Braid Coming to Windows Today

I waited too long for this and damn, i don’t ‘get it’. Next.

Meh, who cares about this traitorous crap.
Oh well, at least it didnt take years to come to PC, like some other traitor – Halo – did.

You know, I enjoyed the game, but so much about it screams “have never designed or possibly played a PC game before”:

-Refresh rate: Locked to 60hz, crashes if forced to anything higher. Hello eyestrain.

-Alt-enter for Window mode (as a workaround the refresh rate): runs fine except game viewing area is vertically squashed, makes playing impossible.

-Gamepads: Does not support non-360 pads, which is terrible considering pads designed for PC come with superior configuration software.

-Keyboard: Does not support the numpad arrow keys. WTF? Does not allow any kind of key binding.

The only way I can get to run the game with any semblance of smoothness is at 10 fps.

orz

@Consarnit: You can’t beat the game unless you get all the puzzle pieces. Getting the puzzle pieces is the point of the game, “completing” the levels is ancilary. It’s a puzzle platformer, not an action platformer.

“-Refresh rate: Locked to 60hz, crashes if forced to anything higher. Hello eyestrain.”

Yeah, that is pretty bad. I’m very sensitive to this, so I can’t use 60hz more than five minutes before I get a headache for the rest of the day.

I did find Braid playable in windowed mode, but I’m disappointed there’s no proper menu where you can set different resolution/refresh rate settings.

I have very little technical insight, but as it’s possible to run the game in windowed mode and with 85 Hz (as that’s the refresh rate my desktop uses), I don’t quite see why it shouldn’t be possible to do the same in full-screen mode as well…

I know I’m not the only one who have serious problems with games that run 60 Hz. Without the windowed mode (which should have been easier to access), I would not have been able to play this game at all.

Because if collectibles are requirements for beating the level, then you can’t get any further in the game once you reach a puzzle you are stumped on. This is a classic problem with puzzle games and is one of the reasons games have been getting easy to the point of lameness.

The thing is, you could run fullscreen at 85hz but the game would be running at 60hz, so some frames would be longer than others, so it would look stuttery. However, maybe this would be preferable to the flickering of CRTs. I don’t know, I haven’t used a CRT in 7 years (for this exact reason).

PC gaming is all about giving the options to the consumer. Console gaming is all about keeping the options in the hand of the company.

“Because if collectibles are requirements for beating the level, then you can’t get any further in the game once you reach a puzzle you are stumped on.”

Well, that’s a partial (and I think inadequate) explanation — though I appreciate getting an answer at all!

First, it’s inadequate because it doesn’t explain why you have to enter the levels in order. Indeed, requiring the players to enter the levels in order (with the very small exception of worlds 5 and 6 or whichever they were opening at the same time) belies the claim of a “nonlinear” story (at least in terms of the story’s presentation). The linearity is strong with this one. It’s just you spend a lot of time backtracking.

Second, it doesn’t explain why you don’t have some collectibles, which are easier to get, required to clear the level, or some *other* kind of obstacles, which are harder to clear than those currently in the game, in the player’s path. Having the levels so short and easy means that beating the is a source of absolutely no satisfaction. The only satisfaction comes from solving the puzzles. Why rob the player of a sense of satisfaction? Why not let him earn it with more interesting level challenges?

Third, I note that the combination of very easy levels and relatively large number of time-stuck keys, levers, and enemies actually makes the time time-traveling *as a way of avoiding death or dead-ends* significantly less meaningful. The only time I really died (in the parts I’ve played) is to the bunnies (who actually kill me relatively regularly). And I’ve had to quit and reload levels fairly often because I’ve dead-ended them. The time-traveling doesn’t even reduce replaying that much because the time-stuck aspects, or coordinated shadow, or whatever often makes traveling backwards in time an inadequate way of getting back to where you were before.

This last point sort of is what it is. There’s no reason the game *had* to make its rewind feature a perfect way of avoiding dead-ends and boring replaying. But that’s how most reviewers (and I seem to think the game’s own publicity) described it.

Hrm? Leaving the level from the door you came in, then re-entering the level resets the puzzles. I found that fairly quick and painless.

You guys got the 360 pad to work with yours? No such like with mine.

Anywho, finally bought this. I have to say, the graphics, music and most of the gameplay is quality, but I don’t think the story could have been much worse.

Really, if I’m interpreting this correctly, there’s some super awkward metaphor relating the Manhattan project to an abusive relationship. I also became more and more tempted to just skip the text-books as they were so disconnected from the gameplay except for vague descriptions of the level’s gimmick.

I’d rather there be no story than have to read bizarre passages about explosions being candy stores.

We can’t let _that_ be the last comment. Even if it is (hopefully) a joke.

I’ve been enjoying the game the past few days. That includes both the gameplay and the story, which I see not everyone appreciates. There are some ideas raised of the sort that you don’t often see in games.

Now if we could just do something about Blow’s overly brief (*ahem*) development period. :)

It does have shader effects actually — shader 2.0 is required. The game was also developed for the PC, not the XBLA. I agree about the gamepad support and lack of config options, but there was a new update to the game recently that allows you to change the resolution and fixes some of the low fps bugs.