admiration, frustration, solitude

This weekend is shaping up to be an eventful time for me - J hasn't been around the place lately because of projects both at work as well as at the theatre, and I've been a terribly irresponsible dog-owner in that I've been shortening L's usual 45 minute walks down to less than half of that.

But my animal-abusive solitude has not been without personal gain.

A gamer friend of mine recently suggested that I take a gander at a new title that's been released on the XBox Live Marketplace: a pretty little something by the name of 'Braid.'

Braid

This wonderful piece of interactive artwork is the rare kind of thing that simultaneously induces in me both rampant admiration and suicidal levels of frustration.  Where I don't usually fall under the spell of your run-of-the-mill platformer, Braid focuses more on puzzle-solving than the usual Mario Brother knock-off.  Not only that, but the look, feel, and sound of the game is a fully immersive experience.  The central source of puzzle-building here is based around your ability to manipulate time, something that I thought would be easy to master early on in my experience with the game.
I was wrong.

Easily floating my way through the first few levels (available in the XBox Marketplace for free), I felt like I'd bested even the Prince of Persia in a 2D, side-scrolling world.  Then I promptly hit a wall.  As it turns out, the people designing the puzzles knew that I was going to be able to manipulate the flow of time.  And, like vengeful gods, the designers appear to have created one of the most torturous (and interesting) pieces of puzzle-based gaming I've ever seen.

I don't know whether or not you own an XBox 360 or if you have any interest in video games - hell, I don't even know if your reading this - but if you do, you really need to take the time to try this game.  And, if you get the chance, please tell me how to get all the puzzle-pieces in the fifth world.  I'm desperate.