Octonok Village is the stage chosen for our demo, taking the quarrelling quartet through a seaside location and culminating in an impressive boss battle against a gigantic octopod creature. It's appropriate, really, since one of the game's many touchstones would appear to be Gauntlet - that early pioneer of four-way action gaming.

The switch to co-operative play has meant that the third person viewpoint of old has been swapped for a more overhead camera. The game is playable in a drop-in and drop-out online mode or as a single screen local affair. In the tradition of everything from The Defiant Ones to Enemy Mine, former enemies must work together to escape a common foe. The concept is that one of Dr Nefarious' latest gadget-fuelled attempts to defeat Ratchet and Clank has gone spectacularly awry, resulting in Nefarious, Ratchet, Clank and hapless cowardly superhero Captain Qwark being snatched up by something called the Creature Collector. As the name clumsily suggests, it's a game designed especially for four players. Sticking two players in a gameworld and occasionally asking them to press buttons at the same time to open a door shouldn't really count.Р”Р‡or the latest Ratchet and Clank game, the tenth in the series, Insomniac is hoping to put things right. Lots of games boast about it but few offer a genuinely co-operative experience. Outside of the more tactically minded shooters, 'co-op' is fast becoming one of the most abused terms in gaming.

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