Hey everyone! We’re excited to share a lot of news with you about Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault. Whether you are looking for a new multiplayer map, waiting for your PS Vita download, or excited about Deadlocked HD, there’s something in this update for you, so read on!

First, thank you for your patience as you’ve awaited the PS Vita version of Full Frontal Assault. Our friends at Sony and Tin Giant have been working hard to deliver a version of the game that lives up to your expectations. The good news is that the game is complete, and will be released on the PSN Store on May 21st.

Furthermore, we know many of you are excited about Deadlocked HD, which we are including as a bonus thank you for your patience on the PS Vita release. The fine folks at Sony and Idol Minds are wrapping it up, we are expecting it to be available soon.

For those of you with the retail copy of FFA, you’ll be able to download Deadlocked HD as well as the Vita version of FFA to your PS3 and transfer to your PS Vita. You can do this by accessing the “Disc Benefits” option on May 21st. If you downloaded FFA, the PS Vita version and Deadlocked will appear free for you on the PlayStation storefront.

Lots of you are still enjoying Full Frontal Assault’s competitive multiplayer and have been enjoying the Metropolis map we added at the beginning of this year. We wanted to continue to support the game for the loyal PS3 players as well. As such, the team in North Carolina has a new software update for the game which brings a brand-new competitive map set in Molonoth Fields from A Crack In Time, and a new game mode exclusively to the PlayStation 3 version of the game.

Here’s a first look at the new map:

The new game mode, 2v2 Full Frontal Assault mode, is something for our hardcore players. It eliminates the phases – so you can always capture nodes, build units, and attack the other team’s base. This results in a more dynamic, more strategic experience that will test players’ skills more than ever before. This new software update is available now.

Additionally, we’ve added new skins to Full Frontal Assault which you can find in the in-game store. The new Monsters pack, Intergalactic Foot Soldiers pack, and Plushy pack all are available now, for $1.99 each. We also have a new A Crack in Time pack and All 4 One pack coming soon!

That’s all for now! As always, thanks for all your support, and if you have questions we’ll try to answer below.

As many of you know, when Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault launched for the PS3 system this past November, we announced that the PS Vita version would be coming out later in January 2013 to ensure the best portable Ratchet & Clank experience possible.

Our friends at Tin Giant have been working night and day to bring Insomniac’s PS3 game to the PS Vita system and to provide our fans with a great game. While the original delay has helped us make the game better, we still need more time to bring the game up to the standards expected by our fans.

In order to do this, the launch date for Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault for PS Vita has moved to Spring 2013. We realize that this delay may be disappointing for our fans, but please know that we are doing our best to get the game into your hands as soon as possible.

For those of you who have purchased the PS3 version of the game and are waiting for your PS Vita entitlement, we want to make it up to you as best we can. On the release date for Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault for PS Vita, we will be offering Ratchet & Clank: Deadlocked for the PS3 system as a free download to all of our fans who purchased Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault for the PS3 system (digitally or on disc). The giveaway will become available when Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault for PS Vita releases.

We greatly appreciate your patience as we work to bring you the best Ratchet & Clank experience possible for the PS Vita system. We will update you with a specific release date as soon as it is available.

Thanks again!

We’ve been having a blast playing against you online in the last few weeks, and we hope you’ve been enjoying the game as much as we’ve enjoyed making it and playing online ourselves.

As you know, Full Frontal Assault is a cross-buy enabled title, so your purchase of the PS3 game entitles you to download the PS Vita version at no additional cost upon its release. Tin Giant and Sony have been hard at work to finish the Vita version, which will be available soon in early 2013. If you bought the PS3 game digitally, you’ll be able to download it via your Download List on the XMB when it releases. For those purchasers of the retail disc, you can download the Vita version via the “Disc Benefits” option under Game on the XMB.

One thing every great multiplayer game has is new content and support. The team in North Carolina has been working hard and listening to your feedback the last few weeks. We have a new patch coming out this week for Full Frontal Assault that addresses many of your requests, and fixes some of the balance issues both online and in the campaign. In addition, we are adding two additional levels to the weapons in the game, so you’ll be able to further up(grade) your arsenal.

But that’s not all — in early January we’ll be bringing another patch to the game that will add a new multiplayer map. This patch will be free and will add the map for all users. This map is set in one of the most famous locations in the Ratchet & Clank universe: Metropolis. Check out a first sneak peak at the new map above.

For those of you who have already jumped into Full Frontal Assault, thanks for your support! And for those of you still waiting, check out the free trial on PSN. The game features a fun-sized campaign, but also two-player campaign co-op and our unique 1v1 and 2v2 competitive mode for just $19.99!

We have more skins and free maps to come in 2013 as well, so stay tuned to the PlayStation.Blog for the latest updates. If you have any questions, ask below and we’ll do our best to answer them.

As a special launch day treat, we’re sharing a few pieces of concept art which inspired the look, characters and environments that you’ll see in the game. We hope you enjoy checking them out!

This fun-sized adventure is one of the best values we’ve ever offered, featuring a campaign you can play single-player or in co-op (split screen or online). It’s classic Ratchet & Clank gameplay with a base defense twist. Even after you play it once, you’ll want to try again to improve your scores and times! On top of the campaign, Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault has a new multiplayer mode that you can play 1v1 or 2v2. We’re really proud of it, and we’ve been working hard to bring additional skins as well as new bonus multiplayer maps to the game, and you can expect more details in the coming weeks.

For those of you who also own a PlayStation Vita system, the game supports cross-buy, cross-save and competitive multiplayer cross-play. If you purchase Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault for the PS3 system, you’ll be able to download the PS Vita version at no additional cost when available in January 2013.

Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Ratchet & Clank series this year has been a blast for all of us at Insomniac. From the release of the Ratchet & Clank Collection, to playing the Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault beta with you, and even sharing the iam8bit Ratchet & Clank screenprint program (keep an eye on G4TV this week for the “making of” the first print, and a reveal of Print #2), it’s been a great year for Ratchet fans. All of our fans getting to celebrate the anniversary with a new game this week is the cherry on top. For a taste of the action, be sure to check out the free demo for Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault which will be available for PS3 on PSN starting today.

See you online!

Our friends at Tin Giant have been working hard to bring Insomniac’s PS3 game to PS Vita and to ensure that your experience is packed with all the action and polish you’d expect from a Ratchet & Clank game. In order to provide the best gameplay experience possible, the PS Vita version of Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault will be coming out in January 2013. The PS3 version will still be available for purchase at participating retailers and on PSN starting on November 27, 2012.

As a reward to fans for their patience, we will be giving them the first piece of DLC for the title, the Mini-Boss Skin Pack, as a bonus with their purchase of Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault for PS3. This skin pack features three fan-favorite boss characters from past Ratchet & Clank games, including Chainblade from Going Commando and the Two-eyed Tyrhrranoid from Up Your Arsenal. Take a peek at these new skins in the screen below.

Thanks for your support and patience for the PS Vita version of Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault. We can’t wait to see all of you online unleashing the multiplayer mayhem on PS3 starting November 27, and then on PS Vita in January 2013.

The 10th Anniversary of Ratchet & Clank is coming up next month, and it’s been a lot of fun this year reliving the memories from our original PS2 games in the recently released Ratchet & Clank Collection. We also had a blast playing the beta of Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault with all of you earlier this fall. Since then, we’ve gotten a flood of e-mails, tweets and Facebook posts asking when you can get back to exploring the battlefield and defending your base in FFA.

We’re happy to announce Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault will be available on November 27th on the PlayStation Store and at retail. That’s right, you asked and we listened: Full Frontal Assault will be available as a retail copy for those of you who love physical copies of your games! Both the download and retail versions support cross-buy as well, so your purchase gets you both the game on PS3 and a digital copy for PlayStation Vita.

The other big question we’ve gotten a lot is “How much will the game cost?” As you know, Full Frontal Assault is a “fun-size” project that’s similar in scope to Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty. But Full Frontal is actually bigger than Booty (sorry, couldn’t resist), as we’ve added tons of new features, including the new base assault and defense elements. An even bigger addition to Full Frontal Assault is the replay value we packed in with online / split-screen co-op, and online competitive modes. Most importantly, while the experience itself may be more condensed, the game quality is bursting at the seams. We’re very proud of what we’ve created.

As such, we’re especially excited to announce that Full Frontal Assault is launching for just $19.99. Considering you get a brand-new Ratchet & Clank game for your PS3 and PS Vita, with cross-save and cross-play support for the game’s co-op and competitive multiplayer, it’s a deal that’s hard to refuse.

That’s all for now! We hope you’re excited about Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault’s launch on November 27th; if you have questions, we’ll try to answer them below!

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We wrap up our Gamescom 2012 coverage this week with a trio of scintillating new interviews with some of the the stars of the show. Self-proclaimed “teen horror” adventure Until Dawn brought the house down in Cologne, fusing immersive PlayStation Move-based exploration and immersive puzzle-solving. Executive Creative Director Will Byles joins us to share details on this thriller where the fate of the main cast lies entirely in your hands.

Then, Insomniac’s Shaun McCabe drills into the competitive multiplayer of Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault, complete with new details on the game’s PS Vita version and cross-play functionality. Finally, Criterion’s Executive Producer Matt Webster runs through the finer points of Need for Speed: Most Wanted and why the PS Vita version is the spitting image of its PS3 big brother.

Of course, that’s all in addition to the normal volley of weekly info: Next week’s North American PlayStation Store releases, new “player queries” and tips, a hand-plucked PSN Gem of the Week — Nick even busts out a tough new Mystery Theme. Listen in and let us know what you think!

Stuff We Talked About

Until Dawn

Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault

Need for Speed: Most Wanted for PS Vita

YouTube for PS3

Sound Shapes

Voice chat

Dishonored

Datura

The Cast

[Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game
details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating
descriptions.]

• Thanks to Cory Schmitz for our beautiful logo and Dormilón for our rad theme song and show music. Special thanks to Astro Gaming headsets for providing audio gear.

Hey everyone, I’m Shaun McCabe, production director at Insomniac Games’ North Carolina studio. Since this is my first PS.Blog post, I’ll briefly introduce myself. I joined the company in 2003 during the development of Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, but I’ve been an Insomniac fan going all the way back to Disruptor on the PlayStation.

As you may have heard, yesterday we announced that our dynamic duo’s latest adventure, Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault, is coming to both PS3 and PS Vita! Working closely with our friends at Tin Giant, who are helping bring the game to PS Vita, we’re delivering full cross-play and cross-save support. So, the ever-popular, “Well, I’d love to be playing Ratchet & Clank right now, but am stuck at the bus stop/office/police station/etc.” can no longer apply. Not only will the game feature cross-play and cross-save, but it’s also part of a super-cool promotional offer where anyone who purchases Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault for PS3 via PlayStation Network will be able to download the PS Vita version of the game from PSN at no additional cost and vice versa.

And today, we have even more news to share. A few weeks ago, we revealed the first gameplay details about Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault. We even teased a new online mode, and now it’s time to expose it all right here.

Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault is returning to the classic camera, weapons and third-person Ratchet gameplay that the series is known for, while adding a new base defense element that will have you building and defending a base against invasions using your ultimate Ratchet & Clank arsenal.

Well, the further we got into development, the more we felt like we just had to add a player vs. player mode. We’re big fans of the multiplayer modes in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Ratchet: Deadlocked and got excited about the opportunity to bring back competitive play to the franchise. The result of our efforts is an intense, strategic and “Ratchet-y” experience that combines classic Ratchet & Clank mechanics with MOBA-style head-to-head action.

The Full Frontal Assault competitive mode will support 2-4 players and feature ranked and custom games. A match will consist of rounds that are divided into phases. First, there’s a Recon phase where you’ll capture nodes in the battlefield. Then, in the Squad phase, you’ll build your base defenses and minion squads. Finally, it’s time to get nasty. In the Assault phase you’ll annihilate your opponent by attacking their base. The game ends when one side has destroyed all the generators in the opponent’s base.

The game has really taken on a life of its own, and we can’t wait for you to experience it for yourself when Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault launches this fall. Of course, if you really can’t wait, just remember that the Ratchet & Clank Collection hits the U.S. on August 28th.

Stick to this space for all the latest Ratchet & Clank news this summer and fall as we continue to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our favorite Lombax and his diminutive robotic pal. You can also like Insomniac Games on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Though fundamentally a third-person shooter, the Ratchet & Clank series has rarely shied from bold genre experimentation: witness the progressive competitive and co-op modes of Ratchet: Deadlocked, the brain-busting temporal puzzles of A Crack in Time, even the four-player feuding of last year’s All 4 One. But with Full Frontal Assault, the storied series will undergo what is perhaps its most sweeping metamorphosis yet, creating what developer Insomniac Games is calling “action tower defense.” Yep, Ratchet’s going all PixelJunk Monsters on us.

This is a logical, some might say inevitable, evolution when you consider the series’ gameplay trajectory, which despite its myriad twists and turns has focused squarely on two core elements: ludicrously powerful weaponry and freakish alien foes. In other words, the raw ingredients for a mean tower defense game. “One of the things we wanted to explore with Full Frontal Assault was large, sprawling battlefields,” Production Director Shaun McCabe told me. “The large battlefields in Up Your Arsenal and A Crack in Time added a lot of player choice. The decision to add tower defense felt organic…exploring large open battlefields and then returning to your base to set up defenses.” McCabe cited tower defense games like Dungeon Defenders and Orcs Must Die as key inspirations for Full Frontal Assault.

Though Insomniac Games isn’t allowing any hands-on play just yet, I learned much about Full Frontal Assault just by watching a few minutes of the game in action. The core gameplay looks to be plucked directly from fan favorite A Crack in Time; everything from the camera view and controls to those intoxicating hoverboots will make series traditionalists feel right at home. The story-driven campaign, which you can play solo or co-op, is strung together with traditional adventure sequences that combine shooting and platforming as Ratchet scours the surface of the planet Ebaro looking for secret weapon caches while fending off attacks from rampaging Grungarian marauders. So far, so good, until the monstrous mercenaries decide to attack your base — that’s when those tantalizing tower defense events kick into gear.

Your home base serves as the tower defense battlefield, and the floor is scattered with pads that enable you to deploy three basic types of units: Turrets, mines, and barriers. You’ll fend off multiple waves of incoming Grungarians by strategically placing these defenses, which you can combo together to devastating effect: a slow-mo mine combined with Combuster turrets can ravage a tough enemy before he breaks through your barrier. Enemies will come in all shapes and sizes, from swarms of tiny Grungoids to tough melee-centric Brawlers to crafty Engineers who seek to sabotage your defenses. Turrets, mines, and barriers will also come in many flavors, though Insomniac Games is remaining frustratingly tight-lipped about specifics for now.

Though you’ll need to monitor your base defenses carefully, you’ll hardly be dependent on them — Ratchet is a potent fighter and can swoop in to turn the tide in a besieged area. The combination of Ratchet’s exotic weapons and the effects of various turrets, mines, and barriers promises to create some unexpected and devastating combinations.

Between tower defense events, Ratchet will need to venture back into the battlefield to seek out more powerful weapons. “Most of the weapons in the game are ‘Ratchet classics,’” McCabe teased. “Our goal here is to give players almost more weapons than they can handle.” Upon finding a weapon pod, you’ll be forced to choose between unlocking one of two possible weapons. Plasmabomb Launcher or Warmonger rocket launcher? Decisions, decisions.

True to tower defense form, Full Frontal Assault awards you medals based on your performance in the tower defense segments, encouraging you to replay them again and again until you’ve completed them perfectly. The medals will unlock promotions, too, including new armor and perks for Ratchet, Clank, or Qwark.

Oh, and they’ll be a competitive mode, too, though Insomniac is saving those details for another occasion. “It builds on what we’ve shown here today,” McCabe teased. “And…I’m pretty good at it.”

Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault heads back to the classic camera, weapons and third-person Ratchet gameplay that the series is known for, while adding a new tower defense element that will have you building and defending a base against invasions using your ultimate Ratchet & Clank arsenal. This new twist, added to the classic Ratchet gameplay, brings a whole new level of strategy and decision-making to Full Frontal Assault. You’ll want to make sure your Hoverboots are laced up and ready as you race to defeat your enemy while keeping your base secure. Wait, Hoverboots don’t have laces…

In Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault, our heroes face a new nemesis – one who has a nasty surprise planned for Captain Qwark. You’ll be able to choose between playing as Ratchet, Clank, or Captain Qwark, and confront an alien army across five levels set on three different planets. The game allows you and a friend to play together with either split-screen or online cooperative gameplay.

Full Frontal Assault will give you a ton of reasons to keep playing, including an online mode we’ll reveal later, as well as loads of upgrades, extra character skins and unlockable content, but we’d like to show you first screenshots of the game here!

Everyone here is very excited to bring Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault to you this fall. In the meantime, for those of you hungering for a Ratchet & Clank fix, be sure to check out the Ratchet & Clank Collection when it launches in the U.S. on August 28th. You may have seen some of the great reviews from the European release.

There will be much more to come from Ratchet & Clank this summer and fall, as we celebrate their 10th Anniversary! To keep up with the latest news, be sure to like Insomniac Games on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.