Story in Braid

Braid is a beautiful little puzzle game. The story, though, would have been a lot better if it hadn't been for all those walls of text.

Take out all those walls of text, and the story would be: Tim is a guy with time manipulation powers, who is searching for the princess. That story, even if it was all there was to it, would be quite enough to carry the game, and in the light of that story the ending would be very effective.

But no. Between each level we also have to have big blocks of text telling us about Tim's feelings towards the Princess, which are apparently set in the real world (with cafes and universities and cinemas) and not in the game-world of 2D platforms and bouncing hedgehogs and keys that open doors. Big blocks of text are the shoestring budget equivalent of cutscenes - they're just as non-interactive - and in this case they are as disconnected from the gameplay experience as they can be.

I enjoyed the story of gameplay-Tim and his quest for the princess and its eventual resolution. I didn't care at all about text-story-Tim.