There will be much new content hitting over the next couple of weeks – including some special coverage on G4’s X-Play where you’ll see one of our time travel levels for the first time.

In the meantime though, head over to Game Informer to check out this special video we put together for their recent site re-launch. It’s all about the replay mode in the game. We spent a lot of time adding extra replay features, a special uber-boss you have to collect all of the Zoni to fight, the Insomniac Museum, optional super-hard Clank puzzles, and of course trophies, which are in addition to the Insomniac-created “Skill Points” we’ve had in all of our games since Spyro: Ripto’s Rage.

That’s all for now – if you haven’t pre-ordered the game already, we have some great in-game pre-order bonuses from our various retail partners Gamestop, Amazon, Best Buy and Game Crazy. And if you haven’t checked out the Future series of games yet, Tools of Destruction is available as a Greatest Hits title now at $29.99 – so you have a couple weeks to catch up (when you’re not playing UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves, of course).

If you have any questions, post them below and I’ll do my best to answer as many as I can!

But don’t take our word for it! We also had IGN into our studio earlier this week to check it out and get some extensive hands-on in one of the space sectors – you can read all of their thoughts here.

One of our favorite parts of space gameplay is how it really rewards you for exploring. The various spherical moons contain Zoni, which allow you to upgrade your ship’s abilities and weapons, and are also required to face-off against our final uber-boss in replay mode (that’s right, hardcore fans, a special boss you’ll need to get beat to get the last trophy). There’s also a huge incentive to explore in that you can discover new mods for your constructo weapons. We’re also really excited because the designers have created some excellent platforming and hoverbooting moons –and some of them, especially later in the game, will challenge long-time platformer fans. 

The other star of the show is Space Radio with its zany commercials, and movie trailers, and fun DJs (like Captain Slag and Rusty Pete on Pirate Radio). Fans paying attention to the news reports will also discover answers to some of their biggest questions about the Ratchet & Clank universe, providing plenty of incentive to tune in while you’re exploring space.

We’re excited about this brand new space gameplay as we are continuing to push hard to wrap up the game. For fans traveling to PAX in Seattle next week – make sure you stop by the Sony booth and check out both the Krell Canyon and Great Clock demos. We’ll also have Ratchet in costume, and we will be handing out the mega-popular Comic-Con swag inflatable wrenches. Creative Director Brian Allgeier will also be giving a presentation about the history of Ratchet & Clank weapons (along with some new ones) called Weapons 101.  You can catch that presentation Friday, from 2-3pm in the Unicorn Theatre.

That’s all for now, hope you like the space gameplay. I’ll be happy to try and answer your questions about in the comments below!

Throughout the course of the show, attendees could check out the Krell Canyon demo at the PlayStation booth. There were also photo opportunities with Ratchet himself, as well as swag: an inflatable replica of Ratchet’s Omniwrench 2000.

All of this built up to Sunday, when we revealed all of this and much more to the public in our panel session. Creative Director Brian Allgeier, Project Manager Bryan Bernal, and Writer Todd Fixman were joined by voice actors James Arnold Taylor (Ratchet), Armin Shimerman (Dr. Nefarious), and Joey D’Auria (Allister Azimuth). The panel was moderated by Gamespot Editor-In-Chief Ricardo Torres.

We led off with some exclusive videos that those of you playing at home won’t be able to see until the final game releases, one involving Captain Qwark, and the other an unlockable video about the Agorian Warriors. Allgeier and company then discussed the story, and its theme of “throwing caution to the wind,” especially relating to the effect of Ratchet being with an older Lombax for the first time. One of the early highlights involved a verbal spar between Taylor and Shimerman, using the voices of Ratchet and Dr. Nefarious, respectively, as they sat together on stage talk about Nefarious’s temperament issues.

Discussion then turned to Clank and his whereabouts after being kidnapped at the end of Tools of Destruction. Bernal revealed that Clank is being held at the center of the universe (give or take fifty feet), in a secret facility known as the Great Clock. Clank gains new time abilities and has some brand new indie-inspired time gameplay.

For more about Clank and the first footage of his gameplay, check out this video:

Next came a topic that is a series standby: weapons. The beginning of the discussion centered on the Weapons Contest event that occurred on Wednesday evening. The Spiral of Death was revisited and shown in case attendees hadn’t seen it. Winning fan designer Jackson Finley was recognized by Bernal, and the crowd gave him a huge round of applause. If you haven’t seen the Spiral of Death in action, check this video out:

Torres then moved onto the world reveal of a brand new line of weapons for A Crack in Time, The Constructo weapons. Brian Allgeier discussed how fans really enjoyed the ability to specifically tailor weapons to their own playing-style with modifications in Deadlocked and Up Your Arsenal. He announced two new weapons, the Constructo Pistol and Constructo Bomb Glove, and revealed some mods that longtime series fans will love – the video below shows and explains more.

The voice actors discussed their work on the game and how much fun they have had working with these characters over the years. James Arnold Taylor discussed how Ratchet’s voice is really his voice, and as such it’s really one of his easiest characters to jump into (which he did repeatedly throughout the panel). He also mentioned that it was only during this past year that he met David Kaye, the actor who voices Clank, as game voice actors typically record their sessions separately.

Armin Shimerman told attendees he generally has to take the next day off after recording Nefarious due to the amount of screaming a session involves, especially due to his perception of Nefarious screaming a lot more in this game. However, this didn’t dissuade him from screaming for the audience, including the classic yelling at his butler, “LAAAAAAAAWREEEEEENCE.” Newcomer to the franchise Joey D’Auria discussed voicing the first new male Lombax in the series, and how much he’s learned from the other voice actors, particularly Taylor. He also discussed how Azimuth’s character arc and how impressed he has been with the evolution of gaming as a storytelling medium.

We recently announced that we were partnering with DC Direct to bring fans the first Ratchet & Clank action figures. These long-awaited figures, including Ratchet, Clank, Nefarious and Qwark, were brought on stage to give fans a chance to see them before their release on December 2nd.

Before the Q&A, attendees were treated to the world premiere of the brand new trailer for the game, which you can watch below. The trailer includes the first glimpse at a new level in the game, Axiom City.

Finally, the group then took some fan questions. Highlights included a young fan who asked about the RYNO. Before anyone on the panel could answer, the fan proceeded to remind the panel of what each RYNO from each game did to crowd laughter and applause. Allgeier confirmed the RYNO as well as the Tools of Destruction fan-favorite, the Groovitron, will return in A Crack in Time. A fan asked if multiplayer would be included, to which Allgeier said the team was focused on closing the story arc started in Tools of Destruction and Quest For Booty while creating an epic single-player experience (also bringing applause). Another fan asked if The Plumber would return, to which Fixman revealed that he indeed would.

Everyone on the panel had a fantastic time. We here at Insomniac want to send a big thank you to all of our fans who came to see us and asked questions and came up afterwards to chat with us, ask for autographs, and take photos. We also want to send out a big thank you to James, Armin and Joey for taking the time to participate and see their fans. A huge thank you goes out to Ricardo Torres for moderating the panel, as well. We also are grateful to everyone at Comic-Con for giving us the opportunity and space to present new features and video directly to our fans. Finally, we want to thank everyone at Sony Computer Entertainment who helped put this together, including all of our PR/Marketing folks as well as all of the event folks who helped us out on the floor when trying to hand out thousands of inflatable wrenches.

That’s all for now – we hope you enjoyed this recap of the panel and the videos. Next up for us is GamesCom in Cologne, Germany, where we will reveal a bunch more new stuff, including the first look at our Space gameplay.

We’ll try to answer your questions in the comments – but as I’m writing this from a plane, Bryan Intihar may chime in as well.

Thanks for all your support! It was great to see so many of you at Comic-Con!
JS

Wanted to post a little note on here to check out the brand new video episode of the Full Moon Show, Insomniac Games’ semi-monthly podcast that gives you a developer’s perspective on the games industry. In this quick video show, we discuss what E3 was like for us, and bring you some exclusive footage of what happens when you let Ratchet loose on the showfloor of E3.

We also wanted to let you know that you can check out last month’s audio show, episode 37, Brian Fleming from Sucker Punch on the show to discuss their awesome new game, inFAMOUS (which you should totally go buy like, RIGHT NOW if you haven’t already). You can subscribe to the show via our RSS feed on our website, as well as through iTunes, though if you previously subscribed to season one or two, please click that link and subscribe to the new feed of the show to ensure you receive Season 3 episodes.

That’s all for now – as always you can e-mail us at podcast@insomniacgames.com with your comments, or Tweet them at us at www.twitter.com/insomniacgames (we’re giving away some Quest for Booty codes on our Twitter, so stop by).

Hope you all enjoyed our E3 content, and we’re looking forward to seeing everyone at Comic-Con this year! I’ll be in the comments section to answer your questions!

JS

As you know, voting ended a couple of weeks ago on our Captain Qwark’s My Blaster Runs Hot Ratchet & Clank Future Weapons Contest sponsored by Gadgetron (whew). But as we had over a thousand entries, it was sort of a shame that we could only show our top five favorites. Over the next couple of months as we head towards the reveal of the winning weapon at International Comic-Con this July in San Diego, some members of the Insomniac team are going to reveal their personal five favorites. I’m going to start it off this week with my personal top five that weren’t finalists – and in case you were wondering, I cast my personal vote for the Plasma Sprinkler:

Shockwave Inducer

This was one of our overall top 10 weapons, and was really strongly considered due to the fact that it’s different than many other weapons we’ve done in the past. We’ve never really had an Area of Effect weapon that was centered on Ratchet – and this one would be especially effective against swarmer enemies. The art was also really cool and we thought it had great potential.

The Pixelator

This is a really cool idea that I believe has been tossed around Insomniac in the past. The challenge is you have to create a whole system for what happens to enemies when they become pixilated, which would have been an art and programming nightmare. We thought this was cool, especially in a day and age when Retro gaming is as popular as ever.

Fruit of the Doom

We had a lot of submissions that really focused on the comedy aspect, and this is one of them. We’ve had A LOT of people suggest underwear guns, and this was the one that made me laugh the most due to the clever title and imagery. Unfortunately, the amount of work to give every enemy underwear and animations is a bit much, plus it sort of breaks the game and maybe our ESRB rating too.

Peter Rottentail

Zombies are obviously in with COD:WAW, Left 4 Dead and even the grims in Resistance 2. So what’s better than bringing Zombie bunnies to Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time? This was a completely awesome idea, and was up there in our rankings but would’ve required a full new character and animation set – thus it wasn’t something that was accomplishable. Still hilarious.

Shotgunchuck

This had a very strong argument as our favorite weapon amongst some of us, while others rolled their eyes. To me, the idea of this is so amazingly badass, especially if you could animate the user spinning and whipping the guns around. That said, this weapon doesn’t really fit the Ratchet universe, and would require a ton of hero animation. Thus it didn’t make the finalists group. Still, a very, very strong competitor.

Anyways, that’s all from me. We’ll be back with more of our favorite submissions over the next few weeks. And stay tuned for the return of our podcast, The Full Moon Show, on May 21st.

There were some common submissions, lots of you loved weapons that left enemies in their underwear, and many others suggested a cat launcher. Other favorites were guns that stopped time, morph weapons, and weapons that launched various food items. A couple of weapons were even similar to our finalists below, but in those cases, we always took the best submission. If all other things were equal, the first submission we received got the nod.

The five finalists are below, and you can vote for them for about one week, until Friday, April 24th at 12:01am PST. The weapon with the most votes will be included in Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, and we will announce the winning weapon at the International Comic-Con in San Diego. We’ll also be flying the winner out to present them with a real-life replica of their weapon.

Before you check out the finalists and cast your vote, check out this video we made, showing our Top 10 favorite Ratchet & Clank weapons of all time.

Without further ado, the finalists are:

• The Plasma Sprinkler Glove
• Spiral of Death
• Bubble Shot
• Qwark Machine
• Super-Sized Sticky Hand Toy

You can get all of the details on these weapons, see the art created for them, and vote on them at www.ratchetandclank.com! Hurry over there to get your votes in this week.

Thanks for all of your great submissions! Bryan Intihar and I will try to answer your questions below.

We wanted to help get the ball rolling with your brainstorming, so we put together a little video roundtable talking about some of our favorite weapons stories and experiences over the years of working on Ratchet & Clank weapons. We also know many people have asked for some advice, so the Weapons team here at Insomniac came up with a few additional guidelines to help you on the path to winning the contest.

• Don’t simply take the Morph Ray and have it turn enemies into a new funny animal like green bunnies.
• Be practical with the visual effects – a gun that fills the
  screen with a thousand flaming rockets will be hard to implement.
• We are looking for innovation, humor, and fun factor – not just total destruction.
• Make sure you take a look at previous Ratchet games so you don’t copy an existing weapon.
• Keep it clean and avoid overly gruesome effects – this game is likely to be rated E for Everyone.
• Try to stick to a one or two-handed gun or grenade weapon form (though if you have something really cool in mind, share it!)

Submissions are open through April 10th, so that means you have two weeks to put something together. Head on over to www.ratchetandclank.com to download the My Blaster Runs hot wallpapers, check out the official rules, and submit your design!

That’s all for now, make sure you tune into GTTV tonight to check out the world premiere of the teaser trailer for Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time!

Greetings from the SCEA Blogger’s Lounge at GDC! Last week, we teased you with our Ratchet & Clank Future Weapons Contest and the new action figures coming from DC Direct. While I’ll talk more about this in a bit, we are very happy at Insomniac to finally announce the name of our next game.

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time will conclude the story arc that started in Tools of Destruction and continued in Quest for Booty. There will be plenty to talk about over the next few months as we work towards our fall release, and we can’t wait to share more. But for those of you wanting a first look, tune into Gametrailers TV this week on Spike TV (check your local listings for time) for the world premiere of the teaser trailer.

For those of you who have been e-mailing us with questions about the Weapons Contest and asking when and where you can submit, you’ll be happy to know that submissions are open as of tomorrow! I’m also excited to announce the Grand Prize winner will have their weapon included in Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, will be given a life-size replica of the weapon, and will win a trip to San Diego Comic-Con to meet with the dev team and reveal the winning weapon to the public there!

As inspiration for you guys, tune in tomorrow for a little video roundtable talking about some of our favorite weapons stories and experiences over the years of working on Ratchet & Clank weapons.

That’s all for now, make sure you tune into GTTV to check out the teaser trailer!

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about Ratchet & Clank, but we wanted to give you an early scoop on a couple of things happening with everyone’s favorite lombax and robot duo!

First off, we’re excited to announce Captain Qwark’s “My Blaster Runs Hot” Ratchet & Clank Future Weapon Design Contest Sponsored by Gadgetron, which will hence be referred to in this post as CQMBRHRCFWDCSG. We’ll post the full details of the CQMBRHRCFWDCSG next Friday at www.ratchetandclank.com, but in the meantime if you want to get a head start on CQMBRHRCFWDCSG, you should brainstorm ideas for a new Ratchet & Clank weapon. To enter, you’ll need to provide a description of the weapon, as well as an image (this can be anything… even a Captain Qwark-style crayon blueprint!). The prize is going to be pretty epic, and every Ratchet & Clank fan will have a chance to recognize the winner’s hard work.

And in honor of CQMBRHRCFWDCSG, we’re having a sale on Quest for Booty! You can download this pirate-themed fun-size adventure off the PlayStation Network at for low sale price of $9.99. If you haven’t had a chance to play Quest for Booty yet, this is your chance!

Some other super exciting Ratchet & Clank news, DC Direct has revealed the line of Ratchet & Clank figures that will be available this fall. Here’s a special sneak peek image of the in-progress figures, though these guys are still getting some additional love! They should be available this fall!

Also, one small request from us at Insomniac in the spirit of March Madness, head over to the Escapist and vote for us! While you’re there, make sure to vote for some of our other good friends, like Naughty Dog, Guerrilla, SCE Santa Monica, and Zipper!

We’ll be back next week with all of the details on CQMBRHRCFWDCSG (including the grand prize), and some even more exciting news. Bryan Intihar and I will be around today to answer questions in the comments!

As development on the game is wrapping up in here in Burbank, and the last few bugs are hunted down and squashed, we wanted to make an announcement we’re very excited about. Since Resistance: Fall of Man, one of the biggest feature requests for the game was that we implemented split-screen online play. We are happy to announce that Resistance 2 will feature 2-player split-screen play for both competitive play as well as our 8-player online co-op campaign! Now you won’t have to stop leveling up your medic just because your friend is over!

In addition – we recently announced the contents of our collector’s edition. Many of you wrote in asking for the bonus disc to be a Blu-Ray instead of a DVD. We can also announce that the Bonus Disc will now indeed be a Blu-Ray disc, bringing almost all of the special features to you in High-Definition.

We are excited to play you guys online during the public beta in the coming weeks, as well as when the game releases on November 4th.

If you have questions or comments, please post below. Bryan Intihar and I will be around to answer!