Have you ever played a video game only to make a mistake and wish you could take it back?  Ever say the wrong thing to your girlfriend, mom, or one of your friends and wish you could just keep your mouth shut?  Now that I think about it, I really wish I would have thought twice about what I did to that hooker in my trunk and just offloading what was left in the hotel dumpster versus trying to drive out on a country road.  I guess that cop had a good sense of smell?  That or the police dog did.  Anyway!  It’s all things we wish we could go back and change.  You might have the same thing happen to you?  Braid just so happens to give players the ability to do just that.  Fix our mistakes.

Braid has been out on the Xbox 360 since August of 2009, so some of you multiple console gamers out there should already be familiar with Tim and his little predicament.  Tim has a falling out with his current stay-at-home woman, who he doesn’t really care for because she fails to make him Pizza Rolls when he wants them.  Believe me, I’d be furious and leave my woman over that too.  He doesn’t really have a falling out, but he’s not in the relationship 100%.  Tim sets off to go find his true love mate, a princess who he lost track of.  Right here is where Braid throws some familiar territory at the gamer, occasionally borrowing from Super Mario Bros.  The princess? Guess what, she’s being held in a castle.  Another throwback to Mario is that when you approach the end of the level and see the castle, what does the little dinosaur thing tell you?  “I’m sorry, but the princess is in another castle.” Classic Super Mario Bros. line.

Braid’s original hand drawn art style and music set it apart from anything you’ll ever play as far as Live/PSN games go.  Braid features 6 worlds with a number of various levels, but overall it’s a short campaign.  It’s definitely do-able on a rainy Saturday in a single sitting.  What you find in this short game though is something magical, something so new to the gamer that it is definitely worth experiencing at least once to watch all of it’s time bending features.  You get the chance to rewind time by moving your stick to the left, and move forward in time by moving it right.  With this ability you’ll have to figure out the right way to kill all of the little “goombas” on the screen to open a locked door or get a key.  It’s multiple puzzles layered on top of each other.  You’ll then move on to later levels where you get the ability to move Tim around for a few minutes and rewind time for a bit, only to watch as a shadow appears of your former self to go off to do the same thing you did mere minutes ago.

I’m not much of a puzzle/platformer kind of guy, but I enjoyed Braid to the very end.  Of course that’s not to say I didn’t get frustrated.  I got frustrated quite a bit trying to figure the puzzles out, even asking my girlfriend for help at times.   I guess I got frustrated because my pea sized brain isn’t used to thinking unconventionally with video games.  Like I mentioned before, the game hearkens back to the golden age of video games like Super Mario.  Back then we were being told what to do subliminally, learning the rules of the game and what all we could do with the characters.  Braid goes many steps further for video games rules, giving you familiar ground that you are comfortable with, but also throwing in a lot of gaming elements we are not accustomed to.  For this I give Braid a lot of credit, but only wish the game were longer and had better replay value.

In some parts, Braid frustrated the hell out of me, but in the end I loved every minute of it despite the migraine headaches.  Nothing has changed from the port over from the Xbox Live version of the game to the PSN, so all of you multiple console owners out there that have played Braid for a year and a half, you don’t need to go buy it again for the PS3.  Braid is definitely a solid buy, but with lack of replay value and short gameplay.  If you aren’t a puzzle guy like me, I would suggest waiting until it’s on sale in the PSN store.  If you love a good puzzle game or a mind tease, I would say go pick this puppy up.  The gameplay and puzzles are rock solid, rewinding time looks and sounds cool, and it’s definitely a good time waster in between multiplayer matches.

[No actual hookers were harmed for the writing of this review, but a download code for Braid was supplied by the publisher for review purposes.]