem in the SNES world, and something I've decided is incredibly rare. Once I lived and breathed the SNES gospel, but looking back there are very, very few games that stand up to the test of time. E.V.O. is just a delightful oddity that I think could be successfully adapted for...oh wait. Spore. Sigh...
In other news: Gamestop employees get miffed when some girl knows more about their potential August 17th inventory than they do. Or: The new POKEMON DS is coming here. I am pretty excited since it will be a while before I can make my happy way to the Pokemon Center in New York or Japan. What I am annoyed with here is that I wanted this DS to launch here first. This is the ultra not so flash Pikachu Edition, and over in the shined out bottom right-hand corner there is a little etching of the current re-styled slim pikachu. I don't know why Pikachu had to be slimmed down, but that does not make me want this any less. Some day I might own this glowing object of excellence, but I am fore sure going to get another of the Pokemon Center DS lites, the one Japan thinks American kids would eat up.
I guess we do tend to export Japan's monsters frequently, or at least those capable of destroying the world or existence. This is the DS coming to your local unfriendly Gamestop this weekend (hopefully), and one you will see in my hot little hands. I like the black DS for how sleek it appears compared to the white or pink, and now that is supports two awesome monsters it is just that much more awesome. What makes this DS particularly cool to own is not that spiffy graphic, but the Pokemon Dungeon short that comes in the bundle, the carrying case, and the rumored Gamestop t-shirt. Christmas has come early to pokemon nerds who know they should focus on buying text books over a shiny bit of plastic. In my defense, this is an awesome shiny bit of plastic!
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