A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible
Braid
A brilliant and melancholy deconstruction of the platformer genre. Much like Portal the year before, Braid is a miraculous unity of content and form, plumbing emotional and intellectual depths rarely seen in video games. Bravo.
Grade: A
posted by d l wright at 4/14/2009 03:15:00 PM
6 Comments:
Not being snarky. Where do you put the pretentiousness on a scale of 1-10? I've heard it's high enough to be distracting.
Some of the prose can be a little grandiloquent at times. Blow has deflected that criticism by pointing out that the text is written in the voice of one of the characters. I think I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one -- but I will say that some of the wording in World 3 had me cringing (again, maybe I was meant to be cringing).
Part of me thinks that the pretentiousness criticism is more of a reaction to Blow's cocky personality that comes through in his interviews and presentations. He has a pretty good indictment of BioShock in one of his presentations, and once you start blaspheming gaming idols, you set yourself up to become a target.
The only thing that has really bothered me, is that in interviews he has claimed that nobody has really "understood" the "true" meaning of Braid yet. He wants to view the plot as a logical system just like his intricate puzzles, but the dude should know that once an author releases a work, the meaning is no longer his -- particularly a work as obtuse as Braid.
In summary: 3 (although I have a feeling you would give it a 7 or higher).
Remember when I told you that you just didn't understand the true meaning of Dr. Horrible and that's why you didn't like it? Classic ;)
Speaking of Whedon, I'll have a Dollhouse blog soon.
Just read his criticism of Bioshock. He's right. And I'd actually heard Shawn Elliott talk about that same "morality issue" issue. And Elliott works for 2K Boston now. For Levine.
Still, Bioshock is easily the second best game of this console generation. (After Portal, of course.) And one of the best ever.
One of the best ever? I seem to recall a brilliant critic, whose name I seem to forget, wrote the following words about BioShock:
"BioShock is easily the most overrated game of the year. Despite a phenomenal introductory sequence and one of the most distinct and original settings to ever grace a first person shooter, the game still traffics in the genre's most egregious crimes: tedious item gathering, useless skill upgrades, repetitive enemy design, and horrendous ai. Quite curiously, the game's most praised aspect is its most banal. There has been much talk of the moral-based gameplay, but considering the game's philosophical backdrop in Ayn Randian objectivism, the game is practically a rail shooter. For all of the in-game discussion about freedom, the moral choices are insultingly binary and have a negligible impact on the development of the game. Don't even get me started on the supposed "plot twist" which is as meaningless as trying to psychoanalyze the nameless soldier in Doom. Disappointing."
I don't disagree with your complaints, but I do disagree with your conclusion.
Bioshock is a very important game. But not because of it's gameplay or it's actual story. But that blog is still being written.
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