The full employee gift set includes Qwark, Clank and Ratchet. To give you an idea of scale, Qwark is a whopping 15 inches wide.

CreatureBox says of their creations:

We're huge fans of vinyl toys and wanted to do our own take on the characters we have come to know all too well. [...] Not sure if these will ever be released to the public, for now they are just for employees.

Bummer. But maybe by next San Diego Comic Con, that'll change.

Ratchet, Clank & Qwark Vinyls! [CreatureBox]

Thanks for the tip, John!

Over at the official website for the creators of this week's Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time (aka the place I go to watch my Ratchet scores slide down the chart), the man running things admitted to only recently signing up for Facebook. And he still isn't ready to Tweet.

Here he is, explaining himself on his company's website:

Recently I've been feeling like a big hypocrite. Since Resistance: Fall of Man I've been extolling the virtues of the community features in our games. And a few weeks ago I mentioned in an interview that I think that community represents a hidden arms race in our industry.

But I have to come clean. I haven't actually been part of the community. I haven't been on Facebook until lately. I don't Tweet. I don't have a MySpace account. And I only post on forums occasionally. What's wrong with me? Haven't I heard that being part of the "community" is freaking awesome? How can I promote community if I'm an outsider?

Some might consider posting on Internet forums plenty of community right there. But Price runs a company that is releasing a game this week that has the word "Community" as one of its main menu options. And, hey, developers, gamers, reporters, PR people are on these networks. Is it essential to be connected in this way? Would there be something archaic about a person professionally involved in gaming shunning social networks, as if it was as essential to keeping up with things as, I don't know, reading a book, using a phone or trying Guitar Hero at least once?

I've seen developers join Twitter and then leave it. I've had gamers ask to be my friend on Facebook or argue with me on an Internet forum. Public relations folks and game creators alike use social networking tools to get the word out and sometimes to make gaffes in whole new ways.

In Price's case, the question is whether the head of a development studio has anything to be sorry for if he's not part of Internet "community." Do you demand the people making the games you play indulge in such things?

Social Media & Me: A Confession [InsomnicaGames.com]

The developer's senior community manager James Stevenson tells Videogamer that it was the long-running fan reaction to Resistance 2 that weighed heavily on the team. Stevenson laments that "the overall opinion of it is that it was a failure by fans, that Resistance 2 was a failure, because maybe the expectations were so high for it."

Stevenson bemoaned that negative fan feedback to Resistance 2's design choices was "like your dog turned on you."

Personally, I wasn't as big of a fan of the second Resistance as I was the first, even in light of the ample multiplayer component that Insomniac added to the game. Fortunately, for Stevenson's mental health, I was probably lower on the rabid fan totem than the rest of the community.

Insomniac Games' newest title, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time, releases next week. Early reviews, from the critics at least, seem to be pretty positive.

Insomniac: Fans believe Resistance 2 'was a failure' [Videogamer]

Since the Ratchet & Clank series launched just back in 2002, Insomniac Games has developed four installments for the PlayStation 2 and three — including the new entry, A Crack In Time, officially releasing this month — for the PlayStation 3. Another development studio has created a pair of PlayStation Portable games for the series as well.

That's a lot of Ratchet: A lot of a fuzzy hero jumping and shooting his absurd variety of weapons which become more powerful the more they connect with their hundreds of targets. That's a lot of Clank: A lot of a diminutive robot starring in side missions that usually feature a new and sequel-unique style gameplay. That's a lot of Captain Qwark, a lot of Dr. Nefarious. It's a lot of flying from planet to planet, collecting gold bolts to unlock alternate character models, jumping from floating platforms, shooting futuristic corridors, entering gladiator arena challenges, collecting comedy guns that make enemies dance, and unlocking post-credits challenge modes. Every time.

That's a lot of formula, and finally with A Crack In Time, the supposed conclusion to a three-part story on the PS3 that separated and now reunites the two title characters, there is enough new and enough changed to merit attention by those who may have grown weary. Ratchet is still flying to planets and doing his expected gun-slinging, but Clank's got his best new styles of gameplay yet. Plus, the mission flow, which brings Ratchet into contact with a mysterious other member of his supposedly lost species, finally gets the shake-up it's been needing.

Loved
Clank Makes Me Smarter: Long ago, Clank stole the show in these games thanks to his fun character design and mischievous sense of humor. Now he's stolen it because of his gameplay as well. He starts the game and, between the breaks of Ratchet's inter-galactic adventures, learns an expanding set of moves that help him puzzle his way through a massive clockwork space station floating in the middle of the universe.

The core Clank gameplay involves time-manipulated 3D platforming. The player makes Clank run to a switch that should open a door. But as soon as they step off, the door shuts. The solution is to rewind time and let a recording of the player's Clank — now a color-coded ghost — run to that platform while the real Clank is made to run out the door. Eventually, Insomniac has the player saving and playing back four Clank ghosts and mixing in time-slowing bomb blasts to boot. These puzzle-room challenges are just involved and devious enough to require thought, and they are the most satisfying thing in the game to complete.

Ratchet Makes Me Hold My Breath: The core Ratchet gameplay is what series veterans would expect. You fly to planets, kill funny-looking aliens with an evolving toolset of absurd guns that includes a massive bowling ball of energy, a bomb-gun that has ordinance that detonates upward, a bundle of sticks that dig into the ground to network a web of tripwires and more conventional stuff like a pistol that shoots ricocheting lasers. The oldest of Ratchet ideas — the weapons level up into more powerful versions as you kill more enemies with them — are merged with more recent experiments with modular customization of some of the gun parts. You can imagine this and be on steady ground with your expectations. But once the game introduces two things — its moons and Ratchet's hover boots — something special happens.

Ratchet's planet visits are mostly conventional, fairly easy escapades. His visits to moons, however, are reminiscent of Mario's visits to the difficult no-hoverpack hidden stages in Super Mario Sunshine. The moons, which are presented as spherical levels — a design both the Ratchet and Mario games have used before — provide optional and tricky platforming challenges. These are the stages the more confident gamer will relish, especially once they are forced to activate Ratchet's hover-boots, which are essentially a stand-in for a futuristic skateboard, and precisely and quickly dash along platforms and off ramps that hover high over a magma moon's surface. Finally, physical movement in this series is tricky and exhilarating again. Mario shouldn't have all that fun.

Insomniac Makes Me Gape: More realistic-looking games tend to get the graphics awards, but the cartoon reality of A Crack In Time deserves commendation. As well as the game's heroes animate, its ordinary enemies animate even better. They clamber and dive and die dramatically with a visual flair one usually has to get from Looney Tunes. The game's environments are stunning, as a distant planet's rings peek over the horizon of the moon on which Ratchet stands … or in the clockwork complexity of Clank's domain … or amid the dense gray smoke puffs that emanate from the magnificent beast and rider who has just been toppled in front of his dozen lieutenants in a level that has the colorful richness of the deserts of the American southwest. This game looks great at every turn and is presented in a confident manner that masks little of its horizons and fills much of its scenes with visual variety and imagination.

The Story Makes Me Remember: The creeping problem with the Ratchet & Clank games is that it was all seeming the same. The series' many planets, guns and enemies began to blur together. Who could pick a favorite or remember any four of them distinctly? Insomniac, clearly trying to tell a more emotional story, albeit one that hits nothing more than the familiar beats about the value of friendship and sci-fi sanctity of time, has finally constructed a memorable mission flow. The game doesn't end when you think it might. It doesn't even progress in the standard planet-hopping manner of its predecessors. New twists and branches emerge as the player progresses, making it easy to tell the difference between the level that was the city, the one that was the arena and the one that pitted me in a battle near a waterfall to save a village. Those may sound like simple distinctions, but they are ones the series had been missing.

A Small Trick Makes Me Fix Things: It is not a big feature, but it is an example of how refreshing this game is. Clank has a scepter that, when he hits things that are broken, makes them come back together again. They animate their destruction in reverse. Reminiscent a little of Red Faction's repair gun, it is one of A Crack In Time's best visual tricks.

Hated
Space Makes Me Sigh: I had high hopes for this game's outer-space sections. The game's mission planets and side-mission moons are contained in several space sectors. Ratchet can fly through each sector, landing on those heavenly bodies or taking side missions while staying in the seat of his craft. Those space tasks include blowing up asteroids, chasing comets and dogfighting enemy squadrons. None of it is challenging or all that fun. And it is not helped by attempted distractions like a quartet of available fake radio stations nor by an upgrade system that alters the lasers and missiles fired by Ratchet's ship. A future Ratchet game might improve the space stuff, but this iteration of it is a visually-attractive bore. At least a player sailing The Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker's equally-beautiful but often equally-dull ocean had access to camera controls and could use their traveling time to frame the visuals in lovely ways.

Qwark Bums Me Out: Qwark's latest mini-game, My Blaster Runs Hot, continues the tradition of putting low-fi mini-games into high-def adventures. The joke's worn thin. I resisted the urge to play more than one round of his twin-stick shooter.

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time retains a lot of what was good about the previous games. But it also continues one of the best traditions of its developers — to compress past accomplishments, quickly give players a lot of the old stuff in the game's early going and then try new things. Earlier games' experiments with dialogue systems and multiplayer didn't thrill me. But, the new game's more dynamic physical movement (hooray for hoverboots), more interesting mission flow, amazing graphics and smart system of relatively easy main missions that branch off to more challenging moon challenges, are good innovations.

The Ratchet gameplay is improved. The Clank gameplay is a revelation. Two years ago, Ratchet & Clank Future showed how good Insomniac could make this series look on PS3. A year ago, Ratchet & Clank: A Quest For Booty showed that Insomniac was still prepared to innovate with gameplay. A Crack In time, the space case notwithstanding, finally shows the series leaping forward.

(Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time was developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment America for the PlayStation 3 on October 27. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through the campaign, finding about half of the hidden items in just under 10 hours. Unlocked and tried post-game challenge mode.)

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

That Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time demo should hit alongside the weekly PlayStation Store update, offering a taste of the all-new Clank-centric gameplay that Insomniac is introducing in the game. A second is planned, with details on what that will entail coming soon.

Keep an eye peeled for the upcoming Kotaku review, also due very soon.

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time First Review, Demos and New Videos [PlayStation.blog]

The NeoGAF user (goldsoundz) who spotted this says it's in an area of Shreveport commonly used for filming movies. Other GAFfers pieced together that it's probably for an upcoming movie called Battle: Los Angeles, which is produced by - ding ding ding - Sony's Columbia Pictures. The picture's release date is February 2011.

So, this Resistance 3 billboard would be an advertisement in the film, suggesting that 2011 is when the next Res is on the way. Check out the larger size pic:

The full uncropped pics taken by goldzoundz are over on NeoGAF. Note also the Resistance 3 logo - and the Statue of Liberty forming the vertex of the A. I guess the Chimera are going to lay waste to New York.

I've emailed a press contact for Insomniac Games to ask if they have any comment. Should any be given, I'll put it here.

Resistance 3 Announced? [NeoGAF via SF Console Game Examiner, thanks Matt, Jonathan, Kreyg, Michael, Vallanthaz and all who sent this in]

This PAL exclusive package for Insomniac Games' upcoming PS3 adventure offers more than just a manual and Blu-ray disc. It offers a fancy slipcase with a lenticular cover, giving Ratchet & Clank fans an opportunity to say the word "lenticular."

There are a handful of other goodies thrown in, like the obligatory art book and a free voucher for the downloadable "Discovery Package" level. You'll have to hit up the official European PlayStation blog for additional details.

Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time Collector's Edition [PlayStation.blog]

What Is It?
Ratchet And Clank Future: A Crack In Time is the third PlayStation 3 edition of the Insomniac Games franchise known for its cartoon gunplay, graphically rich platforming and happy humor. It follows the 2007 Blu-Ray release, Tools of Destruction, that reverted to the fundamental gameplay and level design styles of the first three PS2 Ratchets as well as the 2008 downloadable short, Quest For Booty, that added more puzzle-solving to the mix. The series often combines Ratchet gameplay sections full of dynamic jumping and shooting with side sections starring the robot Clank doing something new: cloned platforming, giant robot battles, etc.

What We Saw
A couple of weeks ago in Seattle, an Insomniac rep handed me a preview disc that features the first hour or so worth of gameplay in the game, providing an intergalactic tour of the game's new features. That includes the new outer space hub system which I already previewed. I experienced a magical opening cut-scene I'd rather not spoil, played as Clank twice, the second time learning about his series-new time-manipulating abilities. The Clank stuff sandwiched two on-foot Ratchet levels, one on a planet and one in a giant enemy space ship. Plus I explored the first of the game's several space hub systems, which stitch the game's main planet levels and moon side-levels together.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is set for an October 27 release, meaning it is just about done.

What Needs Improvement?
Invisible Walls and Unrecoverable Falls: Since the release of Prince of Persia last year and Batman: Arkham Asylum this year, it's become less controversial to have a game hero who can get himself pulled out of what would otherwise be a bottomless drop. Ratchet still falls to his doom, which suddenly feels archaic. More frustrating is the series' continued propensity to erect invisible walls to contain Ratchet's exploration. As always, Ratchet's in-game map reveals how little of the visible terrain is actually available for him to traverse, exacerbating the problem that Insomniac's artists continue to illustrate a landscape that is more inviting than Insomniac's level designers will allow me access to.

Dialogue Choices: As with Quest For Booty, the new game lets the player choose Ratchet's words in some situations. The choices are banal, appearing to only create the illusion of choice while depending on the player to select the single right answer. Yes, Ratchet/I can keep a secret. Yes, Ratchet/I will explore the temple. What's the point of a dialogue system if there's no meaningful interplay available?

Boss Battles: Ratchet games have great guns and great enemies at which to aim those guns. Except, I've found, when those enemies are bosses. There was one boss in the preview build and I fought him the same way I've fought every Ratchet boss: From a distance, circle-strafing while unloading each weapon in succession. It's never been very interesting and remains, in my view, a weak part of the series.

What Should Stay The Same?
The Writing: Captain Qwark is back, and he's hilarious, adopting Ratchet as a sidekick for one mission. The weapons vendor is funny. The villains are funny. The cut-scenes are funny. Insomniac writes a zippy game full of colorful characters, getting closer to Pixar-quality expression than just about any other studio.

Floor of the Year: This game is Insomniac's fifth on the PS3. It runs on a modified Resistance 2 engine. And so, not only is it one of the best-looking games on Sony's system in terms of technical achievement — draw distances are mountain-range deep, enemy animation is complicated and mesmerizing — but it is one of the most visually imaginative PS3 games I've played. A gun is rendered as a belching lizard whose opening mouth can occupy a quarter of the screen when shot toward the camera. A puffy, plush graphics style is coupled with cartoon smoke effects. These are clever visual tricks. A better one is the amazing floor in Clank's second level, a floor that is one of the best-looking floors I've seen in years. Dare I declare it now: Floor of the Year. You'll see.

Time Trials: Clank can now slow down time to get himself through his platforming challenges. More importantly, he can record himself trying to go through a level and then work through the obstacle course a second time with one or two recordings of himself assisting. This isn't an option. This is essential, a superb and puzzling mechanic designed to interrupt all the combat and produce some mental challenge.

The Space Hub: As I've written before, the space hub is a fine addition to the series. Thankfully, it allows for quick-travel between star systems and explored planets. More importantly, it serves as an open hub to spherical-world platforming and battle challenges, spontaneous space combat sequences and who knows what else.

Custom Weapons: Weapons still upgrade the more they are used, a series staple. They also can have modular parts added to them and can be repainted. I couldn't get that far with the weapons customization in what I played, but I liked the little bit I could do so far, improving the firing speed of my pistol by upgrading its trigger and switching its paint job to metal gray.

Final Thoughts
I'm less worried about this Ratchet being stale than I have been for the last few. Fresh ideas abound. Friday The 13ths may get old. But James Bonds do sometimes get better again. Let us not lose hope in sequels. Ratchet signals there's reason to hope even on edition #9.

I got my hands on the outer-space portion of next month's Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time this week in Seattle. The trailer for the space stuff already explained the basics, but here's the Kotaku take.

In a Crack in Time, the levels Ratchet can explore are set on planets and moons to which the player can and must manually fly. He has no hub world, but rather a hub galaxy. Fly it, explore it, use it as a hallway with doorways to the game's levels and side challenges.

Ratchet travels through his hub in armed space-ship that can be upgraded with weapons, a speed boost and tow cable. The ship can be flown through several star systems, all accessed from the game's Galactic Map. The PlayStation 3 controller's left stick steers the ship. The right stick does barrel rolls and flip stunts. Buttons fire guns or land the ship.

The space zone I saw was grand and packed with floating space rock, a streaking comet, and colorful clusters of friendly and hostile spaceships. Navigating all of that was simpler than it looked, because flight is possible only on a flat plane. The developers at Ratchet studio Insomniac Games had toyed with letting Ratchet fly in all directions, but user feedback indicated that it was too disorienting.

I sampled the richness of the one demo outer space zone. My version of Ratchet's ship had a pair of weapons, both infinite in ammo and capable of blowing up enemy craft. Of course, I tested them. I saw a beacon in the tail of a comet and flew to where it would have triggered a mission. I engaged hostile satellites and suddenly had to fight an attacking satellite that was so formidable it had its own health bar. I flew over some small moons upon which I had watched an Insomniac rep land Ratchet's ship. One of those landings seamlessly segued into an on-foot challenge on a spherical planetoid. I saw a much larger heavenly body, a planet protected by security satellites that repelled my approach. The planet represented a full level of the game but I would only be able to get past its defenses if I collected enough Zoni, the aliens in the game obtainable in both story levels and through some of these outer-space optional challenges.

I was told there would be boss battles in space, including some sort of ultimate fight that is accessible only on a second playthrough of the game. But even in the first playthrough, exploration of the star systems can lead the player to some fun diversions. The moon areas — the new game's take on the spherical world levels presented in earlier Ratchet games — serve as increasingly tricky platforming areas. They come in three variations, I was told, though I only witnessed the first of the following: Hover-boot challenges that involve fast movement over ramps and jumps; Platforming challenges that are more about the gymnastics of the genre; Battle challenges that present the series-staple goals of clearing out waves of enemies in confined arenas.

There are some less conventional elements to the space game. Ratchet's ship has several radio stations. The tow cable he can obtain is used to haul space rock and rescue troubled ships. You can be destroyed out in the not-quite-blackness of this colorfully-populated cosmos but in the demo I played, it didn't seem all that dangerous and likely to happen.

The space game in this new Ratchet was fun. As with everything else I've seen in the new game, it's visually spectacular and a joy to move through. The closest equivalent in terms of scale and in opportunity to encounter interesting things is the ocean in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. I'm not sure Ratchet's stellar range is, proportionately that vast but the positive similarities are there.

The one open question is whether travel will be mandatory, something I'm checking with Insomniac about. Traveling to a moon for a challenge once is fine. Having to fly back there later in the game would be less alluring.

There may be an efficiency in menu-based games that allow the player to hop from level to level with the click of a button. But this year I am enjoying the new grander takes on what a decade ago was presented as Princess Peach's castle or the caves of Spiral Mountain. I like these new hubs and the places they reach.

As cautioned earlier, that PS3 box art for the new Ratchet & Clank was based on a standard template and "not final," according to Insomniac. So don't expect to see a well hidden surprise multiplayer component in the final game, nor any of the other features listed in error.

"As we've said before, [Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time] is a single-player game, and has been planned as such from the very beginning," reads a statement. "We're totally focused on wrapping up the Ratchet & Clank Future story arc that we started in Tools of Destruction, and continued with Quest for Booty."

Heh. Booty.

And not a bad piece of art, eh? At least made easier to appreciate with the condensed look of the new PlayStation 3 art template. Not interested in judging a game by its cover? Head to the official PlayStation.blog for further Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time details, including all those pre-order "incentives" that one can throw good money at and Insomniac's PAX plans.

Oh, and for those of us interested in picking apart box art minutiae, the back of the PS3 game case is also available for ogling at the blog. Even the spine!! It's branding heaven.

Update: Looks like the PlayStation.blog has removed the full box art for the game, possibly because of the features revealed on the back of said box. That includes things like multiplayer, lobbies, matchmaking, leaderboards, PlayStation Home integration and Trophies.

Keep in mind that some portions of the back of the Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time box are "for presentation only" and not necessarily a guarantee of what the final game will offer. But we're checking in with SCEA to find out what's happenin'.

It's Official: Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time Available in the U.S. on October 27 [PlayStation.blog]

Not only does it show off the helpful narration of Insomniac's creative director Brian Allgeier, it highlights the game-changing Chronocepter and Time Pads, the latter of which lets Clank record and replay segments of time. The addition of that mechanic should make for some fascinating puzzles. See it in action after this.

A handy recap of the Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time panel is available at the official PlayStation.blog, should have you been unable to attend.

Ratchet & Clank Comic-Con Recap (with Videos!) [PlayStation.blog]

That fan-submitted addition to the already deep Ratchet & Clank arsenal was revealed at an event earlier this week, with Insomniac's Brian Allgeier describing the device as a "deadly yo-yo." You can see how deadly that is in the video above, which also shows the triple saw blade upgraded version, the Spiral of Carnage.

Insomniac also revealed the Constructo line of weapons.

That comes in two parts, the Constructo Pistol and Constructo Bomb glove, each a highly customizable weapon.

The pistol features multiple stocks, barrels and ammo types, including single shots, auto shots, charge shots, ricocheting bullets, and rounds explode on contact. The look of the Constructo Pistol varies wildly from upgrade to upgrade, with one clearly showing a flamethrower type barrel.

The Constructo Bomb Glove is similarly varied, with napalm, shrapnel, and explosive bombs adding variety to the wearable weapons, as does an option to alter the area of explosive effect. Mods for both Constructo weapons can be found throughout the galaxy, rewarding exploration of the Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time universe.

Names carry weight. They give a group of people and the products they create an identity. For companies like Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sega and others, those names are associated with memories, even if those words have little meaning.

Sega, for example, is simply a portmanteau of the words "service" and "games." Nintendo, officially, a direct translation from the Japanese to mean "leave luck to heaven." And Sony, well, that's a fabricated word, a twist on the Latin word "sonus" and the familiar "sonny."

But how did video game developers decide upon the likes of Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Harmonix, and the recently re-christened Visceral Games? And what the heck is a Capybara, anyway? We asked game development studio founders to explain themselves.

The studio that started us wondering just how one settles on an identity was the young Capybara Games, a Toronto-based independent group of initially a dozen game developers. The team most recently had a double showing at E3 2009, with Critter Crunch for the PlayStation Network and Might & Magic Clash of Heroes for the Nintendo DS.

The studio is named for the world's largest rodent, the capybara, a relative of the guinea pig that can weigh more than 200 pounds. How exactly does one decide to identify oneself with a giant South American mammal?

"Unfortunately, with 12 very different opinions on what makes a cool name, coming to a unanimous decision was impossible," Nathan Vella, Capybara co-founder and Art Director said. "We bitched at each other for far too long before deciding on a fair and democratic process. Names of varying quality, from ‘surprisingly awesome' to ‘literally the worst name ever' were tossed out by members of the group, and each person chose their Top 3 from the pool."

No one, however, decided the name "Capybara" was "surprisingly awesome."

"In the end, Capybara was unanimously everyone's second or third choice… and so it won the name election," Vella said. "It was the name everyone thought was 'ok' but didn't really want to win. That's democracy for you... you're not picking the best, you're picking the least-worst."

There was an unintended metaphor in Capybara's "least-worst" choice, Vella says.

"At this point we had not yet realized the irony or accuracy that we were naming our 'guinea pig' of a company after the world's largest guinea pig. In hindsight we totally should have caught on to that earlier."

The developer informally calls itself Capy, as seen in its logo. But it employs a "modern day mustache hero" known as Hank Hudson as its official mascot, not a capybara—though Vella jokes it has flirted with taking an Argentinean agency up on its offer to open a capybara farm.

Another developer that didn't go with its first choice for a studio name was Resistance and Ratchet & Clank developers Insomniac Games.

Before the Burbank, California area developer shipped its first game—the first-person shooter Disruptor for the original PlayStation—it went by a trio of other names: Planet X Software, Outzone Software and Xtreme Software. That last name almost stuck, as the company had already incorporated itself as Xtreme prior to announcing Disruptor. Then it found out someone else, a database company, was already using it.

"We only had a few weeks to come up with something new," says Ted Price, president of what we now call Insomniac Games. "So we hung a whiteboard in the office and began writing down everything we could think of. There must have been 200 names on the list."

Some of the rejects? Ragnarok, Black Sun, Ice-9 Games and Blue Moon Turtle.

"Seriously, Blue Moon Turtle," Price admitted. "However, every name we liked was already being used by someone else. We actually got permission from Kurt Vonnegut's estate to use Ice-9 but someone else was already using it without permission."

Faced with the prospect of launching Disruptor anonymously, a last minute suggestion arrived—Insomniac.

"It was one of those rare moments when everyone looked at each other and said 'Yeah, that works,'" according to Price. "It definitely described us at the time. We sure weren't sleeping much."

From our discussions with game development studio founders, it seems like the best piece of advice they can impart about naming one's studio is to check early (and often) to see if someone else is using your descriptor of choice.

Such is the case with Harmonix, creators of Guitar Hero, Rock Band and, when it first formed, "music software technology."

Eran Egozy, Harmonix co-founder and Chief Technical Officer, says that he and general manager Alex Rigopulos debated over a key aspect of the developer's name, whether to spell it Harmonics or Harmonix.

"The 'ix' ending won," Egozy says. "Hey, it was the mid-90s." To be clear, the company's full name is, in Egozy's words, the "somewhat awkward" Harmonix Music Systems.

"Unfortunately, we did not check to see that harmonix.com was already taken when we named the company," Egozy says. "So our domain name is harmonixmusic.com. If we had checked, maybe the company would be called something else now."

One video game maker that did get an opportunity to change its identity was Dead Space and Dante's Inferno developer Visceral Games, once known by the more sterile EA Redwood Shores or, unfortunately and informally, EARS.

Glen Schofield, general manager of the newly re-branded Visceral Games explains.

"There were a bunch of names we threw away," he says, culling hundreds of ideas and concepts solicited from Redwood Shores team members. "I got tons of great ones but I really wanted a name that had a real meaning for our studio. Visceral just worked perfect as it is a term we use all the time to describe the feeling we want in our combat. It captured our more mature or action type games we make."

The developer's very web site is behind an age-gate, highlighting its mature focus.

The name change had support from the top, with president of EA Games label Frank Gibeau and CEO John Riccitiello supporting a more autonomous model, already seen at individually named EA developers like Criterion, BioWare and Pandemic.

"They welcomed the idea of studios having a distinct identity," Schofield says. "Once I mentioned it to Frank he kept asking me when we were announcing the name. He wanted it changed right away, it was pretty funny. But obviously once you have a name you then have months of creative and legal wrangling before you can go live with it."

Visceral's coming out party, as it were, was a little different from start up studios who sometimes choose their names under the gun. It had time to plan, hire an outside brand agency, and build a style guide for the new identity. Then it went public with a studio-wide meeting, press release, site launch and a tasty visceral treat.

"We painted the walls and hung up mounted artwork from our games," Schofield says. "We had posters, decals and a shirt for everyone. There was even a huge Visceral skull cake waiting. It's the only time we've ever had to have a cake maker sign an NDA!"

And that was that. "When the meeting was over the entire place was now changed and we were ready to move on as Visceral Games."

That sense of identity is something that Uncharted developers Naughty Dog share, with employees (positively) referred to as "the Dogs." The explanation for that choice is much simpler than some of the other stories we'd heard.

The company, formerly known as JAM—hey, it was the mid-80s—when it shipped its first game Ski Crazed for the Apple II, was changed to Naughty Dog the next decade. Founders Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin were "dog lovers," with Rubin often taking his puppy to work.

That continues today, with current co-presidents Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra giving their dogs a second home at the Naughty Dog offices.

And the names of their dogs? Pogo and Trumpet. How those names came to be, we'll just have to wonder.

[Photo Credit]

The third Ratchet & Clank game on the PS3 in as many years was on display at E3 to a pack of reporters curious if there was going to be anything new this time around.

The first Ratchet on PS3, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, was visually impressive but conservatively similar to most of the Ratchets before it. The second was a more puzzle-driven short that lasted just a few hours.

The third PS3 Ratchet? It could present the fundamental change the series hasn't had in some time.

What Is It?
Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time is the third Ratchet & Clank third-person shooter/platformer from Insomniac Games for the PS3 and the studio's seventh overall. (Two portable spin-offs were made by High Impact.) This time, Ratchet is separated from Clank, as the pair was sundered at the end of the first Ratchet PS3 game, Tools of Destruction. Ratchet gets jet boots to compensate; Clank gets puzzle levels that involve time manipulation. Captain Quark's back, but we don't know how.

What We Saw
Behind closed doors, Insomniac developers let us play a part of a new enemy-filled Monument Valley-inspired Ratchet level and watch one of their team play through some brain-hurting Clank puzzle levels locked in metal rooms.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is pretty far along as it moves toward a fall release. The levels we played had all the sights and sounds you'd expect from a finished game, though Ratchet's arsenal was limited to just a few weapons, for demo purposes.

What Needs Improvement?
The Clank Levels: Several indie games, Sony's own upcoming Echochrono and even — sort of — the Xbox Live Arcade game Cloning Clyde, executed in 2D what Insomniac is attempting to implement in 3D. That would be the ability for the player to walk their character (Clank) through one path in a locked room, step onto a switch or ride an elevator… then rewind time, and do a second thing with that character while a "recording" of the first attempt plays through. The idea is that the player might have four versions of Clank running through a puzzle and that that will be necessary to solve it. This seems like the kind of idea that could be fun but also aggravatingly pace-halting. The jury's out, but, please Insomniac, make sure that the music that plays while Clank is in the metallic locked rooms loops a little less frequently than it seemed to at E3. The only thing worse than being stumped is being stumped while the music repeats.

What Should Stay The Same?
The Ratchet Levels: Explosions now appear to be cel-shaded. Enemies can now be frozen and shattered or yelled at with a belching animal/gun called the Sonic Eruptor (Insomniac claims it's a mating call; we maintain it's a belch). Best of all, Ratchet's boots are now jet-powered and, with a press of the d-pad, and a push of R2, they can be used like a high-tech skateboard to propel our hero up ramps, through crates, into enemies. In other words, they can be used to increase the tempo and cacophony of the standard Ratchet & Clank level to Sonic-style brisk commotion. Without the boots, the Ratchet level I played would have looked like the same-old, same-old with a couple of new guns. With the boots, the pace is altogether changed, in a promising way.

Final Thoughts
Insomniac says this Ratchet game will have more re-play value than previous ones, and that's even after I remarked that that previous ones had high replay value because of the score-attack mode that activated during a second playthrough. More importantly, Insomniac would be served to worry about getting people excited about their first playthrough, because what I heard from lots of fellow E3 attendees to whom I mentioned that I saw the game that they were tired of the franchise.

My response to the Ratchet-weary people around me was that, not only does this one have a sharp new graphical style, but it felt in my hands like it would play differently from the recent games in the franchise. And it played well, with an energy that wasn't in Deadlocked, the final PS2 Ratchet game which previously provided the biggest tweak (one since abandoned) to the series' formula. I got more than I was expecting from Ratchet this time. I haven't been able to write that in years.

While we're normally slightly sceptical of any and all messages blurted out across this season's social networking weapon of choice, this message couldn't be clearer:

replies from @mmalex, lbp levells coming, r&c content done, coming soon hopefully, up next for mm, big pack, bigger than mgs even.

Bigger than MGS? Lovely.

[insomniacgames @ twitter]

John Fiorito, chief operating officer at Insomniac Games, wrote about the trials, tribulations and successes the developer experienced during the production of Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, its second PlayStation 3 game. For example, Fiorito pulls back the curtain on Insomniac's trailer for Ratchet & Clank Future, known as "Metropolis," writing that it was built "frame by frame" in the Resistance: Fall of Man engine, essentially a "target render."

On top of that, Fiorito provides exciting data for you to crunch on, including that Ratchet & Clank Future comprised 980,184 lines of code and used up a terabyte of hard drive space over at Insomniac HQ.

Believe it or not, there are challenges developing two games concurrently on non-finalized, new-gen hardware. Read all about it at Gamasutra.

Postmortem: Insomniac's Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction [Gamasutra]

Online multiplayer with up to sixty people, an extensive eight-player cooperative campaign, bigger polygon counts, more massive enemies and a world-spanning adventure all add up to the epic, but succinctly named Resistance 2. Set just a few years after the events of Resistance: Fall of Man, the sequel continues right where the first left off, dropping what didn't work and largely improving upon what did.

Did we give in to our primal urges for Resistance 2? Or did we put up a fight?

Loved
Massive Scale, Perfectly Paced: Nathan Hale is quite the jet setter in Resistance 2, traveling to and from exotic locales like the Air Force Bases of Iceland to the small logging towns of California. The scope of R2 never fails to impress, with bigger than ever Chimera and retro sci-fi settings rarely explored in other first-person shooters. Awesome early set pieces set the hectic pace appropriately. We wish Insomniac hadn't shown the San Francisco invasion ahead of time, as the sheer size of the invading fleet would have been even more awe-inspiring.

New Weapons, New Enemies: Now limited to just two weapons at a time, Hale's arsenal gets upgraded with some great new gimmicks, including the shield-generating Wraith chain-gun and the ridiculous, saw blade-shooting Splicer. As a whole, weapons lack a sense of weight or punch, but that doesn't detract from the joy of amputating hordes of Grims. That new addition to the Chimeran bestiary is the most enjoyable to dispatch, just one of many that feels shamelessly lifted from recent Hollywood sci-fi flicks.

Cooperative: Eight-player co-op is what will keep you coming back to Resistance 2. The class variety, the leveling, the unlockable goodies, the constant drip-feed of experience points — it all adds up to an addicting experience that we've really just begun to scratch the surface of. Hardcore Resistance fans may be disappointed to see a leaner multiplayer offering, but the cooperative mode, with its interesting unique classes will ease the pain.

Competitive: Standard stuff, with the exception of the constantly changing Skirmish mode, which switches from assassination to capture point to team death match modes on the fly. Getting in and out of multiplayer games and tracking your stats is beautifully user-friendly. Insomniac does right by its fans with a well designed community portal for tracking your, as advertised, 420 hours plus of progression.

Hated
Campaign: My slog through Resistance 2's weakest "C" took but nine hours to complete, but it felt like an eternal sludge of predictable Chimeran assaults with all eight six eyes on me and me alone. The majority of the boss fights weren't just forgettable, they were the sort of thing I couldn't wait to forget. Yes, they're big and often loaded with tension, but they're also incredibly trying and sometimes ambiguous in their objectives. Much of the single-player campaign just felt like swimming through a sea of gunfire, ambush after ambush held together by a vanilla story.

Cheap Deaths: The cloaked Chameleons aren't the worst of Resistance 2's sins of cheap deaths. You'll eventually learn where they spawn after a few die and retry attempts. It's the lame, one-hit kill Fury that live under bulletproof water and the slaps from the Leviathan that made me go berzerk. There are few things more personally loathsome than first-person platforming and gotcha, how-could-I-have-possibly-seen-that-coming kills. After blowing through the first Resistance with relative ease, dying 136 times in the sequel left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

Wonky Physics, Inconsistent Presentation: There are plenty of things, aesthetically, that Insomniac nails with Resistance 2. Bizarre physics — did that Chimeran soldier really just launch skyward after being sniped in the face? How long will that LAARK bounce around the room? — and the occasionally dull environment aren't quite highlights.

If anything, Resistance 2 could be pitched as the holiday shooter that's "bigger, better and more bad-ass." Everything has been upped for the sequel, with a workable 60-person multiplayer option, a ton of fan service for the Resistance enthusiast and a co-op mode that's not only fun as hell, but fleshes out the core story line. The intel collect-a-thons certainly aren't my thing, nor is trying to piece together all the disparate plot points, but the hardcore Resistance fan has been very well taken care of. It may be that the novelty of a sci-fi shooter set in the mid-twentieth century has worn off a bit and that the game looks a bit underwhelming in light of the competition, but I actually recall enjoying the first a bit more.

Given the depth of Resistance 2's multiplayer and co-op though, those first nine hours spent chugging through the single-player campaign will probably be forgotten in favor of fondly remembering the entire experience.

Resistance 2 was developed by Insomniac Games, published by Sony Computer Entertainment America and released on Nov. 4 for PlayStation 3. Retails for $59.99 USD. Completed single-player campaign, tested 8-player coop, and multiplayer modes.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Thankfully, for at least my own review purposes, the single player campaign should take you about 9 to 11 hours to burn through. That's totally reasonable. But if you plan on dedicating the time to do everything, unlock every level, find every briefing, max out every class, you've got about 18 days of your life ahead of you just playing R2.

And if you do, you're a more dedicated man than me.