The Review of Braid

The Review of Braid

Braid |brad|
noun
1 A videogame in which you play a man named Tim, who may or may not be using the powers of time and space to save a princess in another castle.

Dude, Braid is the best fifteen bucks you could ever spend. Don't even read this review, just go buy it. Well, maybe not if you only like Halo and Madden. If that's the case, this might be a little too high-brow for your tastes. By the way, minor spoilers on the puzzle mechanics in Braid.
Braid is better than Portal. That's right, I said it. There are a few reasons that I say that. Portal does have style and ironic humor and a catchy song at the end of the game. Portal was the most imaginative puzzle game ever conceived. Braid is not necessarily more imaginative in the base puzzle solving sense. Prince of Persia showed us time reversal. What Braid has done that is more imaginative than Prince of Persia or Portal is the variety of ways in which your core ability is used.

You braid time. You layer timeline upon timeline in order to reach your objective. Wrap your mind around that sentence for a minute.

Just think about that. It is hard to even conceive, let alone execute within a game. You have to see it to truly grasp the meaning of it. It is generally timeline "A" which is your actions and the actions of your surroundings. Then there's timeline "B" which varies from world to world. Sometimes walking forward and backwards moves time back and forth. Sometimes it is a mimic timeline. Sometimes it only goes in reverse. And in a later world you get a time slowing ability. This is not your typical bullet time. This is a bubble that affects time in relation to its proximity. The closer an object is to it, the slower it moves. Then there are the smattering of objects immune to any form of time manipulation, which I will call timeline "C".

Each puzzle is comprised of trying to reach point "A" to point "B" with the variables of collecting literal puzzle pieces. You always have timeline "A" but there are smattering of timeline "C" in world one and there is always a timeline "B" in the later worlds.

Then there is the strange narrative. It sounds like Tim was a normal guy that stumbled into this very strange world. I won't reveal anything, but the end sequence is phenomenal.

The game clocks in about eight hours if you try to collect everything. Apparently if you skip everything, you can beat the game in 45 minutes. The real meat of the game is really finishing it.

Buy Braid or you are an idiot.

Unless you only don't have a 360. Sorry. You just miss out.

-Nick L.

The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket Llama[1] is a webcomic starring "a high-flying llama, a sword-swinging cat, and a rocket as loyal as a cowboy hero's horse."[2] Created by Alex Langley while he was a student at Henderson State University, the comic first appeared in a comic book titled The Workday Comic. For the Workday comics anthology, a spin-off of Scott McCloud's 24-Hour Comics, comics creators each wrote and drew their own eight-page stories in eight hours in April, 2007, on Friday the 13th[3], which turned into an ongoing publication.[4] Co-presenting with comics author and scholar Danny Fingeroth (Dazzler, Spider-Man, Superman on the Couch), the creators described the webcomic's evolution as members of a Comics Arts Conference panel at 2008's Comic-Con International in San Diego, California.[5][6][7] Contents [hide] 1 Debut 2 Webcomic 3 References 4 External links [edit] Debut The full title of Rocket Llama's debut story in The Workday Comic #1 (spring, 2007) was "The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket Llama #112: 'Trouble in Paradise'".[8] The story introduced the taciturn hero Rocket Llama and his talkative sidekick, an anthropomorphic cat named Bartholomew Meowsenhausen, who find themselves stranded on an island after a battle with an enemy called Jetpack Dog. Spherical islanders capture them and then challenge them to combat. A villain named Böwser vön Überdog arrives with Jetpack Dog and, in a sudden Star Wars parody, summons a giant robot known as the Super Robot Dog Walker which blasts a volcano to bits. Before it can fire a second blast, Rocket Llama destroys it by getting it to swallow a pot of water and backfire. The story ends with Böwser tied up and the heroes using the giant robot dog head as a boat to get themselves home, with the promise of the next story to be titled, "Yuck! Yukon!"[9][10] Whether despite the original story's childlike art or because of it, the Rocket Llama story proved to be the most popular in the 2007 anthology collection of the eight-hour comics.[11] After comic artist Stephen R. Bissette, an instructor at the Center for Cartoon Studies and comic book artist best known for his work on Swamp Thing with Alan Moore, read all of the stories in the first volume of The Workday Comic, he remarked, "That llama's gonna stick with me."[12] [edit] Webcomic Nick Langley redrew the story with a less childlike drawing style in webcomic form for online publication[13] as the flagship title for the website rocketllama.com which grew into an affiliation of websites featuring webcomics, art, entertainment reviews, and scholarly studies of comics.[14] The online story featured a new cover[15] and omitted a one-page gag, a preview for an unrelated Stealth Potato comic, which had appeared as an intermission in the middle of the original story.[16] The original story also appeared online as the comic's "ashcan copy."[17] The authors present the Rocket Llama stories metafictionally as the world's oldest comic book, established in 1916, which they allegedly rediscovered and are adapting into webcomics. "Deep underground, in an archaic vault we searched until we found the fabled tales. As both the current production team behind The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket Llama and appreciators of such groundbreaking literature, we have taken it upon ourselves to restore these classic issues to a glory more befitting a modern, digital age."[18] Although every "issue" is presented with panels and screens in the correct order for each story, the issues are presented out of order as if readers were discovering old issues of a classic comic book in a seemingly haphazard order, however they come to find them. After the redrawn number 112's online publication came the serialized time travel story #136-137, "Time Flies When You're on the Run," appearing one page at a time throughout each week.[19][20] Special Rocket Llama Says bonus features appear only in "ashcan" form drawn by the original creator.[21] [edit] References ^ Rocket Llama World Headquarters ^ You are here. ^ Waddles, Joshua. (2007, April 2). Comic book club puts in a full day's work. The Oracle vol. 99 (25), p. 3. ^ Beard, Sarah. (2008, August 25). Comic Arts Club offers excitment. The Oracle, vol. 101 (1), p. 5. ^ T. Langley & R. Duncan, panel moderators, with respondent Danny Fingeroth. (2008, July). "Capes and Tights, Caps and Gowns." Panel presented at the Comics Arts Conference, Comic-Con International. San Diego, California. ^ Recent and Upcoming Research Presentations ^ Pannell, E. (2008, July 27). Comic communication part of professors' classes. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, T-1, T-4. ^ Page 1. ^ The Workday Comic #1. Spring, 2007.[1] ^ The Workday Comic - online edition. ^ Sorrell, M. (2008, April 14).Club produces second annual workday comic. The Oracle, vol. 100. ^ Quoted in "The Workday Comic: Not Just One Third of a 24-Hour Comic." Comics Arts Conference, Comic-Con International. San Diego, California. July 27, 2008. ^ The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket Llama #112: "Trouble in Paradise." Script: Alex Langley. Art: Nick Langley. ^ You are here. ^ #137-Cover. ^ Sneak Peak at Stealth Potato #75. ^ Rocket Llama Ashcan Copy. ^ Who Is Rocket Llama? ^ "Time Flies When You're on the Run, Part 1." Script: Alex Langley. Art: Nick Langley. ^ "Time Flies When You're on the Run, Part 2." Script: Alex Langley. Art: Nick Langley. ^ e.g., "Tanks a Lot." Rocket Llama Says #8. Script and art: Alex Langley.