I'll come right out and say that I think Braid is a great game. It introduces all of its mechanical building blocks right out of the gate, it teaches you all the quirks of each world's unique gimmick about as naturally as possible, and it makes you assemble all the knowledge you've gained by yourself in order to solve each puzzle, which parallels assembling the in-game jigsaw pieces yourself even after you've collected them. It doesn't push any of its mechanics as far as it could have, but it covers a really respectable amount of breadth for each one despite its very short runtime. I found myself fulfilled by every single puzzle solution and excited to find out what each world's new mechanic would be, which I truly don't think I can say about any other puzzle game.

Braid also has a story. But we shouldn't talk about that, since everyone agrees with me in that story in video games doesn't really matter, right? Just making sure, nobody actually took Braid's story seriously, right? Guys?