Best of the Decade: Braid
Wed, December 29, 2010 at 9:34 PM 
Braid
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows
Release Date: August 6, 2008 (360 version)
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios (360); Number None, Inc. (Other versions)
Developer: Number None, Inc.
It’s not often that a puzzle game can snare me. I like a good mental challenge, but I don’t have the patience for the genre most of the time. I’m already susceptible to switching away from a game I’m stuck on and an entire genre built around stopping you in your tracks periodically and forcing you to solve tough puzzles usually doesn’t work for me. I’ll try a new game, get hooked until I’m stumped, put it down, and never play it again.
Thus, sadly, I’ve come to largely avoid puzzle games. Portal and Limbo are two exceptions, but both are far more than traditional genre entries.
Braid is more traditional a puzzle game than either of those two, but it’s still something special.