Insomniac Games has kept to the Ratchet series' tradition by making the newest installment on the PlayStation 3 aware of players' activity in the older ones. Having played — and reviewed — the new Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time using a final retail copy, I was able to see how my save files for the last two games, 2007's Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and 2008's Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty, affect the new game.

I had completed both previous PS3 Ratchets and had the following perks activated automatically when I started the new game:

-My Tools of Destruction save file classified me as a returning customer when I visited A Crack In Time's weapons-vending kiosks. I was given a discount. Thanks to the lower prices and my collection of new bolt money throughout the new game, I found myself lacking money to buy the next available item in the game only once.

-My Quest For Booty save unlocked the pirate hat you see my Ratchet avatar wearing atop this post. The avatar appear in the game's community section, which displays a variety of player accomplishments and stats, shows leaderboards for many of those accomplishments. Players can customize their Ratchet avatar or look up the records and avatars of their friends. The avatar is essentially a visual shorthand for some of the things you've accomplished. For example, the pistol that Ratchet is holding in that shot looks as it does in the game, where I attached mods and selected its paint job.

Those are the unlocks I found so far that relate to the earlier Ratchet games, confirmed by a Sony representative. If I find any more I'll let you know.

What a week. QuakeCon material from last week spilled into Gamescom and Blizzcon bonanzas this week. Not much got left on the cutting room floor or in my notebook. There are a couple of stories I have in the works for early next week, but of the stuff I just can't cram into a post? Not much...

Billy Hatcher's Kind of Back: A couple of weeks ago, I played a bunch of Sega games and wrote about them. The one I didn't get to was Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing. I played it and still plan to write a Preview. But I also was half-tempted to post about how the game surprised me by acknowledging the existence in Sega's past of Billy Hatcher. Hatcher was the star of 2003's Billy Hatcher & The Giant Egg, a GameCube-launching game from Yuji Naka's Sega Team that was the wrong game at the wrong time. While the gaming world was craving Grand Theft Autos and Halos, Sonic Team made a new cute mascot character who rolled giant eggs to safety so they could hatch partner animals for Billy. I believe the game was a flop. But it turns out that this early 2010 kart-racer from Sega has a Billy Hatcher stage, complete with giant eggs rolling across the track. And Hatcher is a racer in the game with his own egg car. So... Billy's back.

An Extra Two Seconds: I sort of already did post this, but no one noticed and I felt it wasn't worth a standalone post. Based on testing the original PS3 and the PS3 Slim, recording their boot-up sequences and syncing them together in split-screen (all of which you can find elsewhere on this site), I discovered that the Slim takes two seconds longer to boot up. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe because it has a single on-off switch and isn't in perpetual stand-by mode like my original PS3, which has an on-off switch in the back and a sleep switch in the front. I used my PS3 controller to shut down each machine, recorded them each booting back up. And, well... I guess two seconds isn't really that big a deal.

Lots Of Screenshots Unseen: There comes a point when enough is enough with all the Gamescom screenshots and trailers. We've slowed that down because that's not what we want the site to drown on. I had some new-screenshots posts in draft I left linger. I'd rather write something that would be read.

I didn't get to a Rage interview I still need to run, believe it or not. And a piece that had me talking to John Carmack about something Hideo Kojima said to me — that one's for Monday. So there's more. I'd suggest you have a nice weekend, but I'm not saying goodbye yet. Gotta do a little more work for the site today.

All hail Fahey, McWhertor, and Crecente, the hard-working road warriors of the week!

If Wet isn't going to turn out to be the game action-move master John Woo would make, it sure seems like it could at least be one Quentin Tarantino would create. It gives that impression with its non-stop action, its love of the gunfight, its car chase, its use of 70s film grain, its kick-ass heroine, and its diva in the diva hall where shooting is about to start, who begins her song by screeching: "Are you ready to rock bitches? One, two... fuck you!"

I also wouldn't expect Tarantino to code a better jumping mechanic.

What Is It?
Wet is a September-dated single-player action game from Artificial Mind and Movement, a third-person shooter with an emphasis on slow-motion shootouts, a la the Midway-developed John Woo's Stranglehold. It's also one of the games Activision chose not to publish when it assumed control of games formerly being published by Vivendi. But I didn't hold that against the fun 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand, so why would I against the now Bethesda-backed Wet?

What We Saw
Not even a day before our Michael McWhertor dove into the game in Germany, I tried three sections of the game in New York: The intro, a car chase and rage mode.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is coming out on September 15, so even though I did not play a retail build, this thing is done.

What Needs Improvement?
Mid-Air Movement: It might be too late for the developers to do anything about this, but that's fitting as this problem is about how it is too late for Wet's heroine, Rubi, to control her movement once she has committed to a leap. This is an issue in a game that presents the player with the ability to have their heroine jump, climb, wall-run, swing from polls and do just about everything else a Prince of Persia would be able to do — and do it in slow-mo, and let them shoot guns with each hand while doing so AND include a scoring system that encourages you to only fight using such techniques — but doesn't let you auto-correct an accidental slow-mo jump that is going to land you in the wrong spot or off the side of a skyscraper. If she's going to be nimble, let her be nimble.

Target Confusion: Rubi can shoot two dudes at once. That's cool. She's got a pistol in each hand (or a shotgun in each or a crossbow in each, etc.). But jumping in the air and trying to target two enemies involves trusting the computer to select one of them for you. Then you manually aim at the other one. Pressing the trigger fires at both. I killed dozens of characters this way and still don't understand what determined which character was auto-targeted and how I could use that to my advantage.

What Should Stay The Same?
Devil May Care Attitude: I like a game that has it's heroine dropping down a ladder head-first in slow-mo with guns out, shooting at thugs. To be clear, any time Rubi jumps or slides and starts shooting, the game's in slow-mo, so we've got a game that feels like it's always trying to be stylish. Why not? I like a game that offers, as its health power-up, its heroine taking a swig of what looked like a Jack Daniels bottle and then tossing the bottle in the air and shooting it for good measure. Whether it's Grindhouse, House of the Dead: Overkill or whatever your B-movie-inspired passion, Wet feels designed to satisfy that same taste. Why else would she also take a sword into battle?

Eccentric Detours: Wet would appear to be everything I described above, except when it turns into a long, scripted, violent car chase sequence that has Rubi jumping from speeding car to speeding car, shooting bad men in black vehicles and dodging tractor trailers (orchestrated with quick-time-event button-presses and real-time shooting)? And except when the story calls for Rubi's face to get splashed with blood, switching the graphics to a molten take on Sin City (pictured up top) with its action sped up, Rubi's health increased and the kill-count multiplier capable of hitting double digits?

Final Thoughts
A Bethesda rep suggests this game will be about eight hours long, which sounds short (8-10 to be specific). But it seems like it could be quite the ride. It's not clear to me that Wet is a game its players would re-play, but its showing a verve that might make some control oddities tolerable and its gameplay a blast while the action lasts.

There's certainly an interesting mix of items to purchase in the new DDO store. You've got your basic essentials, like potions and hair dye, but then you've got races and one class you can pay to unlock, along with whole quest lines you can just drop right into your shopping cart. Depending on how much you play, it might just be more economical to stick with the subscription plan and bypass the store entirely.

The titles are all selling for $40 and coincidentally include Call of Duty World at War, which Gamasutra recently pointed out was getting a price drop to $50 from Activision.

The sale starts on Sunday for Call of Duty: World at War, Shaun White Snowboarding, Madden 09, Animal Crossing, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and Midnight Club.

One of the things I found amazingly odd was that the awards themselves really seemed to take a back seat to the musical performances, commercials, myriad non video game related guest stars, and occasional World Premier Trailers for games like Little Big Planet, Rainbow 6 Vegas 2, Borderlands, TNA Wrestling, Prototype and Gran Turismo 5. It was almost like the awards were an afterthought, tacked on to an evening of oohing and ahhing over the next big name to take the stage. But, they did eventually get around to the awards and while there were no huge surprises, in general the winners seemed pretty in line with most people's guesses.

*Caution: Spoilers ahead. If you don't want to know any of the winners until the show airs tonight, read no further!*

BioShock took home three awards including Best Original Score, Best Xbox 360 Game and the big daddy of them all, Game of the Year. Fan favorite Halo 3 had two wins with Best Multiplayer Game and the highly dubious Most Addictive game fueled by Dew. Seeing as Mountain Dew launched a full fledged advertising campaign that revolved around a new soft drink devoted to Halo 3 this was hardly a surprise even though this category was allegedly voted on by the fans.

Call of Duty 4 and The Orange Box were the other big winners with two awards each and Harmonix rocked the house by taking Studio of the Year as well as Best Rhythm Game and Best Soundtrack for Rock Band. Nintendo games in general were highly underrepresented although they did manage to net three awards: Best Handheld Game for The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Best Action Game and Best Wii Game for Super Mario Galaxy. The Best PS3 Game was given to Insomniac's Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and a special award was given to Kristen Bell for Best Newcomer for her work on Assassin's Creed although there didn't really seem to be any other nominees in the category and if there were, they weren't mentioned.

The evening was also marked by celebrity appearances by the likes of show host and badass Samuel L. Jackson, freaky magician Criss Angel, "TNA" wrestling stars Kurt and Karen Angle, the still smokin' Tia Carrere, legendary Marvel comics god Stan Lee, the godfather of skateboarding Tony Hawk, Simpsons creator Matt Groening, flag toting boxing promoter Don King, much too pretty reality stars Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, NFL quarterback Matt Leinart, complete douchebag Dave Navarro, diminutive bisexual Tila Tequila and comedians Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn and Raphie May. Musical guest performers included multiple performances by the Foo Fighters, a song from southern fried rocker Kid Rock and a far too short old school game medley by Tommy Tallarico's Video Games Live Orchestra.

Some of the other hilights of the evening were great quotes by Samuel L. Jackson ("Mr. Miyamoto, lay off the weed!") and Matt Groening ("Thanks to the game industry for proving that game executives aren't nearly as big assholes as TV executives.") and a particularly funny video clip parodying anti-video game violence commercials. It showed Kim Jong Il, Stalin, Saddam Hussein and other dictators playing violent video games with the punchline "Paid for by the friends of Jack Thompson." Ah Jack, such an easy target...

All in all it was a pretty entertaining event (if not somewhat predictable) with the only real ants-at-the-picnic moment coming at the very end. I had seen the guys from Gamecock roaming about in the audience in costume all night and wondered if they were going to do some sort of performance of speech and as it turns out, they did although it wasn't really part of the scheduled show. Just as Ken Levine was taking the stage to accept the Game of the year award for BioShock, the feisty Gamecockers leapt on the stage, hijacked the mic with some of self promotional banter effectively taking up the time that had been alloted for Ken's acceptance speech. I have been a big proponent of Gamecock and what they are doing for independent titles, but this was seriously bad form on their part. Briefly hijacking the show to make a point is one thing, but stealing another man's hard earned thunder is quite another.

After it was all over, quite a few of us were milling about in the lobby area and I got a chance to see Ken and congratulate him. As usual he was gracious and didn't seem to be ruffled at all by what had happened to him on stage. His lovely wife whom I had met at the BioShock launch party was also present with her parents and they all seemed very proud and happy with the big win. The Insomniac boys rolled by, slightly tipsy and happy as two kids on Christmas morning with their award although they did express some disappointment in not being able to take the award with them (they mail it to you later) on their tour of the strip. Super foxy Helen McWilliams and her dapper cohort Daniel Sussman arrived and the cheerful mood of booze and camaraderie was high. Helen was quite the bombshell in her tight black dress and heels although once the crowds had passed, the shoes came off. When some fans asked to take a picture with her I graciously accepted the duty of holding the goddess of video game rock's shoes and having hit the bar a few times myself throughout the night, I just couldn't help taking a token lick. Tiff may lay claim to her famous PSP licking picture, but who else can say they licked Helen McWilliams' shoes?

Stay tuned later today when I bring you all the action from the red carpet where I spoke with some of the nominees and celebrities and took a ton of pictures. For the full list of all the nominees and winners, merely scroll down the page. The winners of each category are in bold.

Game of the Year
BioShock
Halo 3
Mass Effect
The Orange Box

Best Shooter
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
BioShock
Halo 3
The Orange Box

Best Action Game
Super Mario Galaxy
Assassin's Creed
God of War 2
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

Best Rhythm Game
Rock Band
Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Jam Sessions

Best RPG
Mass Effect
Eternal Sonata
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3

Best Driving Game
Colin McRae: DiRT
Forza Motorsport 2
Need for Speed ProStreet
Project Gotham Racing 4

Best Military Game
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas
World in Conflict

Studio of the Year
Harmonix
Bungie Studios
Irrational Games
Valve

Best Graphics
Crysis
BioShock
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Mass Effect

Breakthrough Technology
Portal
Crysis
Halo 3
Rock Band

Best PS3 Game
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Heavenly Sword
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Warhawk

Best Wii Game
Super Mario Galaxy
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Super Paper Mario

Best Xbox 360 Game
BioShock
Halo 3
Mass Effect
The Orange Box

Best PC Game
The Orange Box
BioShock
Crysis
World in Conflict

Best Individual Sports Game
Skate
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground
Virtua Tennis 3

Best Team Sports Game
Madden NFL 08
NBA 2K8
NHL 08
Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer 2007

Best Handheld Game
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions
Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Best Game Based on a Movie or TV Show
The Simpsons Game
Naruto: Rise of a Ninja
Stranglehold

Best Soundtrack
Rock Band
BioShock
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground

Best Original Score
BioShock
God of War 2
Halo 3
Mass Effect

Best Multiplayer Game
Halo 3
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Rock Band
The Orange Box

Most Addictive Game Fueled by Dew
Halo 3
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Team Fortress 2
Wii Sports

As I mentioned earlier, Jerry Holkins and Robert Khoo decided to duke it out the way real men settle their differences: Through music and interpretive dance. Actually, I made up the dance part.

The debug unit died about two-thirds of the way through the game. Sucks, but that's way they call it a debug unit.