Speedrun achievement isn't fun

[Chizypuff]

It's a puzzle game, so after beating it once the replayability is very low. That being said there are moments where rewinding too far or missing your timing for something can lose you a couple of minutes.

I can see the speedrun for this game being really rewarding when you've practiced it several dozen times and all the cogs are moving together, but how about someone who doesn't want to play the same game a half dozen times for an achievement?I like the idea of Speedrun Achievements but I'm not looking forward to doing this one...

[Mitch Rocks]

Perhaps the devs thought people who don't play games six times for practice wouldn't care about it? (Based on a few other complaints I've seen of this nature, it seems such people do care about it, but it's possuble the devs had made a false assumption regarding the players.)

[Milouze]

Sometimes the dev is just plain stuborn; I am pointing a similar situation with "Another Perspective". Great puzzler with a fantastic setup, ruined by an almost world record speedrun achievement

[supware]

How are people criticising the dev for adding content? Of course not every aspect of every game will appeal to every player; if you don't like it don't do it. Jeez

[Chizypuff]

Originally posted by sup:

How are people criticising the dev for adding content? Of course not every aspect of every game will appeal to every player; if you don't like it don't do it. Jeez

It's not added content, it's only purpose is to make you play the exact same content several more times. It's a tall barrier for 100%'ing the game when I enjoyed the rest of it, for the most part. To this day I haven't gone back and done it and can't add it to finished games list.

[4D]

I have to agree on some level - the whole of the game (besides finding the hidden stars) was interesting, enjoyable, and fairly simple for me. And you unlock every achievement just by playing through it. Then, this last achievement requires you to put in a lot of practice... it seems out of place.

I'm not complaining about it, I think it's a good challenge and I don't shy away from one. I just wasn't expecting that sort of challenge given what the rest of the game experience was like.

[byque]

Originally posted by Casual Collector:

I have to agree on some level - the whole of the game (besides finding the hidden stars) was interesting, enjoyable, and fairly simple for me. And you unlock every achievement just by playing through it. Then, this last achievement requires you to put in a lot of practice... it seems out of place.

I'm not complaining about it, I think it's a good challenge and I don't shy away from one. I just wasn't expecting that sort of challenge given what the rest of the game experience was like.

Agree!

Thanks for sharing your opinions. I thought about beating 100% this game as the achievements have been relatively easy to obtain, but I guess that I may pass on this one too.

Our "time" doesn't have rewind unluckily, and there are tons of other games to discover to get stuck here for an achievement.

[The Fountaineer 🖋]

Edit: sorry for the necropost.

Speedruns have never been about fun. Its always about efficiency and shaving seconds off. You can argue that speedrunning itself is "fun" ina sense but it will always lower the entertainment factor of any game.

I don't usually endorse things like Achieve Unlocker buuuuut...if it's giving you this much stress.

[Chizypuff]

Originally posted by William See:

Edit: sorry for the necropost.

Speedruns have never been about fun. Its always about efficiency and shaving seconds off. You can argue that speedrunning itself is "fun" ina sense but it will always lower the entertainment factor of any game.

I don't usually endorse things like Achieve Unlocker buuuuut...if it's giving you this much stress.

I disagree. I've speedran several games to a middling level, and it's a lot of fun to improve at the game and learn new tech. Super Mario 64, Clustertruck, Cuphead- I create self imposed goals and it's fun to try and achieve them.

Cheating the achievement would give me negative satisfaction and defeats the whole purpose of 100%'ing games for me. It's not giving me much stress at all, but it's been a year and 4 months and I haven't came back to it. Multiple 50 minute runs of a puzzle game is not my idea of a good time.

[Milouze]

Originally posted by Chizypuff:

Multiple 50 minute runs of a puzzle game is not my idea of a good time.

Thank you.

[KenTWOu]

If you start the game from a save game file where full speedrun was already achieved under 45 minutes, you'll get the achievement. By the way, all Braid achievements work that way, the game rereads all earned achievements from a save file on each start up.

P.S: speedrun achievements are definitely not fun, as well as co-op/multiplayer related ones.

[Heav]

i did it 2 days ago. its not that hard, and it was pretty fun

[Chizypuff]

Originally posted by sin(8009):

i did it 2 days ago. its not that hard, and it was pretty fun

You have 3 times as much game time as me. I did a few attempts back when I played the game and got fed up, I don't remember what my times were or if I even finished them.

[VR456]

Sorry for necro, just wanted to add two cents for future generations.

The main factor of a steam achievement being "good" is not about the task being fun. It's about whether it fits into the game. Speedrun achievements are mostly good in games that have a fast pace, and so it's easy for every desperate person to master it, or allow players some small but still helpful freedom in their actions, like in metroidvanias. Obviously, it doesn't fits to primarily puzzle games, no matter what their secondary genre is. And that's the problem we have in Braid: devs only cared about the "platformer" part when creating these.

I played the game 3 times before (first two were general completion, third was with stars), and now came back to it 5 years later for the sake of completion. A quick one hour replay to freshen my memory up, and then an immediate speedrun.
48 minutes.
I'm sure you can imagine how p!ssed I was. And yet I know I could do it in roughly 42 if it wasn't for all the unforgiving puzzles in world 6, and some in worlds 4 and 5. Not to mention that the entire final stage takes 6 minutes just because rewind sequence and epilogue level count for completion.
Ugh.

So in conclusion, yes, Braid's speedrun achievement sucks. Not because it's not fun, but because it doesn't fits the game.
I'm still gonna try again, but I don't think the game will be kept among my good memories anymore.

[Heav]

i think it fits the game. there are many cool optimizations you can do with borderline glitches sometimes, so its a puzzle in itself

[VR456]

Forcing to do a complex puzzle that gets progressively less forgiving as fast as possible is not a good approach though.