Braid. Great little game. I say little when I really mean short. I suppose that if you really just couldn’t figure out the puzzles that the game could be very long indeed. To my credit I finished the game in a couple of weeks but I will admit to looking on line for the solutions to two puzzles and felt awful both times. I guess it’s inevitable but whenever I cheat on a puzzle I immediately go “ooooh, DUH!” I could and should have figured that out. One thing I did learn from looking online after I beat it was that there are 8 stars hidden through-out the game. This isn’t advertised in the game and I don’t know how anyone could have accidentally stumbled upon them because they are freaking HIDDEN. I started to collect them but got distracted by other games and haven’t been back. There is also a timed challenge that I have read is pretty nasty but would nab me the final achievement for the game. Time will tell if I go back to complete these herculean tasks.
The two things you hear the most about this game are the ingenious puzzles and the unorthodox story. Both of these things are great, no doubt, but what I enjoyed the most was the music. Music is always important for setting the mood in a game and Braid has mood to spare, in no small part to the music. It’s almost spiritual, I don’t want to use the word haunting, but spiritual, and makes you feel like this game is some sort of journey or pilgrimage, which I believe is one of its themes. I think I read somewhere that there was going to be a soundtrack available. Ah, here is a collection of links if one wanted to by the tracks individually. I spent some time on Jonathan Blow’s webpage, and I found the time to be well spent. He is a man of many interesting ideas, and I recommend his musings to anyone interested in the state of games, which I assume if you’re reading this that you are.
Unreal Tournament 3. Still haven’t played it. My current highest-tech computer has adequate RAM and CPU speed but is equipped with the Radeon X300 GPU. Not a bad card but older and not designed for games, at least not games that came out four or five years after it did. Looking at the Radeon 4650 HD as an upgrade, not top of the line by any means but more than enough for my purposes. Of course my purposes are ostensibly to use the level editor to practice my game design over the summer. But we both know I just wanted the game… and then an excuse to buy a new graphics card. Shhh, don’t tell my wife.
Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls. I had forgotten until just now that this game was made for the Play Station back in 2003 as Final Fantasy Origins. I passed up on it then, largely because I bought Final Fantasy Anthology in 1999 and was disappointed by the crippling load times. I'm glad I waited six years to pick this up and for a platform more suited to it. The Game Boy Advance has served as a system for the rebirth of great classic games, especially Final Fantasy. It makes sense, being that it's a cartridge system with graphics capabilities on par with the 16 bit systems. Also the game is something better suited to casual entertainment while traveling or sitting on a conference call than sitting down in front of a TV and logging hours.
Really I waited longer than six years to play this game (or games really since the long lost FFII is on there too). Final Fantasy came out for the NES in 1990. I did not have an NES in 1990 and in fact do not own one now. I spent many hours watching other people play this game. Later when I had acquired a SNES and had FF3(6) all to myself that the mystique behind the first game grew and I always meant to go back and play it.
Well now I can. I have to say that even though the game is 19 years old its is still fun to play. The addition of a bestiary is cool I guess. The best part is that you can save anywhere, not just at inns which is nice especially since it's on a portable system and you may be in a place where you have to put it down in a hurry... like traffic. I haven't played FFII yet. Looking forward to forgetting to do that.
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