Clank gets a Date [Official PlayStation Blog]

And, between my heavy pants of hyperventilation at meeting the brains behind the PSP's best game to date, I was able to sputter out a few questions regarding the direction of the franchise and what sweet features we could expect in the new game.

"Why Clank?" I asked. When Ratchet has been the star of so many successful games before, what's the motive behind firing the star?

Fan demand, she answered, without a pause. "People love the character...beyond that, Ratchet has stuff on PS3..." And it supports what appears to be a new strategy for Insomniac/High Impact Games. Ratchet will push the technical boundaries through big explosions and epic landscapes on the PS3, while Clank will represent the PSP platform with a few less gallons of napalm and a touch more stealth. (Whether or not this platform distinction will continue beyond this title is uncertain. Though, we're guessing if Clank is successful in his solo career, he ain't rejoining the boy band.)

The new PSP style is a tough balance to find, as the last thing developers ever wanted is for Clank to "feel like secondary version of Ratchet." And at the same time, Clank's trademark puzzle-oriented levels could wear on the player over an entire campaign. Spy gadgets are the compromise here between bazookas and bowie knives—boomerang bow ties, for instance—and "Clank Phu" melee compliment Clank's mini bots.

What's this new protagonist mean for porting your old guns from Size Matters to Secret Agent Clank? Not happening, it appears, though small playable Ratchet levels will feature some of your favorite guns of old.

Then again, many of you aren't reading this article to hear about stinky old gun ports anyway. You want to sync your PSPs with your PS3s, unlock new content, be treated as "special" for spending so much money as a company-loyal consumer. But if these cross-platform features exist, Mathieson is playing coy. All she'd offer was the code most of us have heard about from Tools of Destruction that will unlock goodies for PSP owners.

So as for exploiting hot possibilities like the PSP's Wi-Fi connection for a little bow tie boomerang backup on the PS3...it appears to be just another sticky dream for the time being.

UPDATE: A special thanks to Stephen Totilo for tactfully pointing out the game's real title...that I'd incorrectly pasted no less than four times.

While we don't have official word yet—we're waiting to hear back from SCEA—it certainly wouldn't surprise us to see yet another PSP game ported to the PS2. With one-time exclusive PSP titles such as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, Twisted Metal: Head On, Tokobot and (allegedly) Silent Hill Origins making the jump, it might just file under fiscally sensible.

Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters [Gamestop via Joystiq]

The game was rumored to be in development at High Impact Games—creator of Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters for the PSP—earlier this year. While we don't have any official screens of the game yet, we expect it will be on the TGS show floor and hope to get some hands-on time with it.