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In the second entry of the Game Club's coverage of Braid (check out part one) , our community contributors tackle the hard questions: Is the main character's fractured experience an allegory for our own? Where the hell is World 1? Is Tim a frat boy?

As J. Cosmo Cohen's creation sinks its teeth in, the meaning of the game seems to become more and more elusive. This one is open wide for interpretation folks!

Hit the jump to find out more about Alex Martin's analysis of the narrative, Travis McReynolds' assertions that the main character is a shady fellow, and J. Cosmo Cohen's unsure description of the game's crazy time mechanics.

Downstream by Shira Kammen

Braid Edition Contributor: J. Cosmo Cohen

J. Cosmo is having a difficult time with World 5; he prefers perfecting each World before moving on. He should probably just give up before he goes insane. Is he already insane? If he is, he wishes he could rewind time and change whatever broke his mind -- or something like that. Utilizing the power of time travel, he's currently playing Braid and Braid 2.

In my last contribution, I concluded by pointing out that I hadn't discussed Braid's time manipulation mechanics. I promised to do so this time. Ah, the power of hindsight. If only I could rewind time and remove that part of my write-up, it wouldn't seem so bitterly ironic now.

The time manipulation in World 2 and World 3 would've been easy to discuss. If you die, you rewind time and try again. That pretty much sums it up.
Now I'm stuck describing the mechanics of World 4 and World 5 instead.

In World 4, Tim's movements change the positions of the enemies onscreen -- moving right advances time and moving left rewinds it. It sounds easy, but it's the polar opposite. Look up the word "easy" in the dictionary, then replace its definition with its antonym...that's World 4.

One stage in particular really had me scratching my head. Tim has to kill all of the enemies on the screen -- simple enough. But bear in mind World 4's Law of Time. Tim starts on the bottom of the stage and has to work his way upward while killing all the enemies along the way. But whenever you move too far left and rewind time, all of the enemies "un-die." It's extremely difficult and completely ineffable. Hopefully, my lack of a decent description will correlate in quality directly with how you'll probably feel while playing World 4 -- completely shitty.

I did finish World 4, and I grabbed all the puzzle pieces along the way, too. After that, I took a break for a few days before beginning World 5. Once I finished my respite, I started playing at 10:00 a.m. and at 10:03 a.m. my brain exploded.

The time manipulation changes again; unlike World 4, you move Tim around like normal, but when you rewind time and stop, a shadow of Tim pops out does everything you just rewound. The player-controlled Tim is then able run around and work in tandem with the shadow. The puzzles are so devious that, as of this writing, I haven't completed World 5 yet.

Hopefully, I've given you an idea of how crafty the time manipulation in Braid is. If not, I highly suggest playing the game for yourself. Even if the mechanics are difficult to understand, it's still fun. And that speaks volumes about how well-made the game is.

Braid Edition Contributor: Alex Martin

Alex is finally getting around to playing some '09 favorites. He's enjoying Batman: Arkham Asylum, The Beatles: Rock Band, and Pure.

I am a goddamn genius! Well, not really...but Braid makes me feel that way. Jonathan Blow designed the game's puzzles to be hard enough to stump me -- for a little while. But once that eureka moment comes a few minutes later, I can't help but be pleased with myself.

World 4 requires you to get into a unique head space -- a mindset radically different from the other 2D platformers.

World 4, subtitled "Time and Place," seems like an eponymous metaphor for the idea that time is relative. Time goes backwards when you move left through the environment, and because of the story interludes between levels, it feels like Tim is coming back home to visit his family. When you move Tim right, he leaves home again, and the nostalgia flees. But as he moves forward, everything is fresher and newer.

The best bit about World 5 is working out one particular puzzle. A situation in the level requires you to kill yourself and get help from a lookalike goomba.

It makes sense in the context of Braid, but after playing video games and learning their conventions for two decades, it's mind-blowing.

Also, when you play, you'll find that Braid's levels have no specific order. They started with Tim leaving on a quest to find a princess, but the books at the start of World 4 indicate that he is only just setting off.

The passages offer contradictory information about the narrative. Sometimes Tim is leaving a lover, and sometimes he searching for one. It's possible that the princess isn't a love interest all. She could be a metaphor for a desire or any kind. If Mario has taught us anything, it's that the princess is more of a goal than an actual person: She's a token for the skill and mental agility that it took to get to her.

Apply that to the whole of Braid and the non-linear story gets even more ambiguous. It seems we're approaching a climax -- but is it the end...or not? Is it the start of a story told backwards? And what the hell happened to World 1?

Braid Edition Contributor: Travis McReynolds

Travis McReynolds has come to get down -- so get off your feet and jump around. He's currently playing Dissidia: Final Fantasy which has his renewed interest in an update of Final Fantasy 7. What's it going to take, Square-Enix? He's offering as much as five bucks for the cause.

In our first post, I think I did a pretty solid job of pointing out that I have authentic and serious feelings about Braid. I dodged further elaboration on those feelings with some easy frat-boy jokes. I have bad news for you: This week I'll be doing the same. Hopefully, you can at least admire my candor.

I wasn't kidding last week when I said making fun of this game was like beating up my mom. Every year my buddy, Patrick, asks me what he should get his mom for Mother's Day, and every year, I give the same advice. I suggest that for the week prior, at about the same time every day, he burst into his parents' house and beat the holy hell out of his mom -- go for broke, intentionally leave marks...the whole nine yards. Do that for six days and then, come Mother's Day, unexpectedly stop. For once, she'll actually get something she wants.

This is how I feel about Braid. After I'm done with the gag routine, it's all just a joke. I don't actually mean it. Jonathan Blow has crafted a gaming experience with the ability to hold myriad meanings for every person who plays it. And that's something rare and special for video games. So in his honor, I promise not to make any oral sex jokes about his last name...this week.

Last we left Tim, he was at the start of World 4 and was several bottles of wine deep -- we were, too. At least, I was. If you were a team player you'd have been drinking along with us. Tim, wasted and wandering, was looking to start trouble.

In order to illustrate my point (and artificially enhance my word count), allow me to include a quote from the beginning of World 4:

"He felt on his trip that every place stirs up an emotion, and every emotion invokes a memory: a time and a location. So couldn't he find the Princess now, tonight, just by wandering from place to place and noticing how he feels?"

So that's the plan for the next set of levels: wander around and see how we feel. Looks like ol' Timbo is a reflective drunk.

Wonderful.

The last time I got drunk with a frat boy, he tried to enlighten me about the finer points of Adam Sandler's range as an actor (true story). I can do without that particular brand of "Greek" philosophy.

Anyway, just so you know, World 4's time structure flows back and forth in tandem with Tim's left and right movements. The soundtrack follows suit. Those inclined can turn up the music and treat this as an alpha version of DJ Hero. But be warned, it's a game build whose only song is Johannes Brahms' Lullaby and Goodnight. On the plus side, you don't have to deal with Eminem.

But back to our adventure. At this point in the game, Tim's night had gone from head-scratching to controller-smashing, and Tim didn't seem to give a shit. His drunk ass was hopping at all the wrong times and landing in all the wrong places.

I refuse to take blame for the actions of a goddamn pledge.

After a couple of visits to GameFaqs, I managed to beat World 4 in spite of Tim's shitty attitude. Once I solved World 4's jigsaw puzzle, I had a startling realization -- Tim touches kids. The assembled picture shows Tim peeking in to a child's room. It doesn't take much foresight to figure out what happens next. But on the off chance that you lack a vivid imagination, I'll tell you: Tim is about to get up to some molesting. In accordance with Megan's Law, good conscience requires me to inform you that this is some creepy shit.

As I began World 5, I was starting to have some serious doubts about Tim. I'm not sure I can endorse inducting a fraternity pledge with no manners, some sort of time-affective pact with the devil, an oncoming hangover, and a taste for under-aged women.

I seriously doubt the denouement of this story will end in any sort of redemption for Tim. Unless, of course, Braid is actually some sort of viral-marketing preamble to promote the Cantos of Hell in Dante's Inferno. If so, I think EA should go back to encouraging gamers to sexually harass adult women.

Luckily, World 5 introduces a gameplay element that gives me some hope: Tim's evil twin. If television has taught me anything, it's that everyone on the planet has an equal and opposite identical twin. If this silhouette version of Tim is his evil twin, and Tim is himself evil, then maybe the evil twin is actually good. You know, like Boss Hogg's evil twin from The Dukes of Hazzard (scratch that...you probably don't know).

My hunch proved to be correct. Tim's doppelganger seems to be a pretty awesome guy. He grabs keys and puzzle pieces for me, and so far as I've seen, he hasn't violated a single child. With his help I was able to complete World 5 and piece together its jigsaw puzzle...which revealed a Mormon missionary in an airport.

What the fuck?

So far I've strung together a narrative using the previous images of getting drunk, getting drunker, and committing a horrible felony. This image leaves me with more questions than answers.

Will Tim find the princess? Is his evil twin here to stay? Will Tim still be dressed as the assistant manager a Men's Wearhouse? What the hell does all of this have to do with a Mormon stuck in LAX? Perhaps we'll find out next week.