I can’t remember enjoying something that much since Portal, and I hold it even higher than that. JB is genius.

Okay, maybe pixel-perfect is an exaggeration, but it is utterly pedantic – and the slippery acceleration of your avatar doesn’t help that.

However, I found that switching the god-damned horrible sound effects off and playing it in silence actually helped my concentration enough to solve many of the puzzles that I couldn’t get before.

A couple of the slow-down time puzzles are all that’s left now. I’ve only found the click of satisfaction with about two of them so far (notably the first elevator one) – mostly it’s been groans of repeated execution. Even though I’ve persisted with it, I can’t say I’ve found any of it particularly ‘enjoyable.’ I’d hoped that the jigsaw puzzles might play a larger part in the gameplay, but they seem pretty pointless apart from the first one (and their alleged link to some kind of ‘plot’).

Work on each plant at a time until all the plants sync up to let every goomba pass every time. The trick is where to drop the ring. To slow the first plant, drop the ring directly under it. Drop the ring for, say, a couple of seconds at a time until it lets everything pass in its own time. To manipulate the second plant, you want to drop the ring nearer the third, so the first plant isn’t affected by the time-slowing. Then, to manipulate the third plant, drop the ring under the platform with the puzzle piece on so the time-slowing only affects that one plant. Shouldnt’ take long at all to get all the plants moving how you need.

You don’t even need to use the ring to get the two goombas out, just judicious use of mini-rewinds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaOCv6-e8sM

I couldn’t manage that 3 plant puzzle either.
There is a slightly cheaty way of doing it: Get the plants in sync using the ring, then press shift, followed by up and down. If you keep shift held down, then time passes at 0x and the greeny goombas all make it past the plants – allowing you to do your multi-bounce.

If someone has figured out a better way – please tell me!

YES! Exactly. That is exactly my issue with it. It totally breaks the flow. The rest of the rule re-writing is introduced in an excellent manner. But the decision to just make your time-manipulation not only useless, but to have it break the puzzle, just doesn’t sit at all well for me.

I can see why these puzzles are there, in the context of what the game’s trying to say. But still: a big design “no.”

Really? I think the first Tomb Raider is the winner of that one. I remember my girlfriend watching in abject terror as I neared the top of some precarious edifice, hoping against hope I wouldn’t screw up and initiate once again a seemingly endless stream of hideous hopeless screams terminating finally with a sickening thump. Or spikes. Braid didn’t seem nearly as bad as THAT. Not the demo, anyway.
I can hardly wait to buy Braid — it looks great. When a computer game has generated as much heated debate as it has, it’s a foregone conclusion that it has merit. At least for me! Long threads on RPS pique my interest far more than advertisements or glowing write-ups!

I’m currently stuck on a puzzle half way through in World 6 (involving sneaking goomba guys past plants). Last puzzle piece before the attic as a matter of fact.

I typically judge the quality of a puzzle by my response upon determining the solution. If I mentally respond with “Oh yeah, that’s pretty awesome”, it’s a good puzzle. If I respond with “You have the fucking shitting me!”, then there might be something wrong (typically a completely illogical solution: see 90%+ of adventure games [I love them anyway, but seriously, what the hell The Longest Journey?]).

This particular puzzle falls under the second. Determining what the solution is took me, maybe a minute. Actually executing the solution… well, I’ve wasted probably over an hour at this point. Watching a couple walkthroughs on Youtube and checking an FAQ on gamefaqs confirms that I have the correct solution in mind but it has a very difficult execution.

The root of the problem is that it requires extensive precision but without the benefit of time-rewind (goombas are time resistant). Time-rewind in Braid is used both a tool for the player and as a gameplay element, and it used brilliantly in both. Letting a player undo mistakes is a difficult problem in game design and has lead to a number of (mostly poor) solutions, such as Prey’s Spirit World and BioShock’s Vita-Chambers. Time-rewind solves this problem with flying colors, allowing players to revert death and other errors with minimal repetition and without the difficulty curve flatting problems of Bioshock and Prey.

So you have to understand my irritation at Braid for introduction an excellent tool in the time-rewind, but then arbitrarly breaking it, apparently for the sake of being ‘clever’ on a couple puzzles.