Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

The PlayStation Blog carries word that the very first Ratchet and Clank game for the PS3 may ship sooner than its October 30th release date.

“a vast majority of retailers have already received the game. With that, some retailers are choosing to release the game next week instead of waiting until the 30th, which we are all too happy to allow”

So keep your eyes open at retail for the game because the demo alone makes this a must-play for any platforming fan, and for me, a long-time Ratchet and Clank fan, a must-own. Read on for my demo impressions if you haven’t had a chance to download it from the PlayStation Store and play it yet, and for information on what PSM had to say about the game.

First off, the demo is very pretty. The city level you play through is extremely busy with traffic and an ongoing alien invasion. The environments are beautifully made, the characters and enemies are animated with detailed, cartoonish humor, and the controls are tight and responsive. The demo does a very good job of teaching you the basic controls using the same pleasant voice-over narrator from previous games but any Ratchet and Clank veteran will immediately remember how to play. The camera works well, but the demo did show a tiny bit of slowdown during one or two of the more cinematic sequences where, for instance, you are on a grind rail going past a very large building falling down. That was a surprise given the speed and fluidity of the game during even the most hectic on-foot combat sequences.

You get lots of classic Ratchet and Clank gameplay types in the demo. You get platforming, scripted sequences where you need to cross a crumbling area quickly, straight-up weapon-based mayhem, and even some good rail grinding. You get to try out just a few weapon types — the standard starting pistol, the fusion grenade, the transformation weapon that turns your enemies into penguins, and the groovatron that makes every enemy disco-dance for a limited time. The story is also introduced just a bit in that the aliens, once sighting Ratchet, are all after him specifically instead of both him and Clank.

If you haven’t taken the time to download the demo yet, you really need to. There’s no better way to understand if this is the game for you.

PSM felt it was the game for them, giving it an amazing score of 9.5 in their review. They call it the quintessential Ratchet and Clank game and the best PS3 game yet. They do complain a bit that the space flight parts of the game are not as good as the rest of it, and miss the online multiplayer modes from the previous two Ratchet and Clank games on the PS2. While the review text isn’t online yet, you can see PSM joins PSM3 Magazine UK’s 93% rating as a second rave review for the game on MetaCritic. Will the other review sites score it as highly? We’ll have to see.