i has a question

[copulatingduck]

Braid was fun, but given how short it was I can definitely see someone complaining about the price. With a lot of $10-$20 games you get hours and hours of play, but with Braid you only get hour. Most half-decent bargain bin games (Psychonauts, we barely knew you) are better for the value imho

[KorJax]

Braid was fun, but given how short it was I can definitely see someone complaining about the price. With a lot of $10-$20 games you get hours and hours of play, but with Braid you only get hour. Most half-decent bargain bin games (Psychonauts, we barely knew you) are better for the value imho

It takes an hour to beat only if you know all the puzzles or don't bother doing all the puzzles since you technically can walk straight through from one end of the level to other and not bother to get the puzzle pieces (however this is similar to fast-forwarding in a movie instead of actually watching it in my eyes, and you can't get to the final room until you unlock all the pieces).  There are some puzzles for me that were really really creative/hard to solve in how they were designed which took a long while for me to get the puzzle piece for.  If you want to get the stars, even via a walkthrough that adds at the least 3 more hours to your time.

Aquaria was around $20-$25 or so, and it was "short" as well, but people didn't seem to complain too much about that.  I think braid's pretty much worth it for value.  Takes about 4-6 hours of gameplay to really beat if you've not played through it before already (akin to Portal, which only takes an hour to beat as well if you are teh smarts), only $15 (sure psychonauts is also around this price but let's face it... that game was released several years ago), etc.

Fanboyism over!

Anyways, another great game would be DEFCON.  It's like... that game was MADE for laptops/shitty comps.

[Wedge]

I have 10 hours in Aquaria and have a ways to go, so no, it's not short.  Speedrunnable possibly, but it takes forever to play through your first time.

[copulatingduck]

Dunno about the stars, but the game really only took me 45 minutes to complete. I had a lot of fun playing it, but when I was finished the second thought in my head was "glad I wasn't the one that spent $15 on it."

[ScottyGrayskull]

If you want to get the stars, even via a walkthrough that adds at the least 3 more hours to your time.

Only because one star requires you to stand in one spot for nearly two hours. Very clever/creative puzzle deisgn there.

As for the price, yeah, a lot of indie games are $20-$25 and typically are indie because few people in their right mind would ever pay that much for them (god bless sales on Steam) and they just sit there unsold. Basically though I'm annoyed about the price because when it came out on 360, Blow justified the higher than normal price - 1200 points ($15) as opposed to 800 ($10) - by blaming it on Microsoft, saying he wanted to sell it for less but they overruled it. Of course I saw through his bullshit and said at the time to wait and see what he charges for the PC port, and sure enough it's even more expensive. Heck, only reason I want to play it at all is because people won't shut up about it, but given that it takes 4-6 hours to completely beat, 2 of which you're standing in one spot, I'm really not inclined to pay for it.

Sure, Portal is also 4-6 hours, but it's clever, funny, and actually has replay value with user generated content. Plus it doesn't contain any bullshit puzzles like standing in place for 2 hours and doesn't have pretentious devs behind it who bash other games while at the same time dodging questions about their own game.

[KorJax]

[quote author=KorJax link=topic=2598.msg74111#msg74111 date=1238643128]
If you want to get the stars, even via a walkthrough that adds at the least 3 more hours to your time.

Only because one star requires you to stand in one spot for nearly two hours. Very clever/creative puzzle deisgn there.

As for the price, yeah, a lot of indie games are $20-$25 and typically are indie because few people in their right mind would ever pay that much for them (god bless sales on Steam) and they just sit there unsold. Basically though I'm annoyed about the price because when it came out on 360, Blow justified the higher than normal price - 1200 points ($15) as opposed to 800 ($10) - by blaming it on Microsoft, saying he wanted to sell it for less but they overruled it. Of course I saw through his bullshit and said at the time to wait and see what he charges for the PC port, and sure enough it's even more expensive. Heck, only reason I want to play it at all is because people won't shut up about it, but given that it takes 4-6 hours to completely beat, 2 of which you're standing in one spot, I'm really not inclined to pay for it.

Sure, Portal is also 4-6 hours, but it's clever, funny, and actually has replay value with user generated content. Plus it doesn't contain any bullshit puzzles like standing in place for 2 hours and doesn't have pretentious devs behind it who bash other games while at the same time dodging questions about their own game.
[/quote]

The stars are hardly even apart of the game, you can't honestly complain about getting them when they are nothing but more or less an "easter egg", because there is no possible way anyone who isn't screwing around could of gotten them.  There's no mention of their exsistance at all in the game and no showing.  The only way people know about them is some guys had some freak accidents while playing and then eventually ran into a star along the way.  They are akin to the Chaos Emeralds in one sonic game I had on the GameGear... despite them being there they weren't part of the main game itself at all and were in rediculous/hard/hilariously off-the-beaten-path locations on the levels.

And heh, maybe I'm wierd but Portal lasted me 4 hours and I didn't bother with any of the user-generated content (especially since none of it really meant anything to me fun wise and they were released until months later) and yet still found the expereince worth the money (through the orange box) and had fun with it.

It just seems like you're trying to find things to pick at with the game... if the gameplay of it wasn't your cup of tea than it wasn't really.  I went in and found a game that I had known nothign about and wasn't even sure if I'd really enjoy it, but wanted to play because I heard it was good.  What I got out of it what much more than I expected.

I still don't understand how anyone who's never played through the game can honestly beat and complete all the puzzles within 45 minutes, because if so the that's quite an amazing feat considering the people on the top speed-run scores for the game are around 25-30 minutes (and they are the kind of people who know every puzzle by heart and can beat an entire level to completion pretty quick using shortcuts and not making many mistakes)... if you have never played through the game it should take you about 4-6 hours depending on how good you are at it (not counting the "easter egg" stars).  If you're the guy who can just see a puzzle and instantly know how it works and what to do then you're purty damn good at puzzle games I think

And the PC port isn't more expensive, it's $15, the same as the 360 version.  He orignally priced it at $20 because that's what the price point of other PC games were but he decided to drop it to be equal with the 360 point "because you can't take an established price and expect to pay higher/lower regularly than that established price" (paraphrasing whoever said that).