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Call me crazy, but when I saw the YouTube video featuring rapper Soulja Boy Tell'Em laughingly "reviewing" Xbox Live Arcade game "Braid," I didn't take offense the way many other fans of the game did. Sure, he called the game "stupid as hell," but it appeared to me that he was having fun, possibly despite himself.

So when I saw the interview tape we got back from our L.A. team's interview with him last week, I was disappointed that he responded to my submitted question about naming a game he doesn't like by calling out "Braid." For the record, the three games he said he thinks gamers should be excited about are: "Gears of War 2," "Saint's Row 2" and "Grand Theft Auto IV."

Soulja Boy fans and haters, brace yourself: there's one more post about the famous rapper coming to Multiplayer a little later today, a post that will greatly benefit from all of your feedback.

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(Videos not viewable by users logging in from Canada or the U.K.)

"I thought, wow, six to eight hours of a side-scroller for 15 bucks, that's amazing. To spend 15 dollars based on the gameplay I've seen and not be satisfied doesn't make sense: does not compute."

--Lead "Rachet & Clank: Quest for Booty" designer Brian Allgeier tells me his reaction to complaints from some gamers about the $15 price of Xbox Live Arcade game "Braid," complaints he saw a couple of weeks before "Booty" was released on the PlayStation Network for that same price.

(Sometimes the one-liners we get are more than one line. Got a better name for posts like these? Tell us...)

I would have cheated while playing Xbox Live Arcade game "Braid" by now if the game's developer Jonathan Blow hadn't discouraged his players from doing so. His official walkthrough for the time-shifting side-scroller spoils no solutions to the game's puzzles and instead exhorts players not to cheat:

All the puzzles in Braid are reasonable. They don't require you to do anything random; they don't require guessing. They don't require trial and error. The solutions tend to be simple and natural. They flow directly from the rules of gameplay in each world.

Why would I have cheated if he hadn't written that?

It's partially my fault: I often play games in a rush, ready to try the next few games in my queue. If I'm vexed in a game I'm enjoying -- as I was in "Braid" World 2 and World 4, I want to get solutions quickly so I can advance to the end. This, I admit, is a poor reason. I should be chastised. But...

It's partially many game developers' fault: For decades game developers have designed puzzles that do "require guessing" or don't "flow directly from the rules of gameplay." How did we ever know how to walk through the repeating maze-square of the first "Metal Gear"? How do we know in any "Final Fantasy" that the solution to our problems is in the local vicinity (as it is in every "Zelda" dungeon) and not in the farthest reaches of the map in some place to which we must backtrack?

Game designers haven't played fair since I started playing games. They still don't, as I discovered this weekend deep in "Siren: Blood Curse," where I encountered a boss who automatically killed me even if I ran past him. Why? Because I hadn't first backtracked through the level to do something else the designers wanted me to do. I used a walkthrough to get past that.

So that's why I cheat so often when playing games. That's why I peek at the walkthroughs. All I needed was a game developer to promise he was playing fair. (And wouldn't you know it: I solved all of Worlds 2 and 4 two nights ago.) But it's too bad Blow had to write that to keep me on the straight and narrow path of puzzle-solving. It's too bad the reflex to cheat has been so strong. I'll shoulder some blame, but only some of it.

Next: "Braid" world six is on tap...

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“A Higher Standard” — Game Designer Jonathan Blow Challenges Super Mario’s Gold Coins, “Unethical” MMO Design And Everything Else You May Hold Dear About Video Games

Now that Jonathan Blow's time-manipulating side-scroller "Braid" has a release date for Xbox Live Arcade -- August 6 -- I'd like to refresh readers' thoughts about the game with a look back to a post from last August. It was on August 8 of last year that I ran an interview with Blow in which the designer openly and artfully challenged many accepted game design conventions while explaining his philosophy for the design of "Braid."

The interview proved to be one of the most widely-cited pieces we've run on the blog. You can read it all at this link: “A Higher Standard” — Game Designer Jonathan Blow Challenges Super Mario’s Gold Coins, “Unethical” MMO Design And Everything Else You May Hold Dear About Video Games [UPDATE: link is now fixed!]

In our interview, Blow opened up to me like few designers had before. For example, when I asked him about his views about life affect his thoughts on game design, he said:

... I feel like unearned rewards are false and meaningless, yet so many people spend their lives chasing easy/unearned rewards. So there is a very conscious decision that you only get collectibles in “Braid” when you solve a puzzle, and you only get one per puzzle. Some of the puzzles are easy, some are hard; but you did something very explicit to get the reward. It’s not like “Mario” and every other game since then, when there are gold coins sprinkled everywhere, and you get them just by walking along a path or jumping up to some blocks, and that satisfies your reward-seeking reflex for now and pacifies you into continuing to play the game.

I've played enough "Braid" to highly recommend that everyone should try it when it is released. I also recommend you brush up by checking out our interview. If you care about personal expression and how it can be made manifest in a game coming to the Xbox 360 then Blow and "Braid" should be on your radar sometime between now and August 6.

"Braid" visuals by David Hellman and character by Edmund McMillen.