I don't know why (or how) I keep convincing myself that I like puzzles. I mean, I enjoy solving puzzles. That's a good feeling. It's immensely satisfying to figure something out and see an obstacle turn into a non-issue. And I suppose I'm moderately good at puzzles. You don't get a degree in mathematics (even as half-assedly as I managed to do it) if you don't have a brain that can twist its way around a problem. However, there is a period of time, where you can see the basic shape of the puzzle, but you have not yet found the thread to tug that will lead to a solution, and while that is going on I just . . . I feel like I want to break something.
I knew that would happen. My long, frustrating time with Antichamber is not something I will soon forget. Yet before I started, I fooled myself into thinking the anger would be a tonic, an antidote to the melancholy that settled over me post-Brothers. I'm something of an idiot.
Especially since the particular puzzle that's thwarting me is apparently an easy one. It is literally in the first level of the game. There is a collectible do-dad that is right out in the open, only a fraction of an inch above the character's normal jumping height, and for the life of me, I cannot figure it out at all. I have not the slightest clue about how to squeeze out that extra little jump. I'd think that boosting off an enemy might do the trick, but there are none around. The frustrating part is that it has to be something basic, because according to the global achievement stats, almost half of all Braid players get this. Yet I am drawing a blank.
Which reminds me why I hate puzzles. I'm sure that when I do finally get the answer, it will seem incredibly obvious, and the inevitable "aha" moment will be an enormous relief, but for now, when I don't even have an approach, it feels like pounding my head up against a brick wall.
Braid does have a plot, and it appears to be kind of heavy, emotionally speaking, but something about the combination of the subject matter (I think the main character, Tim, is analyzing the breakdown of a relationship through the metaphor of time travel) and the presentation (somewhat hypocritically, the precise and verbose prose of the interstitial narration strikes me as pretentious) means that I'm not really engaging with it (seriously, Tim, get over it, sometimes these things don't work out, and besides, if your diaries are any indication, the "Princess" dodged a bullet). This is fine by me. The last thing I need is to have my heart touched again.
Finally, I have to say, that for all my histrionics about "feeling too much," these last three games have all been a feast for the eyes. Braid looks like a painting, and the artifice of the "brush strokes" goes a long way towards giving the levels a great individual character, ranging from the dreamily hazy to the darkly intense, and I'm kind of loving the way that the visual design of the game pulls me into Tim's mind (as inconsistent as that is, in light of the fact that I'm only superficially interested in what he has to say).
There's still a lot left to discover in Braid. I've only got 32 of the 60 puzzle pieces, and I'm running out of easy ones, so I expect that I'll still be pretty far from completion by the time I've played another five hours.
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