Traversing worlds in Braid like a true tourist

I played a little bit of Braid back at the end of August 2011, during the time that Hurricane Irene came swooping on in and knocked out power at Grimmauld Place for a week and then some. Stuck at the in-laws, I only had my Nintendo 3DS and laptop to entertain me videogames-wise–Tara’s dogs and old VHS tapes provided non-gaming fun–and there was only so much of The Sims Social I could take. So I loaded up Steam for like the third or fourth time ever and gave Braid a spin, using just a keyboard to govern Tim and time. It was not easy, but thankfully, the game itself is not punishing, and actually needs you to rewind your mistakes to learn how to progress forward. I got to the end of World 4 before stopping, but let me preface that with the fact that you actually begin Braid on World 2. So, uh, yeah.

And for the most part, I just walked from the beginning of the level to the end. Occasionally, I’d tried to get some of those shiny puzzle pieces, but if they proved too complicated, I just moved on. And the game is fine with that. You can literally go from beginning to end on some levels in under a minute. Just keep going right; Mario would be proud. As Jonathan Blow says, it’s “about the journey, not the destination.” Well, my journey was often that of a tourist, going forward and taking in all the gorgeous sights while trying not to disturb history. If I could, I hopped over enemies instead of on them. I do not regret breezing past some puzzles, as they will still be there when Tim decides to return.

Some of Braid‘s story elements had already been spoiled for me at that point by the Internet, so that was the least compelling part. The puzzles though, they remained unspoiled…and good for me. They are works of art. Clearly planned and executed in a way that mattered to the game’s  mechanics and mood. Even the simplest of them still give off a good feeling aura when completed.

Flash-forward to now, 2012, the year of our unmaking, and I’ve been using Steam a lot more thanks to a capable laptop. Y’all remember that I recently bought a second copy of Skyrim, right? Well, I’ve been playing it with my Xbox 360 controller plugged into the USB slot, and it’s been fantastic. I thought to give some other games in my Steam library a chance, too, to see if they were more enjoyable with a controller versus a mouse and keyboard. And they were–Trine and Super Meat Boy. Braid, too. It just felt more natural to jump about and rewind time using a controller. I dunno. PC gamers can hate all they want, but platformers and controllers go hand in hand.

And for giggles, here’s some Steam Achievements I unlocked, which are totally different entities than Xbox 360 Achievements:

Traversed World 5: Travel all the way across World 5.

Traversed World 6: Travel all the way across World 6.

Solved World 2: Fit together all the World 2 puzzle pieces and align the puzzle in its frame.

Okay. Will hop back in soon to hopefully finish Tim’s heroic journey up, though I suspect I’ll need to look up some walkthroughs to get all the puzzle pieces in Worlds 2-6 as many look quite tricky and daunting; however, I’m quite proud of myself for getting them all on my own in World 2, as well as defeating a certain boss using the clone recording mechanic. Guess I retained some skills from playing The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom long before Braid.

Hurricane Irene, the weekend, and gaming

Well, we all knew she was coming ahead of time, and thankfully many of us paid heed to the warnings, but things were still pretty rough this weekend. In terms of things hitting close to home, the house we literally just moved into on Friday…well, it’s currently without power and hot water and the basement had about two to three inches of water in it. Plus, branches of deadly size were breaking off and dropping on the back deck:

Ugh. Yeah…don’t even know what’s going on in our other place–the Leaky Cauldron–but most likely not much, just power loss. Or extensive leakage. Trying not to think that way. Won’t be able to check on that for a little bit though. Pray that the remainder of our stuff remains dry and safe and…dry. Dry is the important factor here.

Tara and I spent the entire weekend at her parents’ place in Sparta, NJ, which still got hit with a lot of rain, heavy winds, and power loss. Honestly, prior, I thought that there was too much media hype about Hurricane Irene–my mother would’ve called me days ago and told me to pay attention and be prepared and that there was no hype, that this was a major storm rolling up the East Coast–and I probably would’ve just carried on as business as usual. Thankfully, everyone else freaking out began freaking me out and we smarted up, moved as much as we could into the new home, and then hunkered down elsewhere.

Before the storm rolled in, I made a quick swing by GameStop, interested in picking up a “get me through the hurricane” game, as well as rewarding myself for all that heavy lifting and stress that comes with physically moving from one place to another. I figured that if the power went out, I’d at least have my fully charged 3DS for a few hours of distraction/entertainment. I had a slight interest in Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked, the first true Japanese RPG for the Nintendo 3DS since its launch, and that’s interesting, considering the DS was always playing host to this JRPG and that JRPG. So I grabbed it, looking forlornly at the numerous copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution on the shelves behind the counter. My friend Greg had ordered me a copy, and I was hoping to get it in time for some weekend gaming, but Amazon was late shipping it, and then factor in the slim chance of being at the house to actually play it…wah.

But then DE:HR arrived on Saturday! I have read the game’s manual twice. That’s kind of like playing it, right?

Other than that, I played some Braid, VVVVVV, and more The Sims Social to help pass time as we *ahem* weathered the storm. Will probably have some posts up this week about these games, as well as some other goodies. Stay tuned. And please, please…stay away from falling branches.

Witness that I am intrigued over Jonathan Blow’s The Witness

Great, truly unique puzzles are hard to come by these days. We’ve seemingly done everything across a myriad of videogames spanning the past, present, and future: move blocks, match colored gems, flip switches, use portals to our advantage, bend time,  and so on. I thought the cloning and time-heavy puzzles in The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom were fantastic, excruciatingly tricky and humbling. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge had a few brain-twisters, too. But other than that, it’s all been pretty ho-hum, and yes, I’ve not yet played Braid, but do plan to soon.

And so with that said, I’m pretty excited about The Witness, Jonathan Blow’s next game after Braid, and I’ve barely seen much of it in action, just read several lengthy, praising articles over the last couple of days about the stuck-on-an-island puzzler. Which is all about discovery, and listening, and looking–and seeing. Seeing is solving.

The Witness has a Myst feel to it, playing from a first-person perspective and exploring a lush, but isolated and empty island. Why is it people-less? Who are you, anyways? What’s with all the tech? Questions, quizzical uncertainties, a pristine and thriving locale void of human life…only one way to figure it all out, and that’s to go exploring, picking up recordings for deeper insight. There are blue computer screens littered across the island, and they all seem to be connected to a door; to open the door, a player must draw a line from point A to point B, and that sounds simple, but it seems like the kind of thing that can grow dangerously difficult over time. Some of the answers for the line are actually found by looking around at the island; that group of trees, perhaps, with their weird-looking branches; that bird chirping overhead, chirping high then low then high again; these are not just bits of nature, they are answers. Seeing is solving.

It sounds fantastic. However, if I’m truly going to love The Witness, I’m going to have to stop reading about it, as I don’t want to know all the puzzle solutions long and before it even comes out. The lesser known, the better.

And here’s some lo-fi video footage of the game in motion:

Bouncing around the cosmos with Osmos

I think it’s safe to assume that I’m going to be talking about many of the indie games I’ve recently added to my collection over the last week or so. It started with just five darlings from Humble Indie Bundle 3, but that list quickly expanded as bonus games were added to the collection, including everything from a former bundle, one that I missed out on when it released in December 2010. Let’s just make things simple and list ’em all, okay? Okay, good. Glad to hear you’re a fan of lists, too. Ka-ka-kaboom:

• And Yet It Moves
• Atom Zombie Smasher
• Braid
• Cogs
• Cortex Command
• Crayon Physics Deluxe
• Hammerfight
• Machinarium
• Minecraft (free for a limited time)
• Osmos
• Revenge of the Titans
• Steel Storm
• VVVVVV

Yes, I put them in alphabetical order. You wanna make something of it?

Anyways…thirteen games. Probably half don’t work on my crappy Macbook. I dunno. I haven’t spent too long trying to see. I do know that Atom Zombie Smasher, Cogs, and Crayon Physics Deluxe definitely don’t work. Will have to try others later. I really really really hope Braid plays as it’s something I’ve been interested in for a long while, having heard it’s a great puzzler and a great story.

One game that does work on Mac OS 10.5.8–and plays extremely well–is Osmos. It’s an ambient strategy game set in outer space, giving the player control of a tiny mote which is trying to grow bigger by absorbing larger motes. You do this by bouncing/pushing the mote across the galaxy; however, moving the mote makes it lose some of its shape, getting smaller and smaller, making each click vital to its very survival. You better be hoping you’re moving towards another mote you can absorb, otherwise it’s best to just restart the level. As Isaac Newton would say, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This actually leads to a surprising amount of strategy.

Oftentimes, strategy can equal stress. You plan and plan and plan–and then everything goes wrong, leading to last-minute decisions to save your skin or keep things together. I didn’t really find that to be the case with Osmos though. It’s actually quite hard to plan ahead; the level starts, you see a mote nearby, try to click over to it, and then watch as it is absorbed by an enemy mote, turning it red, turning it deadly. You have two options: try to click away or just charge head-on, meeting death, which is the quickest way to restart the level. Other levels require you to be big enough to absorb a specific mote or chase down this one mote that is constantly avoiding you. Can get quite challenging, but even after failing like seven times in a row, I was having fun, learning, and just enjoying the all-around chill vibe the game’s soundtrack evokes.

I especially like zooming out using the mouse-wheel. Really gives off a great sense of size and wonder, and strengthens the idea that we’re all just tiny motes in a vastness, desperate to get bigger, hungry to get big.

Have only done the first few levels, having gotten to the point where I can decide my mote’s path. Looking forward to more Osmos, especially after chatty titles like Bastion, horrible vehicle sequences in Half-Life 2, or simply pure boredom on my Nintendo 3DS.