What was amazing was the look inside Clank's head. By hopping into a machine and letting Sigmund throw the switch, Clank peered inside himself to find a recording of his creator -- a bit of locked-away AI that instructed the little 'bot on the ways of becoming The Great Clock's new Caretaker using a the all-important Chronoscepter, a wand that could literally turn back time and repair the various broken bits of the Clock. It also granted Clank the ability to throw out little time bombs, explosions that slowed the temporal flow to a crawl for anything (except Clank, of course) caught in the slowly decaying bubble. This was useful for taking out enemies, sure, but it became a core part of Clank's platforming as it could slow spinning platforms long enough to allow him to jump to a new ledge.

Clank's mind is, frankly, gorgeous. Insomniac cooked up a slick little effect where platforms were made of slowly undulating squares. Anywhere Clank walked (or ran) would instantly pull the squares up in to a solid platform for him to stand on. It's a little hard to describe, but the effect is absolutely incredible in motion -- particularly because the game runs at a rock-solid 60 frames a second even at this point in the game's production timeline. It probably shouldn't come as a huge surprise given this is an engine that's been up and running on the PS3 since before the system was out, but it's still impressive to see the visuals constantly getting upgraded and the game keeping pace (and now without a lick o' screen tearing).

After learning his place in the grand scheme of things, Clank was pulled back into the "real" world and set about trying to destroy the Hyper Sonic Brainwave Scrambler that was mucking things up in The Great Clock. Before we could get to the boss fight, though, we had to put the lessons learned both in Clank's mind and in the demonstrations we had back at E3 to work in recording and re-recording specific movements with Time Pads in the level. It really is one of the most promising puzzles Insomniac has ever crafted for their series. Essentially recordings of your earlier actions, the Time Pads allow clank to record an action, then play it back and interact with it (for instance, recording himself pressing a switch that opens a door allowing him to press another switch which in turn will allow the old recording to be re-recorded over, pressing the original switch to allow the previously recorded self to press the switch locked behind a door and oh god I've gone retarded.

It got even more complex than just switches, too. We eventually had to raise and lower platforms, slow time on some objects and generally just play with the idea of recording an action for one's self and then interacting with that action's results. It was, in a word, awesome, and we can't wait to see how mind-bending it all gets. Kudos to Insomniac for making it both intuitive and (hopefully) complex to give a nice sense of accomplishment once everything's figured out.

The actual boss fight itself was actually rather easy thanks to careful use of the time bombs to slow the Hyper Sonic Brainwave Scrambler, a robot that fired off plenty of shots in quick succession and would release waves when he pounded the ground (that looked fantastic, by the way, thick with ribbons of energy) which would sprout enemies as distractions. We made quick work of him, the screen faded to black... and the demo was over.

If anything, this proves that Insomniac has one hell of a sequel on their hands. The dynamics in place already have us chomping at the bit to play more, and rest assured that when we do, we'll let you know.