Nerdblog

Last night I was supposed to go to this party. The (why am I admitting this?) Sunnydale High School 10-Year Class Reunion. In case you have a life outside of decade-old television, Sunnydale High is not MY high school, but that of Buffy (the vampire slayer), who graduated at the end of the third season (i.e. June of 1999).

I didn't go because it was sold out because I have better things to do, but that's ok because I heard it was lame.

What I did instead was stay home and play this awesome little video game called Braid by Jonathan Blow. Yeah, Blow.

I can imagine in high school on substitute teacher day: "Blow, Jonathan." "Don't mind if I do!" ... yeah remember how I am 5?

Anyway it's a platformer, and in it you're this guy (Tim) who goes to different worlds collecting puzzle pieces for some reason with the ultimate goal of saving a princess. But you also have the power to reverse time, so if you screw up or die, you don't start over, you just go back. It's a neat mechanic, and it comes into play a lot in puzzle solving. Other worlds have different time-oriented powers like dropping a localized time flux that slows things down inside of it. In another, time goes forward when you walk right and backwards when you walk left.

Blah, I'm not gonna sit here talking forever about a video game, but it's super cool and you all need to play it immediately. (Srsly, it's very short, like a couple hours.) It's a total-package kinda thing, something you don't find very often. The graphics, the esoteric story, the music, all of it comes together to make the more unique gaming experience I've had in a long time. Eat your heart out, post-apocalyptic first-person-shooter of the moment!

In conclusion, go to that god-awful Perez Hilton site and watch Joe Jonas dancing to All My Single Ladies. Or just watch it here.