I’ll stop right here for a moment and admit that all this preface about the Humble Indie bundles is so that I can write about Atom Zombie Smasher, but the bundles are good, and the background info is good info.

The first bundle included World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Penumbra: Overture, Lugaru, and Samarost 2. Of these, I enjoyed World of Goo and Penumbra: Overture and didn’t so much love the others.

The second bundle was much better. It included Cortex Command, Machinarium, Revenge of the Titans, Osmos, and Braid. By the time I’d gotten this bundle, I’d already played Braid, loved it, and written a hint series about the game on this site. The one from this bundle that grabbed me was Osmos, wherein you play a tiny amoeba trying to envelop and “eat” smaller amoebas and thus gain mass in order to eat increasingly larger amoebas. It’s a really good game, although the later levels get way too difficult. I believe that Osmos is now available on iOS, and I highly recommend it.

I never tried the unnumbered “Humble Frozenbyte Bundle” but I recently dug into the third bundle for the first time. I quickly learned that Hammerfight‘s controls were a bit wonky for my taste and And Yet It Moves didn’t hold my attention. I’d played the flash version of VVVVVV previously and didn’t feel the need to jump back in, although I’ve heard more than one person rave about that game. Cogs is one I played for about a dozen puzzle/levels before growing tired of the 3d puzzle-slider mechanic, and Steel Storm is a fun old school shoot-em-up that I continue to play bit by bit. Crayon Physics Deluxe is a game I took notice of long ago, when it was still in development. The premise was very creative and cool, much like Scribblenauts. But like Scribblenauts, the implementation somehow didn’t quite measure up.

Lastly, my favorite game in the bundle, which is my favorite game in any of the bundles. It might be my overall favorite game that I’m playing currently. Atom Zombie Smasher.

Atom Zombie Smasher is done by Blendo Games, who made the amazing Gravity Bone, which I featured long ago in Free Game Friday. After having seen what great stuff Blendo puts out, I’m going to have to revisit their catalog.

In Atom Zombie Smasher, you coordinate the response to a worldwide zombie outbreak. Your playing field is a map of multiple territories, and both you and the zombies score points on a victory track. The default setting has a 2000 point victory condition, but there are many settings to tweak. The zombies score one point per citizen that they convert into a zombie, and 10/20/30/40 points each round for level 1, 2, 3, or 4 outbreak areas. You score one point per citizen you rescue, and 20 points per round for each territory you capture. There are also certain milestones along each victory track at which specific events will occur – each side can unlock new abilities. For example, you can begin to rescue scientist and can gain access to orbital cannons and llama bombs. The zombies can increase their rate of infestation and begin to create super-zeds.

But this outer strategic level is only a housing for the meat of the game, wherein you evacuate citizens from the city. You first get a setup phase, where you can position snipers, ground troops, landmines, dynamite charges, and barricades. Then you click “begin” and the zombies begin coming. You set an evacuation point, and the citizens rush to it while the zombies pursue. You do your best to hold the zombies back while minimizing civilian casulaties, but the trick is that any citizen caught by a zombie becomes a zombie. Rescuing scientists can unlock new upgrades, and things like zombie bait, artillery, and the orbital catbird cannon help a lot. And if you take too long and night falls, even more zombies show up.

The game is very difficult, but very fun. I have yet to win a campaign, but I’ll be playing this one for quite some time.

25- Braid (Jonathan Blow, PC, 2009)
Braid took the gaming world by storm primarily because of its creativity. The game originally showed up on XBox Live Arcade in 2008, but I didn’t play it until later, when it became available on Steam. Although it’s an excellent 2D sidescroller in its own right, Braid’s greatest achievement are its fiendishly complex puzzles. Although this kind of thing generally drives me insane with frustration, I actually had fun sitting there for 20-30 minutes staring at the same level, trying to figure out exactly what I was missing. If you’re interested, I’ve written up some hints for the Braid game which attempt to nudge you in the direction of the answer without outright giving it away.

24- Plants vs Zombies (Popcap Games, PC, 2009)
My first impression of Plants vs Zombies wasn’t a good one. Made by a company that got famous creating casual browser games, this tower defense title looked shallow and boring. But one day when I was bored, I downloaded the demo and gave it a shot. I was hooked. The lanes, which had originally looked horribly limiting, create their own type of strategy. Unlike many other tower defense games, the creeps can attack and destroy your towers. Certain towers can attack creeps in lanes other than their own. There are slowing attacks and area attacks. And the different environments such as pool and rooftop introduce entirely new gameplay every few levels. Fighting off bungee zombies and zombie bobsled teams has never been so much fun.

23- No More Heroes (Suda51, Wii, 2008)
No More Heroes was a flawed game in so many ways. The open world was a disaster, and the last few fights were far too difficult. But I loved it so much. It was so over-the-top ridiculous, and it took pride in it. How many games force you to save your progress by sitting on a toilet? How many let you kill enemies and have blood and coins fly out of their bodies? Or learn new professional wrestling moves from a drunk Russian guy in a bar who instructs you in “the technique of crazy awesomeness” by beating the living crap out of you? No More Heroes succeeded in being awesome not dispite its absurdity, but because of it. If you’re a fan of RealUltimatePower, you should have an appreciation for the style of humor that makes No More Heroes shine.

22- God of War (David Jaffe, PS2, 2005)
God of war took the 3D beat-em-up genre and brought it to new levels. The refinement that exists in the God of War games is hard to find elsewhere even today. Never have I seen a game with better camera angles, and rarely have I seen such epic scope in a game. God of War uses puzzles, platforming, and hordes of enemies to create wonderful gameplay. It also makes the best use of quicktime events that I’ve seen in a game. The environments where the battles take place are often as much a part of the challenge as the enemies – when you’re battling minotaurs on a conveyor belt, falling to your death is as much a danger as being gored.

21- Fallout (Black Isle Studios, PC, 1997/1999)
I’m including Fallout and Fallout 2 here, as they ran on the same engine and could have been two halves of the same game. Seldom has such a kickass combination of story, gameplay, and humor made an appearance in a game. Fallout was brilliant because it salvaged a good bit of the adult dark humor present in Wasteland and refined it into an isometric post-apocolyptic RPG which in its day was absolutely brilliant. It’s even possible to play through the entire game with a character whose intelligence is so low that he can only speak in grunts. Yeah – it closes off a lot of options, but it’s pretty damn funny.

I played a lot of games in 2009. I could manage to count 23 of them, since I’m only looking at games that I played for the first time. This means that I’m not counting Thief: Deadly Shadows, Dungeon Siege, Warcraft 3, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and Beyond Good and Evil, since I’ve played those all before.

That being said, I’m going to go through my list in alphabetical order and try to give some kind of brief rating and review to each of them.

Braid

Amongst downloadable XBox Live Arcade titles, Braid is a superstar. While it doesn’t quite fit in with the casual fare that permeates downloadable console catalogs, it’s a good game to play in small chunks. Many of the puzzles can be so maddeningly difficult as to break your brain, but there’s an immense sense of satisfaction when you finally figure them out.

I played the PC version, since I have no XBox, but while the Steam release had some issues, it was worth the wait. I played it, my wife played it, and I wrote a series of hints that ended up near the top of the google search results.

Braid’s story was a bit hard to follow, introduced as it was in small chunks at the beginning of each of the game’s six worlds, and it got really odd at the end. But the game was more about the puzzles than anything else, so all else is forgivable. I’ll give the game a B.

Crysis

Before its launch, and for a number of months afterwards, Crysis‘s big marketing line was that it would bring your $2000 gaming rig to its knees with its amazing graphics. That’s probably why it didn’t sell as well as the developers might have hoped. Crysis was good, although overall I’ll say that I preferred CryTek’s earlier title Far Cry.

Crysis was almost like two separate games, as the gameplay during the second half is drastically different from the first half. Personally, I prefer the first half, as it was much closer to the gameplay in Far Cry. I could sneak around to scout an area, snipe off a few men, then let the rest come to me. It felt strategic and fun. The zero-gravity segments in the second half of the game were disorienting and confusing. I found myself backtracking unintentionally, and the alien enemies weren’t nearly as interesting to fight as the human opponents. The segments in which you fly a fighter jet were even worse. More often than not, I’d crash and burn but never know exactly what killed me.

Towards the end of the game, during a battle on an aircraft carrier, the game froze. Every time. I was never actually able to see the end of the game, which I assume was well under an hour away. I must have tried twenty times to get through that battle, but the game froze every single time. Considering the non-fun segments and the bug at the end, I’ll have to give Crysis a C+.

Defense Grid: The Awakening

As far as Tower Defense games go, I found Defense Grid to be strictly average. It held my attention long enough to play through the entire game, but I found the aliens to be generic, the story to be uninteresting, and the computer narrator’s melodramatic dialogue to be unbelievable, as the computer got more emotional about a hinted-at past war than most humans would get. The computer’s odd fixation on raspberries was a bit funny, but that small bit of humor didn’t make up for the rest of the game. I’ll give this one a C+.

Dead Space

Being the best survival horror game I’ve played in years is no mean feat. That’s what puts Dead Space in the running for the best game that I played in 2009.

It’s nearly impossible for me to talk about Dead Space without comparing it to Resident Evil, as I believe that Dead Space has neatly filled in the survival horror niche once occupied by the earlier Resident Evil games. But Dead Space is certainly its own animal, and is an entirely new generation of survival horror title. For one thing, Dead Space is more of a shooter than any of the original survival horror games (Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Clocktower) ever were. It has the best collection of weapons I’ve seen in a shooter since Doom 3, a weapon upgrade system that I like even better than Resident Evil’s, and some excellent gameplay elements such as zero-gravity areas, vacuum areas, ship-mounted weaponry for firing at targets in space, and the kinesis and stasis modules.

Dead Space is certainly a game that I’ll return to and play again some day. I’m doubting that I’ll go for the trophy where you have to play the entire game with only a plasma cutter and no other weapons, but I’ll enjoy my replay nonetheless. Dead Space gets a solid A.

Desktop Tower Defense DS

I was a huge fan of the flash version of Desktop Tower Defense for a long time. I still believe it to be one of the best tower defense games ever made. As simple as it is, it’s got a lot of complexity and balance. Building new mazes for the creeps to traverse and arranging things perfectly can be quite a challenge, and if you start on advanced strategies like juggling, things get even more complex. The game begins simple, but has a lot of nuance.

For some reason, since I bought this game, I haven’t played my DS nearly as often as I used to. So I haven’t put a lot of time into the portable verion of Desktop Tower Defense. But they’ve added quite a lot of new modes, plus a number of achievements. Although not being able to share those achievements online somehow detracts from the experience, I’ll still enjoy trying to get them. Probably on an airplane at some point in the future. I’ll give Desktop Tower Defense DS a B-.

Dragon Quest 4 DS

Back in the day, when I played this game on a friend’s NES, I absolutely loved it. The charm and the fun are still there. I haven’t completed Dragon Quest 4 since beginning the NES version, but I’m easily halfway into the game. Once again, I just haven’t spent much time with the DS recently. I know that will change when Scribblenauts drops. But as far as RPGs for the DS, I haven’t seen many better. C+

Fairway Solitaire

While Fairway Solitaire is without doubt a casual game, it takes plain old solitaire and adds a golf theme to make it really interesting. Streaks where you don’t have to use cards from the deck become “long drives”, sandtraps and water hazards become cards that are inaccessible, and you can collect extra golf clubs that act as cards up your sleeve. While explaining these intracacies are beyond the scope of this mini-review, you should take my word that this game is amongst the better casual games that I’ve played this past year. B-

Fallout 3

While I didn’t go through all the expansions like Brandon did, I spent a lot of time playing Fallout 3. I played three characters, and maxxed out my levels on two of them. And even though it wasn’t entirely deserving of the “Oblivion-with-guns” moniker that it got in so many reviews, there was enough of that to detract from the game. All the things that I disliked about the Oblivion engine were still problems in Fallout 3, and none of the things that I’d loved so much about Oblivion were replaced with adequate substitutes. The charm of the first two Fallout titles was likewise lacking. As you can probably tell, I much preferred Oblivion to Fallout 3.Still, I did enjoy my time playing Fallout 3. GFW, while it does suck, gave me the ability to grab some achievements, and I got about 90% of the ones available, including every damn bobblehead in the game. I loved tearing up slavers with the shishkebab, I loved melting Combine troops with a plasma rifle, and that nuclear explosion was a thing of beauty. I’d just love to have seen more Wasteland in Fallout 3. You know, some snake squeezins, or perhaps a Scorpitron. Fallout 3 gets a B.

Far Cry 2
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Far Cry 2. I knew that it was an open-world game and that it was significantly different from both the original Far Cry and from Crysis. Far Cry removed a number of the elements that I’d liked so much about those two games: The science fiction elements, and lying prone for purposes of sneaking. I wish I’d been able to record achievements in the game. I went out of my way to grab every diamond in the northern section of the map – had I been able to get an achievement for it, I’d likely have done the same for the southern map. The game also has some really silly conventions.

Final Fantasy 12
The only other Final Fantasy games I’ve played are Final Fantasy 4 on the DS and Final Fantasy 9 back on the original Playstation. These are loong games. I’ve been playing Final Fantasy 12 for years now. I tend to play for 4-6 months before getting burned out and shelving the game for a couple months. But then I go back to it. I’m still only about 2/3 of the way through the game and I plan to go back to it soon, although I’m sure I’ll quickly shelve it again when Borderlands and Dragon Age: Origins come out in October.

Final Fantasy is about story, but it’s also about level grinding. Lots and lots of level grinding. The game’s battles are simply too hard if you move from place to place battling only story-essential foes. Level grinding is absolutely essential. It harks back to old RPGS that I’d played on the Sega Master system. And in Final Fantasy 12, it’s actually a lot of fun to level grind. There’s a lot of inventory management and skill management to do – I’ve got a couple sheets of notebook paper where I’ve got notes sketched out on how my characters’ gear and skills are set up. It reminds me of mapping out Bards Tale or Wizardry dungeons on graph paper. Final Fantasy 12 gets a B. Square Enix knows what they’re doing when it comes to JRPGs.

Galactrix
I absolutely loved Puzzle Quest. And so I was very excited for Galactrix. I’m sad to say that I was seriously disappointed with the game. The touch screen controls are terrible. Selecting the item you want with the stylus is often more of a challenge than fighting battles. And the game’s loading screens are frequent and very long. The game’s minigames can be fun once you unlock them, and tricking out your ship with improved equipment is probably the best part of the game. Overall, Puzzle Quest was a far better game. Galactrix gets a D.

Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters was a mixed bag. There’s a lot of good, and a lot of bad. My biggest complaint about the game is the uneven difficulty. There are some moments that are just way too hard. This forced me to play through the game on “casual” difficulty. I also hit a number of bugs where certain plot triggers just wouldn’t fire, and I had to reload my last save, after which things worked fine.

If you’re going to play this game, play it for the story and the atomosphere, because those were great. The game totally nails the feel of the original movie, and having all four ghostbusters voiced by the actual actors is fantastic. The game is very well written. The plot is probably better than that of the Ghostbusters 2 movie, and there are some really funny one-liners in the game. I have to give this game a C+.

Lost Planet
Seldom have I had a worse experience with a game that I had with the PC port of Lost Planet. Most of my complaints had to do with the fact that it’s the worst PC port of a console game that I’ve ever played, but the game engine is also terrible – I have a hard time imagining that I’d have enjoyed the 360 version much more. This is the only game in my list that gets a definite F.

Mad World
I understand that my negative take on Mad World is primarily opinion. I know that other people (such as Brandon) really enjoyed Mad World. But I didn’t like the game at all. At all. I played nearly halfway through it (I’m guessing) hoping that it would get better, but I eventually just got bored and frustrated.

I’d been expected a new-school brawler that felt like SmashTV or Double Dragon, but what I got was not nearly as fun. At all. I had many complaints about the game overall, but the bottom line is that I just didn’t find it to be fun. At all. Mad World gets a D.

Mass Effect
If Brandon doesn’t kill me for my take on Mad World, then he’ll probably kill me for my take on Mass Effect. In a word: meh. The game was fine, but I didn’t get nearly as much out of it as everyone else seemed to. The story was really interesting, I’ll give you that, and Bioware always does an amazing job with the dialogue. But to me, the gameplay’s the thing. And the engine that Mass Effect ran on (actually, the engine that a lot of Bioware games have run on) felt old and klunky to me.

I played through the whole game – start to finish – but it didn’t grab me. I enjoyed the story, but the gameplay wasn’t there, so I can’t classify it as a keeper. Mass Effect gets a C.

Okami
I’d heard about Okami for a long time before having picked up a copy. I got the Wii version, although Okami was originally a playstation 2 game. And I loved it.

The gameplay in Okami is a lot like the gameplay in the more recent Zelda games – action/adventure. Fetch quests and conversations with some minor platforming and a whole lot of fighting. Also, plenty of minigames. Add to that the innovative magic brush mechanic and you’ve got a winner. But what stood out most to me about Okami were the graphics. They don’t excel by being photorealistic – just the opposite – the stylized graphics in Okami are an excellent argument against photorealism. They look amazing in a far more cartoonish way. Okami gets a B.

Penny Arcade Adventures: Episode 2: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness
I’m a big fan of Penny-Arcade. I love their style of humor, and of course I love the bulk of their subject matter: video games, tabletop gaming, and general geekery. I’ve played and loved both their games. How can you not love a game where you’re battling hobos, mimes, barbershop quartets, insane asylum inmates, and robots with a perverse sexual attraction to fruit? I give this one a B. It’s inexpensive, and if you buy it on Steam, you can shoot for the Steam achievements.

Pixeljunk Monsters
I’ve certainly written enough here about my love for Pixeljunk Monsters. Although I didn’t start playing it in 2009, I likely won’t finish before the end of the year. Honestly, I’ll probably end up putting it aside again as I start playing Muramasa and Scribblenauts. Although I’ve only got two levels remaining in the expansion, there are still plenty of trophy challenges for me to tackle. The “Four Tree Rainbow” challenge is harder than it looked, and the “Rainbow Team” challenge looks to be incredibly difficult. In Pixeljunk Monsters lingo, to “rainbow” a level is to complete it perfectly – without losing a single villager. Pixeljunk Monsters gets an A from me simply because I can’t think of many other games I’ve ever gotten so much prolonged play out of.

Plants vs Zombies
While I’ve enjoyed many Popcap games in the past – Bookworm Adventures and Zuma come to mind – I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed any of them as much as Plants vs Zombies. I only played the game for a couple weeks, but during those weeks, I played it hard. My initial take on the game was a poor one – how could a tower defense game with only six linear lanes have the depth of something like Desktop Tower Defense? You know what? I grew out of that one quickly, and became a Plants vs Zombies addict. Steam offers achievements for the game, and PvZ became the first game on which I’d ever gotten 100% of the achievements. Plants vs Zombies gets an A. It’s all about the spikerocks, gloom shrooms and garlic.

Prototype

I can imagine Prototype being a far better game on a console. Firstly, it might not freeze as often as it did on my Vista machine, although I’m willing to concede that the freezing issue may be related to the import version of the game I’m playing. While the PC controls weren’t terrible, I had some issues with the dashing controls. Firstly, the double-tap on the ‘W’ key for an air dash wouldn’t always register – I’m sure that’s my own fault, but the double-keyboard-tap isn’t the easiest motion on which to get 100% accuracy. Similarly, I found that when dashing, you corner like a passenger jet. So often, I’d sprint past a waypoint or someone I’d intended to grab, then take at least 5 seconds to turn around and run back. And when you’re in a timed event and you’ve only got 60 seconds to do what you’ve got to do, that 5 seconds can make a huge difference.

Although I’m playing a weird Russian import version that I got on Ebay and I can’t actually register achievements, I managed to complete nearly every challenge. I got gold on all but one gliding challenge and managed to complete every infected consume event. The military consume events where you’ve got to consume the commander and then end the alert before getting in can be HARD. And although I found destroying hives and bases with a tank to be super-easy, helicopters are nearly worthless. Granted, they’re the best for fast travel, but they’re difficult to hijack and they get destroyed by one hit from anything.

Also, like Ghostbusters, I can’t imagine playing Prototype on any difficulty other than ‘Easy’. Prototype gets a C+, but it might be a B- on consoles.

Resident Evil 5

I played the Playstation 3 version of Resident Evil 5, and while it was inferior to its predecessors in different ways, it wasn’t a bad game. Resident Evil 5 tried to be Resident Evil 4. But it wasn’t different enough from Resident Evil 4 to really shine, and it didn’t have the charm of Resident Evil 4. There was no mine cart chase, no jetski sequence, and no chance to harpoon lake monsters. There was a nice sequence where you could shoot at enemies from machine guns mounted to the back of a jeep, but that alone didn’t measure up.

Resident Evil 5 only really shines when played co-op. I played with my brother on his XBox over Christmas vacation, and having the game be a shared experience really changed it. For the better. The partner AI in Resident Evil 5 is laughably bad at times. The game gets a B.

Street Fighter 4

After having beaten Seth with every character in the game other than the three big bosses whom I have yet to unlock, I’ve been playing Street Fighter 4 far less. I’ve gotten somewhat competent at online matches, although like so many other online games, the people still playing are the ones who play all the time, and are thus much better at the game than I am. But the game did bring back a good bit of my Street Fighter 2 nostalgia, and despite my hatred of Crimson Viper and Rufus, I really like the game. B+

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
This game totally fails, which is sad. It seemed like it had so much going for it. Great story, a very nice engine with good graphics, and the upgrade and combo system seemed like it was going to work out very nicely. If only it weren’t for all the bottomless pits. There is nothing as maddeningly frustrating as falling into the same pit for the fourth time when you have to wait for 5 minutes in between attempts. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed gets a D for bad platforming.

Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People

I love HomeStarRunner. I really do. So I was super-excited to hear that there was going to be a StrongBad-themed WiiWare game, and I snatched it up as soon as it was available. Sadly, I’d forgotten that I don’t generally like point and click adventure games. And that I’m horribly bad at them. So while HomestarRunner.com gets an A, Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People gets a C-.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad gaming year. Granted, there was nothing that stood out like Half-Life 2, Oblivion, or Shadow of the Colossus, but the year isn’t over yet, and I’ve still got to play Scribblenauts, Muramasa, Brutal Legend, Uncharted 2, and Dragon Age: Origins.

This is the fourth part of my series of Braid hints. It’s not a walkthrough, because simply giving the puzzles’ answers would ruin the game. But I got so frustrated at the game that I gave in to temptation and looked online to find answers to a puzzle in both world 2 and world 3, so I’m now providing the spoiler-free hints I wish I’d had access to.

The official walkthrough says…

Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!

I urge you to only read the hints on levels where you’re completely stuck. Once you read a spoiler, you can never un-read it.

World 6: Hesitance

World 6 introduces the ring. The ring that slows time. And creates all kinds of freaking difficult puzzles…

The Pit?
There’s actually no puzzle piece here.

There and Back Again
1. (very easy)
No hint.

Phase?
1. (easy)
It might take a bit longer than you like to get there, but two steps forward one step back is still progress.

2. (medium)
Take note that you can climb all the way to the top.

Cascade
1. (medium) – this is the one at the upper left
You’ll need to use the ring, and you’ll need to have some pretty good timing. Thank goodness for the rewind button.

2. (very hard) – this is the one just above the door
There are many many steps involved here, as you’ll notice if you’re manage to get the key. Put the ring in a hard-to-get-to place.

3. (easy)
You’ll need to use the ring here too.

Impassible Foliage
1. (hard)
There are two challenges in getting this puzzle piece. Firstly, getting past the plant. You need to find a way to use the ring to slow it without slowing yourself. Secondly, actually getting to the puzzle piece. If you’re having trouble with this, just enter the level, stand still, and watch what’s going on. You might have to kill a couple monsters while watching, but just watch.

2. (very hard)
To me, this is one of the hardest puzzles in the game. Obviously, bouncing off of one monster doesn’t get you up there. You’ll likely spend a lot of time in trial and error to get two through. It’s tedious. Experiment with different positions for the ring. It’s helpful to remember that you can jump up through certain portions of floor.

Elevator Action
1. (medium)
This is one of my favorite puzzles in the game. The solution is so elegant. I’m really hesitant to give even a hint, since finding the answer is so fun. Getting past the cannons is pretty easy, it’s getting out that’s the trick. I urge you not to read this hint: How can you slow down not just one or two, but all the cannons?

2. (very hard)
This was the last puzzle piece in the game that I ever got. The thing I wish I’d known was that one of those two moving platforms is actually blocking the other one. Knowing this by no means makes the whole thing easy, but it sure helps.

3. (medium)
The trick here is to realize that once you’re on either of the glowing platforms, you’re immune to both rewinding and to the ring’s time-slowing.

In Another Castle
1. (hard)
It’s all about the glowing section of floor to the left of the lever.

This is the fourth part of my series of Braid hints. It’s not a walkthrough, because simply giving the puzzles’ answers would ruin the game. But I got so frustrated at the game that I gave in to temptation and looked online to find answers to a puzzle in both world 2 and world 3, so I’m now providing the spoiler-free hints I wish I’d had access to.

The official walkthrough says…

Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!

I urge you to only read the hints on levels where you’re completely stuck. Once you read a spoiler, you can never un-read it.

World 5:Time and Decision

World 5 introduces your shadow self. After you rewind, a shadow copy of yourself will re-perform whatever actions you have.

The Pit
1. (very easy)
No hint.

So Distant
1.(easy)
Your shadow self can’t pick up this puzzle piece, but it can help you to get it.

2.(easy)
Look! There are two tasks, and there are two of you. Have one do each.

(No Name) – It’s not clear whether the game developers intentionally left this level unnamed, but there is in fact no name.
1. (hard)
The pit is too far to jump, but it’s so close… How about a relay?

2. (medium)
Have your shadow self create a diversion.

Crossing the Gap
1. (easy)
Notice that a new monster comes out of the cannon when the first one dies.

2. (medium)
You should probably be pulling that lever earlier than you think.

3. (very hard)
I figured this one out purely by accident while screwing around and trying different things. Just as you can jump on the monster’s head, it can jump on your shadow’s head.

Window of Opportunity
1. (hard)
The real you needs to pull that lever to get the platform to move – your shadow self can’t do it. Getting to the lever and pulling it is easy. Getting back out is what’s hard. Let your shadow self help you. You just need to time things right.
2. (very hard)
It took me forever to figure this one out. Hard to give a hint without giving it away, but just keep in mind that in order for your shadow self to pull a lever, he’s got to be in the right vertical position.

Lair
1. For the most part, this is just like the earlier Lair level. The main difference is the fairly easy puzzle at the end. The lever and door are at opposite ends, so you and your shadow self will need to go in opposite directions. Keep in mind that just because you can’t see something happening, it doesn’t mean that it’s not happening…

Fragile Companion
1. (very hard)
This one is so simple, but so damned hard. This is the only level in world 5 that I looked up online. Yes, I cheated. Here’s a hint: you don’t need to use the monster. The second one is almost a spoiler, so read with care: start rewinding mid-jump.

This is the third part of my series of Braid hints. It’s not a walkthrough, because simply giving the puzzles’ answers would ruin the game. But I got so frustrated at the game that I gave in to temptation and looked online to find answers to a puzzle in both world 2 and world 3, so I’m now providing the spoiler-free hints I wish I’d had access to. I’m happy to say that I got all the way through world 4 without looking online for any help. World 4 is also my favorite level in the game.

The official walkthrough says…

Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!

I urge you to only read the hints on levels where you’re completely stuck. Once you read a spoiler, you can never un-read it.

World 4: Time and Place

World 4 introduces the ability to control time by moving left and right. In fact, you can’t help but move time backward and forward by moving left and right. It’s critical that you understand how this works and what it means in order to solve world 4’s puzzles.

The Pit
1. (easy)
This level is so easy that I’m hesitant to provide any hint. But here’s something: monsters can carry keys.

Jumpman
1. (medium)
Keep in mind that since your movement left and right controls the monsters’ positions, even going so far as to resurrect dead monsters should you move back past where you stomped them, the monsters will always be in the same spot when you’re at a certain left-right position. You may have to find another route.

2. (easy)
You’ll do a lot of dying and rewinding here. If you get frustrated, try the other door.

3. (very easy)
No hint.

Just Out Of Reach
1. (easy)
No hint.

2. (medium)
Before getting too frustrated, check out the entire map.

Hunt!
1. (medium)
Not as easy as the first hunt, is it? The key here is understanding how the left/right time movement thing works. The monsters will come back to life if you move left beyond the point where you killed them. So you’ve got to kill them in a specific order. Also, since time only moves forward as you’re moving right, you can’t kill the monsters without a tinge of rightward movement – you can jump on a monster as many times as you like, and if you’re not moving right, it shouldn’t die. You can use this to your advantage.

Movement By Degrees
1. (easy)
Things can happen offscreen. There are often sound cues you can listen for to determine when something happens.

2. (medium)
If you’re finding that you can’t move quickly enough, make sure you know how to rewind at x8 speed. That will move you very quickly indeed.

Movement, Amplified
1. (easy)
Rewinding isn’t the way to move faster. Try the cloud bridge.

2. (very easy)
No hint.

A Fickle Companion
1. (hard)
This one infuriated me more than any of the other puzzles on this world until I realized exactly how the level works. The key thing (no pun intended) to realize here is that when you carry the key to the right, and then move back leftward, it will follow whatever path back that you’d taken before. So if you move left along a different path, you’ll lose the key. But you can’t get the key up to the door without moving left a bit. So how do you move the key leftwards? The answer to that question is similar to how you’ve solved some previous puzzles.

2. (medium)
This one is one of my favorites in the game – it’s just so clever. You want a hint? You’ve got to use the monster.

And that’s it for world 4. More to come soon.

This is the second part of my series of Braid hints. It’s not a walkthrough, because simply giving the puzzles’ answers would ruin the game. But I got so frustrated at the game that I gave in to temptation and looked online to find answers to a puzzle in both world 2 and world 3, so I’m now providing the spoiler-free hints I wish I’d had access to.

The official walkthrough says…

Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!

I urge you to only read the hints on levels where you’re completely stuck. Once you read a spoiler, you can never un-read it.

World 3: Time and Mystery

World 3 introduces glowing objects, which are unaffected by rewinding time. These open up all sorts of possibilities for new puzzles.

The Pit (easy)
This level is so easy that no hints should be required. Just play around with reversing time, and the solutions should quickly come to you.

There and Back Again (easy)
The solution here is the same as that in the pit. If you’ve passed the previous level, just do more of the same.

Phase (easy)
This level’s clouds do more to introduce you to glowing objects that are unaffected by time reversal. Reverse time and observe the clouds.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet (average)
This level took me a while to figure out. The first hint I should give is that there’s no way for you to fit inside the nook that holds the key. The second hint is a bit of a spoiler: Monsters can carry keys.

For the second puzzle piece, just play around with rewinding things and observe. Note that the platform is glowing, and will be unaffected by rewinding. If you’re still stuck after doing that, you should note that when rewinding, you can generally move through walls and platforms, and hover in the air where a platform once was.

Tight Channels (average)
For the first puzzle piece, just note the glowing cannon and monsters. Rewind time to see how they behave.

For the second, you need to make use of the diagonally-firing cannon.

Irreversible (easy)
For a level that I found so easy, this seems to have given a number of people some trouble. For the first puzzle piece, the most important thing is that you simply look at the moving walls and platforms and see how they’re behaving. Look at which is glowing and you should understand the problem and the solution. The level’s name is a bit of a hint here.

The second piece is easier. It’s just essential that you understand how glowing keys and glowing doors behave – their state isn’t affected by rewinding. Glowing keys remain used when you rewind after using them, and glowing doors remain unlocked when you rewind after unlocking them.

Lair (easy)
Lair is a level without much puzzle – just a Super Mario-like boss.

A Tingling (hard)
This is the level on which I looked up the answer. (shame) Hopefully, it’s the last in the game for which I have to do that. What I wish I’d known is that you have to leave the immediate area of the first puzzle piece in order to get it. I feel that with that knowledge I could have gotten it.

That’s all for world 3. More to come soon.

After having actually managed to download Braid, I’m really enjoying it. But when I got really stuck on one of the puzzles in world 2 and looked up an online walkthrough, I found that the official Braid guide says

Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!

So I felt bad about having cheated on the final part of “The Cloud Bridge”, but I’m determined to figure the rest out myself, even though I’m currently totally stuck on two different puzzle pieces.

What I’m wishing I could find for these are not walkthroughs but hints. Something to edge me in the right direction without giving anything away. Even then, I’d only look at the hints for the ones I’m truly stuck on. But I couldn’t find any non-spoiler hints anywhere. So I’ve decided to create a non-spoiler hint guide for Braid. In the places where I’m giving hints that might border on spoiling something, I’ll print it in hard-to-read text that you’ve got to highlight to see well. Today, I’ll be going through world 2.

I urge you to only read the hints on levels where you’re completely stuck. As the official guide says, once you read a spoiler, you can never un-read it.

World 2: Time and Forgiveness

Three Easy Pieces
This level has three puzzle pieces. The first two are so simple as to require no hints. For the third, keep in mind that as it says in the instructions, the only way to get higher is by jumping on a monster. Take a look: there are more than one monster here.

The Cloud Bridge
This is where the difficulty begins to ramp up a bit. The first two pieces on this level are very easy, but I found the second two to be surprisingly hard. This is because the solution requires some totally out-of-the-box thinking. The best non-spoiler hint I can give here is that you’ll need to interact with the puzzle to get those last two pieces. Try jumping at the puzzle.

Hunt!
The one puzzle piece on this level is relatively straightforward to get. If you’re reading this guide and think you’re honestly stuck on this one, I urge you to go back and try more before reading further. But if you honestly can’t figure this one out, keep in mind that the monsters are like trampolines. If you jump from higher up, you’ll bounce further.

Leap of Faith
The final level on world 2 has four puzzle pieces, all easy. I’ll give a number of bulleted hints here, and I urge you to only look at one at a time.

• As it says in the game’s instructions, the way to get higher is by jumping on monsters.
• Looking at the fuses on the cannons helps you determine when they’ll fire.
• Those cannons launch the monsters. They actually catch some air coming out.
• The title “Leap of Faith” should be a hint in itself.

That’s all for world 2. I’ll write up a hint guide for world 3 soon.

Braid for PC ostensibly releases today. I say ostensibly because earlier today, I logged onto the game’s Steam page, and it said “This game will unlock in approximately 2 hours”. Fine. Good. I logged on a bit later and saw that it said one hour. When it was supposed to release, the message disappeared, but there was no option to purchase. WTF?

I checked back just a minute ago, and it now says “This game will unlock in approximately 2 hours”. Sheesh. Maybe I’ll just buy it from Greenhouse.

UPDATE: Friday, 16:30 MST – The steam page now says “This game will unlock in approximately 1 day and 1 hour”.

UPDATE: Saturday, 00:39 MST- The game is now available. Purchased and downloading.