Since their adventures in the Shadow Sector in Gladiator, our heroes have been enjoying some well deserved R&R. Ratchet has been pondering his origins, and his lonely life as the only known Lombax in the universe. Enter Emperor Tachyon, leader of a race of hideous insect like creatures. He's been obsessed with wiping out the Lombax for centuries and now he's come for everyone's favourite kitten of mass destruction. The Emperor attacks in the opening moments of the game, resulting in a spectacularly explosive introductory level that leaves our heroes stranded in the far-off galaxy of Polaris.
"One of the things we learned from Resistance: Fall of Man was that it's really important to start your game off with a bang." Ryan Schneider is the marketing director at Insomniac Games, the guys behind the Ratchet & Clank series. Ryan's just finished revealing the latest version of the popular franchise (six games in five years, if you count the US-exclusive cell phone version, Going Mobile) at Sony's Gamer's Day event in San Diego, and he's clearly excited about getting to show off the game to an audience for the first time.
The live demo went unbelievably well, didn't it? We were really apprehensive about showing it because, apart from the trailer, we hadn't shown any raw gameplay yet."
OVER THE RAINBOW
Seeing the game in action, it's easy to see why Ryan's excited. It seems that the only reason that Resistance was so unrelentingly brown was because Insomniac were saving all their colours for Ratchet & Clank - the rainbow palette looks like the result of an explosion in an Play-Doh factory. While instantly recognisable as a Ratchet & Clank title, the jump from PS2 to PS3 has caused the needle on our pretty-o-meter to wang off the end of the scale. The alien worlds have always been imaginative, but never have they looked so alive - everything bursting with ambient detail. Trees gently sway, fire flies dart around, hundreds of hover cars clog the air and huge gears and wheels churn and turn constantly. But despite all this, the frame rate is smooth like peanut butter. For all the focus on Ratchet's imaginative arsenal, it's easy to forget how solid the underlying technology is too.
"We consider Ratchet & Clank: Tools Of Destruction to be the first second generation PlayStation 3 title," says Ryanwith no small amount of pride. "We think that we've finally managed to create a world as detailed as something you might read in a book or see in a movie. If Resistance was our Bruckheimer movie, this is our Pixar flick."
But the raw grunt of PS3 is doing far more than just filling the screen with pretty colours and background fudge. As soon as the weapons come out, you can immediately see how Insomniac have managed to use the power to create weaponry that just wouldn't have been possible previously. Take the Groovitron, for example - one blast sends a silver disco ball into the air, causing all nearby baddies to down tools and get funky with their bad selves. "Every single enemy type has their own unique set of dance moves," says Ryan. "There's absolutely no way we could have had the memory resources for that on PlayStation 2." You also have the Gelinator, powered by Gelitonium, a weapon that fires cubes of wibbly-wobbly jelly that can be stood on and combined to form larger cubes. Or there's the Visicoptor, a sort of portable RC helicopter drone weapon that's controlled with the Sixaxis when launched.
You can use it to scout the route ahead, or as a remote controlled bomb - perfect for taking out large clumps of enemies in one go. The Sixaxis is also used for the Tornado gun, which fires a portable tornado that whirls around the room and sucks up everything in its path, before dumping it all in a tangled mess of bolts, debris, and dizzy looking villains. Very smart.
BACK TO BASICS
But Ryan is keen to stress that the most significant change is the return to the series' adventuring roots. "Over the course of the PlayStation 2 games, we went down a path that started to prize the weaponry over the storyline. One of the key pillars of Ratchet & Clank is a mystery adventure. We want players to explore this universe and get wrapped up in the tale that we're trying to tell. It's a good story too - while Ratchet is slowly discovering details about the origin of his race, Clank is discovering spirituality - though more than that I really can't say at this point."
As well as getting to see nextgeneration versions of a couple of the planets from previous Ratchet adventures, we can expect to see some cool new rocks too. The demo that was shown at Gamer's Day focused on Kerchew City, a place so toxic its inhabitants are constantly sneezing. We also got to take a look at the planet of Kobalia, which is full of wild beasts, enormous sea monsters and giant centipedes. It's absolutely overfl owing with life and it shows off the incredible visuals of the game beautifully.
COWER, INFIDELS!
It's clear that the yearly EA-style updates of the series have quietly garnered it a solid following, and that Ratchet & Clank PS3 will keep the faithful happy. But Schneider is certain that the PlayStation 3 incarnation will impress a lot more people besides just the already converted.
"Sceptics who saw the trailer we put out last year were thinking 'Is that really gameplay? Can they really put all this stuff on screen?' and I think that with this presentation we've demonstrated that we really can." And, you know, we think they might be right.
Forgot all about this silly game coming out until I just checked IGN. Damn the man ... I haven't even had a chance to bust into the last few games I've bought. Curse the companies for having huge dry spells, then releasing to many good games all at once.
(maybe that's why I should have stuck with one system only ... then I'd have time to play all the good games for that system. hehe)
