The Last Candle

In my years, there have been few objects, people or concepts that I’ve singularly devoted extra time or attention towards, fixations of sorts, minor or major. Examples are few: Akira Kurosawa (which blossomed into enjoying Eastern films in general), Stevie Ray Vaughan (whose music introduced me to the blues at large), the Battle of Hastings (of October 14, 1066), and the Ace Attorney series.

But the most recent infatuation is Braid.

Braid trailer by David Hellman.

In typical infatuation fanboy-speak, I’m going to spend a lot of time here talking about the game’s mechanics and makings, most of which is unnecessary to anyone’s who has played the game or read the official web site. Even the official Braid “walkthrough” provides some meaning insightful about the game, although not the kind usually offered by a walkthrough.

Braid is the masterwork of Jonathan Blow, Braid’s designer, programmer, and writer — everything besides the art, which was created by David Hellman (and who also created the trailer above), and the music, which was licensed from a few Magnatune artists.

The gameplay’s core is a puzzle-platformer, with an emphasis on puzzles; the platforming aspect is merely a conduit to solving puzzles. The game is divided simply into chapters and “Worlds,” much like the original Super Mario Bros., although the similarities to Braid stop after the basic platforming and several earnest homages in Braid.

The most basic use of the dominant mechanic of time flow is the player’s ability to reverse it. Everything in the world of Braid works on a timeline, and the simple push of a button can reverse the flow of time. When time reverses, everything moves backwards along the chapter’s history: sound effects, the music, enemy locations, the movement of waving grass, projectiles, clouds in the sky, and, of course, the player character’s movements, all rewound (with some exceptions — more on that below).

Braid does not require the player to follow a health bar or hit points, and it does not use 1-ups or time limits. If the player makes a mistake, all that’s (usually) necessary for the player to rebound is a couple seconds of reversing time, going back in the chapter’s history to before the fatal error was made, allowing a second, third, or twentieth chance at a puzzle (and I’ve definitely kept at some puzzles after more than twenty time-reversals).

But this is a puzzle game after all, and the player is constantly confronted with new twists on familiar methods. What happens when some objects or characters in the game are not affected by reversing time, creating two completely time contexts? Or when all objects in a chapter move as a function of the player character’s horizontal position (as seen in the trailer, where one of the Goomba-like monsters hovers above the lead character’s head in an inevitable death-drop)? Or if time could be dilated within a certain radius, with the dilation dropping off with distance? Interesting puzzles abound in Braid.

If time is the basis of gameplay, the actual root of progression is collecting puzzle pieces, each piece contributing to a final mural that represents a history in the lead character’s life. The difficulty is determining out how to collect those pieces, and the real meat of Braid is how those pieces are retrieved: manipulating and moving through time.

The most controversial subject about Braid, proving that even puzzle games can be controversial, is the game’s subtle marriage of gameplay and story — or plot and story, as it could be better called in this case. In fact, the game’s narrative is so subtle and divisive that discussion of the story’s intention continues to this day (and will no doubt be reignited as a new platform’s market enters the arena) among game analysts, developers, fans and critics, armchair and professional. For examples of critical analysis of Braid, see Corvus Elrod’s or Michael Abbot’s commentaries from last year. More commentaries are sure to come.

I have my own theories about what the game is trying to say through its sparse writing and rare exposition (and thankfully complete lack of cut scenes), but I’ll leave those for another post.

Braid was originally released on the Xbox 360 in August 2008, but beginning two days ago, Friday the 10th, it is available on the PC. The fact that I’m considering purchasing a PC copy, just to play it all over again on a different platform, in addition of nearly fully completing the Xbox 360 version would be the final puzzle piece in a mural that depicts a happy infatuation.

Most of the live concerts I catch require at minimum 40-minute trip into Detroit. The destination (and there are a few, all similar) is a dimly lit concrete and brick venue, enveloped in smoke, cheap beer on tap and staffed and stuffed by metalheads wearing clothes several shades darker than my own (most of my shirts are blue, not black). The evening is spent staring up at a band as another high-tempo, high-volume anthem blasts the audience backwards from the dual 10-feet amp stacks. Good times, really.

Want to see a metal show in the Detroit? Boy, you’ll get all that I described above, and possibly more — visit Harpo’s, for example, and you can order a hot dog at the Coney Island next door, speaking your order through a thin vent embedded in the bullet-resistant plastic that separates the customers from the cooks. (See also the web site for Harpo’s, which actually is an indicative measure of the venue: stupidly straight-forward, ugly, and black.) But while I gladly go through the grungy movements necessary to see my favorite rock and prog bands, after last night’s Chick Corea and John McLaughlin jazz show at the lovely Hill Auditorium — smokeless, seated, and fashions in a variety of hues and shades — I wonder why I just don’t buy a good pair of closed-ear headphones and get my high-volume rock-and-roll intake that way, leaving more money and time for the jazz and blues.

Corea, McLaughlin and McBride jam in the Five Peace Band. Photo by PiroTek.

Besides a change of genre, an uptick in occurrences would also be welcome. The number of live concerts I see per year is fairly low, once every two months or so. A small blip appeared in May 2007, when I visited three different venues within 31 days for three great Porcupine Tree shows, but since then the frequency has been relatively linear — and the magnitude low.

This year has been better for live concerts, so far: The magnificent Kodo drummers cranked out an amazing set as I watched from the upper-far balcony on February 13th, and then last night was the Corea/McLaughlin show. And then this Wednesday, eccentric and vibrant singer-songwriter Andrew Bird will be jamming and whistling along at the Michigan Theater, and I’ll be there to see him. That’s two great shows in the space of a few days — if only the regular concert schedule around Ann Arbor was that great more often.

And there’s the thing: the schedule in this massively-cultural university city is probably quite good, but I haven’t pay enough attention to know, and according to an exchange last Friday I haven’t even been to the good venues in town. During that Friday conversation, a co-worker who spends significantly more time and effort investing herself in the pursuit of jazz, and who essentially opened me to the genre through artists like Béla Fleck, took me aback when she stated that the Hill Auditorium was not very good. I thought everybody liked the Hill’s acoustics. I do. But my co-worker prefers Rackham Auditorium, which is just around the corner from the Hill and is a smaller, more intimate venue, and the Power Center, also nearby on the campus.

After my colleague stated her preferences, the obvious and initial reaction was, How can you not like the Hill’s sound? Everybody likes the Hill!

But then I realized I’ve never been to either Rackham or the Power Center. What if those other joints do sound better than the lovely Hill? I’ve been missing out, no doubt about that. I haven’t even bothered to take the first step.

But Corea and McLaughlin played the Hill this last Saturday night, good sound or mediocre sound. Despite our differences about the Hill’s acoustic, the show itself was fantastic — over three hours of mind-blowin’ mastery, improv and contemporary jazz atmosphere was enjoyed by a near-full house. My friend and I had better seats for this concert than I had for the Kodo show, this time being on the lower mezzanine, house-left. We had a good view of the stage and the full Five Peace Band, watching rapt for the duration of the show while the fleet-fingered Corea and his perfect-poised cohort McLaughlin teamed up with alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett, virtuoso bassist Christian McBride (who played both electric and upright bass, the latter both fingerpicked and bowed), and the eight-armed Brian Blade on drums (”Sharp as a knife,” as McLaughlin introduced him in a classically cool demeanor that made the obvious simile more than welcome). The crew played a serious but lofty set, the highlight being the second half of the show, which featured a 30+ minute arrangement by Chick Corea (Hymn to Andromeda) that ran a gamut of colors and feelings. Absolutely brilliant, all of it.

But I’ll be damned if the show acoustics didn’t sound all that great.

The first part of the set was almost muddy, a descriptor of the Hill I wouldn’t have imagined using prior to Saturday’s show. The instruments were not homogenized early on; Chick Corea was most sensitive to the difference in instrument volumes, turning around on his piano bench to look at the sound booth, pointing and motioning to the floor, silently exclaiming to turn it down. When his order wasn’t carried out to his satisfaction, Chick stood up from his bench, walked over and visited the sound booth in person, undoubtably delivering a few exact words. Turn it down.

The sound was better after that.

But now that the Hill has suffered a minor (and easily reparable) blow to its otherwise stellar reputation, and now that I’ve walked into a minor streak of local and excellent concerts, I’m wondering else is playing in this fabulous city and whether I can keep the pace.

To do so, I’d need to delve more deeply into the local circuit. The University Musical Society’s Winter 2009 season is coming to a close, but the Michigan Theater will continue to host shows throughout the summer. And then there’s the various live clubs — Goodnite Gracie’s, or the Firefly Club, the latter especially looking like an excellent outlet for regular jazz and blues. My co-worker also mentioned that one of her friends hosts live jazz performances with internationally-known musicians in his own house, which would be a completely new and crazy experience altogether.

Or I could just walk down to the Blind Pig, Ann Arbor’s closet thing to a club dive for rock and roll. After all, why visit a city 40 minutes away for smoke and chains when I could walk down the street, take a left turn and a few steps to get the same experience?