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Insomniac Games is bringing back Ratchet and Clank in the title Ratchet: Deadlocked. We got our hands on a six-level demo of the game and from our experience it was pretty impressive; there’s much of the same wonderful platforming experience, but with some unique additions.

In this version of the game, Ratchet and Clank find themselves on a television series called Dreadlock. Our two heroes have been captured by Gleeman Vox, the media emperor who has captured them for ratings and holds their lives on the line with collars on their necks a la the movie Running Man. Ratchet and Clank must battle their way through various environments to get themselves out. 

From our experience with Deadlocked the gameplay is still very much intact which is obviously a good thing because the previous versions are some of the best platformers on the market. In the game, players can either use your usual wrench or one of a handful of guns which are all upgradeable as you use them throughout the game. Unique to this year’s game is that you can not only purchase other weapons, but also add upgrades, for example freeze, to very different types of guns which in turn makes each of them unique and different. Combat and weaponry is particularly more important in this version as you’re now battling it out in arenas and not doing much of the running, jumping except in battle sequences. 

Besides new weapons, Deadlocked features a handful of vehicles for players to cruise around in too. We were able to get our hands on just one of the vehicles in the game, the Landstalker which is a mechwarrior that can jump, move and shoot tremendous firepower in a short period of time. The vehicle does take a good bit of damage as well.

Each mission we went through seems to be a set of battles against various enemies. The battles are even more open-ended and developed as you’ll now have enemies surround you from the sky and ground. This makes the battles much more intense and keeps you moving throughout. Of course, you couldn’t fight the enemies alone and so the developers have a handful of bots that help alleviate some of the difficulty, but from our experience you’re still doing all the work. The good addition of the bots is that you can defend an area and get them to hack orbs or do other quests. Just like your own weapons, players can customize the bots weapons, skins and more.

Online play wasn’t available with the demo, but we were able to check out a nice new addition in cooperative play. This allows two players to play the same levels together and you’re instead without the assistance of the bots. It’s a good way to make a platformer a two-player experience and is a nice new direction for the genre. Beyond the actual two-player experience from the missions, they were all the same. 

Overall Ratchet: Deadlocked is set to be another impressive success for Insomniac Games when it releases this holiday season. With what is rumored to be a better online experience, a more open-ended experience, cooperative and multiplayer gameplay and better graphics, Deadlocked has made another huge step forward for not only the genre but also the series.