Braid, Anniversary Edition

Some thoughts on the remastered Braid.

The puzzles and the overall system hold up really well, I enjoyed rediscovering it 15 years later. David Hellman did an incredible job repainting most of the game, you've got brushes of paint drawn in real time all over the place, it's trippy and it's great. The sound design was also heavily improved (it was mostly a programmer's clunky job back in the old version), I like most of the changes, although the quest for high fidelity is sometimes questionable (world 6 became quite weird).

About the commentary: the parts from Hellman and the sound duo were quite interesting, but the 10+ hours about game design from Blow are so overblown (that pun was unintended). Mainly it's in dire need of editing. You've got 4 interviews and also monologues, so the same subjects come up regularly (if I hear one more time about the Pit puzzle, I swear...) It doesn't help that the clips are segmented across, and accessed through, multiple doors in new puzzle-lite areas. These areas look nice and I appreciate the attempt at added interactivity, but I'm not sure the end result feels better than a plain old playlist menu of audio clips. I do believe that Blow is a talented designer, and he's got knowledge to share about his craft (misdirections, 'excuses', reprises, pattern breaking, etc.), but without better editing, much of the value here felt unfortunately buried.

There's a dozen or so new levels, also accessible from the puzzle-lite areas. They fit well with the rest of the game, it's like a strong B-side to the original Braid. Shame though that accessing half of them involves convoluted setups inside the puzzle-lite areas.

Also, that missable hasn't been patched. I remembered about it only after collecting most secrets. Rage ensued. :')