Of course, if you want to just run through all of Braid’s levels without testing yourself, you can. You don’t have to solve the puzzles if you don’t want to. But if you don’t, you’re missing the point, and you won’t get the full reward. Solving each of the game’s puzzles earns you a jigsaw piece for that world – each world contains twelve pieces that make up a picture representing that level’s theme. Solve all the jigsaw puzzles, and you’ll be granted access to the game’s final world.

Right, wank-hat back on. Playing Braid reminded me of something I read a few years back. It was an article about some Xbox 360 press event, with some over-enthusiastic Microsoft employee harping on about how the hi-def era was going to bring us “the Zen of videogaming”. His idea of this ‘Zen’ essentially boiled down to having a massive telly with a highly-detailed picture on it, which apparently leads to a more immersive experience. He might be right about that, but he sure as hell didn’t understand what Zen is. Braid – intentionally or otherwise – does.

Let me explain - Braid is a really hard game. At least, it is if you’re as thick as I am. Yet it’s not frustrating in the least, and doesn’t really require a massive amount of skill. The clever thing about the game is the way it forces you to think in ways you hadn’t considered before. We’re not used to being able to manipulate time in the ways that Braid allows you to, and it’s remarkably difficult to get your head around at first. You can sit staring at it for hours, feeling entirely clueless as to how the next jigsaw piece could even be possible to reach. But with a bit of patience, everything just clicks, and you can’t help but smile to yourself at how elegantly simple the whole thing is. It was never difficult at all – you just weren’t thinking in the right way. That’s videogaming Zen.

I haven’t even started ranting about the gorgeous art style, the wonderful story, or the incredible attention to detail in the game’s time manipulation, in both aesthetic and gameplay terms. But this is only a preview, so I’d better save some stuff to talk about, eh?

Mind you, if you’d rather not wait for our review when the game actually comes out, just stick ‘9/10’ on the end of this preview and you’re basically there.