Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One Preview

All 4 One is the logical response to a series that has mostly kept its focus on single-player for ten years (Ratchet: Gladiator had a large multiplayer component). Now it’s multiplied the Ratchet and Clank duo by two with franchise favourites Captain Qwark and Dr. Nefarious, and turned its attention to co-op play. As the story has it, the Doc has tried to take down Clank and Ratchet but things have gone awry. Now all four characters have been kidnapped by an interstellar machine, the Creature Collector, and transported to the planet Magnus where they work together in a plot that gives you just enough incentive to actually cooperate with each other in order to get out of there.

And that results in an underlying rivalry that is encouraged from the start of the game. All 4 One supports offline and online four-player co-op, but with every character having the same weapons and gadgets your success is dependent on how well you’ve used other players to your advantage. So the tools at your disposal support cooperation as much as they do competition.

The demo brings us to Octonok Village: a kind of intergalactic seaside resort that’s been built around sets of strategically placed platforms which lead toward a final – and surprisingly cinematic – battle of Us-Versus-Giant Alien Squid. The lot of us were equipped with a Vac-U-4000, a weaponised vacuum of sorts and the game’s primary Swiss Army Knife-alike. It’s used to collect bolts – a currency that affects your final score – as well as being a weapon and way of getting about.

On the competitive side of the game we have bolt collection. Bolts will spill out of any smashed object or enemy, which means there’s typically a mad dash to the most recent pile of metal junk as each player attempts to vacuum up as many bolts as they can before any of the others have a chance.

On the cooperative side you’ll use the same device to work your way across Octonok. The Vac-U’s secondary feature is to shoot bursts of air like a cosmic leaf blower and fire individuals across gaps and onto far-away platforms.

Out of the kindness of your heart? Probably not. You’ll need to use their position on that platform to get across yourself by hooking onto them with a rope and swinging across. At times you’ll need to time your jump-swings with one another, creating an enormous and pendulous 4-player rope line to get across even longer gaps and the effect of working together in that way is impressively satisfying. But this is a game built for that special kind of player who gets as much out of griefing their friends as they do cooperating with them – if you’re not rushing across platforms then you can use your tools to irritate. And you’ll find yourself using the leaf-blower to shoot your team mates off cliffs very quickly.

While players are lauded at the end of the level for the number of bolts they collect or for how well they did in combat there aren’t any penalties for dying beyond the human sense of shame. Which means griefing is just a part of interaction rather than a direct path to success. But whether Insomniac manages to keep that fun and not frustrating is another question. Occasionally that sense of social interaction falls apart, particularly when it comes to collecting bolts.

Bolt collection is just a matter of who’s the fastest to vacuum, with bolts becoming fair game once they spill out of recently hit objects or enemies. So the race to collecting them all can feel more antisocial than being shot off platforms. Often a player can just hang back as the others fight and then run in at the most opportune moment to sweep up the loot. That combined with All 4 One’s whimsical griefing could potentially get tiring.

But there’s a clear sense that Insomniac is trying to balance the competitive with the cooperative. This is an incredibly fast-pace platformer and with each player having access to the same gadgets there is a sense that you need a level of skill to really come out on top. And with each gadget having multiple uses, finding new and creative ways of interacting with the environment and other players is key. Griefing or not, it’s an interesting step for the series.

Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One is due for release on PS3 later this year.