Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time

This is hard to do when enemies are running round all over the place, so Bernal switches to another new weapon - the CryoMine Glove. It encases enemies in blocks of ice, making it handy for crowd control and, in this instance, for creating sitting ducks. Bernal freezes the big monster he's facing, then switches to the Plasma Striker - a sniper rifle, in the old money - and neatly pops away at the special targets.

Naturally there are new gadgets and gizmos to play with. These include the hover boots, which allow Ratchet to glide without the aid of Clank and his propeller. They also allow him to cover long distances more quickly. This is useful as some of the new levels are massive, such as Krell Canyon, the area Bernal is demoing today. "It's basically our biggest level ever in a Ratchet game. It's huge," he says. "It's about 20 per cent bigger than what was previously the biggest level."

The Kinetic Tether from Quest for Booty is back, and once again you can use it to move platforms, pull switches and so on. However, the tether also works as a weapon now too. Bernal shows how it can be used to whip off one of the heads of a three-headed hydra, thereby considerably increasing Ratchet's odds of survival.

But what about Clank? Don't worry, Ratchet's talking metal baby features heavily in ACIT: "We actually have more Clank in this game than in any of the other full-length Ratchet games in the past," Bernal says.

In some levels you get to play as Clank and experiment with his new abilities, which allow him to manipulate and control time. These levels will be more sedate in tone, revolving around puzzles rather than combat, and are designed to provide a break from all the smashing and shooting Ratchet gets up to.

To demonstrate this, Bernal boots up a level where Clank is standing alone in a large, space age-looking room. Ahead of him is a big door and two giant locks. On the floor are two pressure pads. You guessed it, there has to be weight on both pads for the doors to open - but there are no wooden crates or stone blocks to push around anywhere. So how is Clank supposed to solve the puzzle?

The key lies in his new ability to record and replay time. Bernal shows how you can record Clank running over to one of the pressure pads and standing on top of it. He then plays back the recording and we see a ghost Clank perform the exact same actions, to the same effect, with the real-time Clank present as a solid form within the same room. Yes all right it's a bit "I need you to go back to Oxford University and find my mother so she can shoot me in the face", but bear with us.

Bernal then records Clank activating the second pressure pad, so he has two recordings stored. He plays them back simultaneously and both ghost Clanks take up their positions. The real-time Clank can then run through the open door, problem solved. But not all such puzzles will revolve around simple pressure pads, explains Bernal.

"Right now we're planning on having up to four Clanks you can control. You can imagine all the possibilities for different types of puzzle mechanics with this," he says. "You record yourself and it logs everything you're doing - swinging, slamming, deflecting shots, standing on buttons... In addition to the switchers there are cylindrical doors to manipulate, elevators to control, lots of cool stuff. We're going to reveal a whole lot more of it in the future."

They're also keeping any multiplayer plans under wraps, though it doesn't sound like they're going to bother much. "We're not talking about that a whole lot right now. We're trying to evaluate and find out what is the best match for this game," Bernal says. "In the past we had the giant, multiplayer competitive deathmatch mode, and we found it wasn't really the best match. Only a very small percentage of our players actually played it. So we are researching and evaluating at the moment."

Another sensible decision from Insomniac, then - not to waste too much time on a feature no one cares about anyway. It's clear that A Crack in Time is designed first and foremost to give Ratchet & Clank fans more of what they want. Insomniac isn't mucking about with the formula too much and they're not implementing features for the sake of it. Gripers might complain this shows a lack of imagination and daring, but gripers should shut up and have a go of the frog gun.

"I would also say overall, we're going for a bigger and more explosive experience," says Bernal. "Bigger levels, bigger enemies, bigger weapons, more destruction and just a lot more fun." Seeing as Ratchet & Clank's an awful lot of fun to begin with, that sounds like a good plan.