Time for a preview and I’m looking forward to the latest Ratchet and Clank game, called Future: Tools of Destruction. It’s the first next-gen title after the awesome Size Matters on the PSP and there’s going to be a whole load of new weapons and gadgets to try out and this time it’s all in glorious hi-definition and looks absolutely stunning.

In this one Ratchet is still trying to trace where he came from as he’s the last of the Lombax race. Even his little robot friend Clank can’t help him when it comes to fathoming out this one. However, the evil Emperor Percival Tachyon is also interested in Ratchet and wants to wipe the last Lombax off the face of the universe with the help of his insect horde of Cragmites.

And so another adventure begins with lots of platforming, puzzling and of course comedy weapons to kill your enemies with.

Let’s concentrate on some of the new weapons. There’s the Combustor which fires out balls of flame which also sets fire to the floor, there’s the Groovatron which is basically a big mirror ball which plays music and makes all enemies around you dance to death and there’s the Vizicopter which you can launch into the sky and control with the sixaxis as you fly around and launch missiles from above.

There’s also shielded enemies in this game so you’ll have to use your Buzzblade to ricochet spinning metal spikes off walls to hit them from behind or fire radioactive plasma over their heads to spray them with a whole load of hurt.

Another cool device is the Tornado, again controlled with the Sixaxis function of the controller, meaning, if you can co-ordinate yourself correctly, you can control Ratchet and send the Tornado to sweep up enemies and objects around your immediate area.

As well as all the new weapons it’s the same game you know and love with new tweaks and better graphics. You can play through the adventure in a few weeks time.

This is a game I’ve been excited about for months ever since I had a brief playtest of the game on the PC. I’ve now got my hands on the full game on the 360 so let me tell you what it’s all about.

Set in the 1960s, you’re a passenger on a plane that suddenly ditches into the water. You emerge from the burning fuselage to find a tower in the middle of the sea with a pod inside it. Of course, not wanting to hang about and smell the burning fumes, you pull the lever inside and plunge into the murky depths, discovering a whole new forgotten underwater world called Rapture.

This place was once supposed to be a Utopia but now it’s a watery hell, you’ll notice this soon as the first thing you see is someone being murdered by a strange ‘thing’ you soon learn is called a Splicer. You’re then left to fend for yourself with only and Irishman on a short wave radio to help you as you scavenge what weapons you can find and try to survive.

What’s great about this game is the freedom it gives you. You can choose to just shoot the Splicers until you run out of bullets, but it’s more fun to hack into security systems to make them work for you, or even genetically modify yourself with lightning bolts and flames you shoot from your hands to burn and electrify your surroundings.

These NPCs aren’t dumb either. There are creatures known as the Big Daddies in this game that won’t attack you in this game unless you’re a threat and trust me, you don’t want to fight them if you can help it or they’ll drill you to death with their strange hands. They’ll only attack you if you try to harm the ‘Little Sisters’. Small girls with devices that extract energy called ‘Adam’ from the dead – the energy that keeps Rapture running.

Graphically this game is stunning, The art-deco setting is different from the norm, the water bursting into areas almost drowning you looks like it’s alive and the fire effects really are a treat for the eyes.

There’s no multiplayer but what you do get here is an incredibly atmospheric FPS which truly redefines the genre.

It reminds me of the first time I played of Half-Life so it gets an almost perfect 9 out of 10.

This week Matt Cuttle talks about:-

• Beautiful Katamari
• Chronicles of Riddick
• Halo 3 Epsilon
• Blue Dragon
• Little Big Planet
• SingStar 90s
• Fable 2

Thanks for the Mii-alike pictures, the winning entries can be found in the gallery section on Gamesweasel web site . For your chance of winning Omega Sektor tickets in Birmingham download this episode, listen out for the question then head over to http://gamesweasel.mevio.com for full details of how to enter. Our email address is gamesweasel@mevio.com .

[DOWNLOAD MP3] | [AUDIO RSS FEED] | [SUBSCRIBE IN ITUNES]

So I’ve finally got my hands on some SIngStar mics and I haven’t played it since the very first one came out during my time at Gamezville where I dressed up as Justin Hawkins with silly wig, billy-bob teeth and a spangly catsuit that I could only just squeeze into.

Thankfully, those days of dressing up (at least on television) are behind me and now we have the ninth edition of the series, the 90s collection.

Before I go into the track list let me just explain for anyone who hasn’t played or heard of this before. Basically, you get two microphones, the original track plays complete with music video and judges you on your pitch and rhythm. As you read the words, you can see if you’re hitting the notes via a little graph.
Stay in the zone, sing the song and you get a high score. You can also play the game in duet mode against a friend, family or even your dog if you’ve trained it very well.

So, onto the track list and this one’s a bit of a mess to be honest. Because the 90s was a bit of a jumble of styles, that’s what you get here. The Cranberries go head to head with the B-52s, Natalie Imbruglia and Wet Wet Wet. There’s even tracks here from Radiohead, REM and The Cure. Whilst this would all be a disaster if you played them back to cheesy club, it’s an eclectic mix so there’s something for everyone here if you have a party. Play it on your own though or with just a friend and you’ll only probably like a handful of the tracks.

By far the hardest track on here is the Bare Naked Ladies One Week where he talks so fast it’s almost impossible to keep up with his chickety china the Chinese chicken you have a drumstick and your mind starts ticking etc etc.

Although not as focuses as other collections form the past, if you’re a collector, this will add yet more variety to your karaoke collection. For anyone that likes specific genres of music, maybe wait for Rock Ballads to come out in September.

Here’s an interesting concept from Sony. Take a platform game, make the objective just to make your way to the end, make it really open ended and give you the chance to make your own levels and make your way through the game with your friends, giving a helping hand when you need.

That game will soon be a reality. It sounds simple, looks great and is called Little Big Planet.

Having seen the videos of this game, this really is a look toward what the PS3 is capable of after all the launch titles with good but not stunning graphics have been and gone. It has the look of a pre-rendered movie that Pixar would make but it’s all running in real time as you and up to three other friends move through the levels.

Controlling your character isn’t just a question of jumping with the X button and using the analogue. You even use the shoulder buttons to move your character’s arms indepently and the sixaxis function of the controller to move their head. Hold R1 and you’ll grab something and pressing directions on the d-pad effects the emotions the face is controlling.
The world is also a stickler to physics – Isaac Newton would have a field day. If a rubber ball hits a wall, it behaves how it would in real life. If you swing about on a rope, you’ll swing to and fro depending on how much momentum you apply from your character.

Central to creating a level is a control system called Pop It. Here you mix and match what you want and where to put it, and you can even put items together to create new things like vehicles, tanks and skateboards. You can then use these in multiplayer games to find new ways of getting round obstacles. The whole thing looks like an interactive Vauxhall advert which makes you want to shout ‘COME ON’ as you play though the levels. It’s sure to be a hit with gamers and non-gamers alike when it comes out September 2008.

Buy LittleBigPlanet now
New: Buy LittleBigPlanet from Amazon.com

This one’s a classic-style Japanese RPG on the Xbox 360. Japanese developers have mainly ignored Microsoft’s console and stuck to making games for the PS2 but this one, even before its release in Japan, was being hailed as the big RPG for Microsoft which should change the attitudes of all you RPG-ers out there.

It’s got the dudes who created Final Fantasy, wrote the music and the character designer who worked on the Dragon Quest games and the cult classic Chrono Trigger so it better be good.

The game begins with a big purple cloud rolling over a small village with a Land Shark hot on its heels coming for a feed. All the villagers run to safety as this happens once every ten years, but your heroes stay at ground level to fight the beasty. They then trap it, get spirited away to some ancient ruins, learn it’s actually a machine controlled by a nasty man and go on a quest to fight other monsters, level up and eventually defeat him.

What you get here is a very standard RPG with traditional values that won’t make you gasp with any originality, however it is beautifully designed, has a solid turn-based combat and leveling up system and a couple of neat touches you haven’t seen before.

When it comes to exploring dungeons it’s great that you don’t have random battle encounters. If you like you can hunt down all the monsters first of all and then be free to explore without being jumped. A really cool thing is the ability to fight more than one monster at a time, and drag them into battles with creatures they don’t like, so they fight each other as well as you and make the battle much easier.

Each character has a mythical beast living in their own shadow which you can call upon to attack physically and magically. It would be nice if they had their own HP and MP but here they just serve to be another way to attack in battle.

Graphically this game sits in a strange place. All the characters look like they would in a 3D anime cartoon but almost look like they’re plastic toys, their expressions rarely changing in-game. It’s something you’ll have to get used to but is still very pleasing on the eye.

When all’s said and done you’ll get a lot of RPG hours if you get this game. Just don’t expect too many surprises along the way. It may once again be a little but too much for Western gamers but if you like your games very Japanesey and you want it on the 360, now’s your chance to fill your boots.

Blue Dragon gets a very respectable 7 out of 10.

Try it out with our GameFly free trial.