We are giving Ratchet & Clank fans everywhere the chance to design character costumes for the upcoming epic space adventure, Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One.

From April 19 to April 29 budding designers are invited to create an outfit for the self-obsessed Captain Qwark or bumbling super villain Dr. Nefarious. Two lucky winners will each see their creation feature in the game and also take home an original print of their winning entry, signed by the legendary Insomniac Games team.

To be in with a chance of winning simply head over to the competition page and download the character template. You will then need to create your own dastardly outfit designs. Once you’ve completed your masterpiece, send us your creation through the website. The winning two costumes will be hand-picked by a panel of judges from Insomniac Games. But hurry! The competition closes on 29 April 2011 – you’ll need to move at light speed. Terms and conditions apply. For more information visit eu.playstation.com/psn/competitions.

What about Ratchet and Clank? Just check the US PlayStation blog, where we’re giving our US fans the opportunity to jump in and submit their own designs as well. The entire skin pack will be made available as we get closer to the game release this Fall 2011.

Keep an eye out on the Blog as we’ll be announcing even more details in the coming weeks. For more information on Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One in the meantime, including the latest trailers, head to eu.playstation.com.

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve been enjoying Chime Super Deluxe since we launched three weeks ago – we’re delighted with the great reviews it’s been getting so far. I’m especially pleased with the reaction to the music, obviously! But I’m not here to talk about that, I’ve got some news about a competition that could see your music rubbing shoulders with Philip Glass, Plaid, Moby and the rest…

We’re inviting aspiring musicians to submit tracks for a chance to appear in Chime Super Deluxe. We will pick our favourite and work with the winner to turn the track into a unique level. Players around the world could hear your music and see your name on screen! We will also profile you on www.chimegame.com and link to your music online.

There are no rules about what style of music you can submit. Whether you’re a laptop producer, band, choir or percussion group, if you think it would make a great Chime level we’d love to hear it. The only stipulations are that it’s your own work, that you’re up for putting it into the game, and that you’re able to provide “stems” (a multi-track recording with separate instrument parts) if we pick your track as the winner.

In case you’re not familiar with how the game works, here’s beat-boxer extraordinaire Shlomo explaining the basics:

For Chime Super Deluxe we got great results by collaborating with artists like Shlomo, now we’re inviting you to collaborate with us. We’re always looking to push Chime in new musical directions, and we can’t wait to hear what you come up with for the game – so come on, surprise us!

“How does it work?” I hear you ask… To enter, just head to www.chimegame.com/competition/ and submit an mp3. The competition opens today and we’ll be accepting submissions until Friday 1st July.

Good luck to you all!

FAQ

How do I submit a track?
Once submissions are open, you can use the form on this page to upload an mp3 file of your track, along with contact information and comments.

Can I submit more than one track?
Yes, but if you submit more than one we may not be able to listen to all of them, so choose your best!

What kind of music can I submit?
Whatever you like – if you can imagine it in working in the game, let’s hear it.

Can I submit a cover version?
No. A cover version is partly owned by the original composer. Anything you submit must be your own composition and not infringe on any existing copyright

My music contains samples from other songs, is that ok?
No. Samples are the property of the owner of the original recording. Anything you submit must be your own composition and not infringe on any existing copyright.

Will I get feedback on my track?
We can’t promise to provide feedback but we will listen to every submission.

Hello everyone,

Happy NearlyEaster! I’m back to tell you what we have coming up for you in episode 54 of FirstPlay, which is out this Wednesday and nearly as high as we can count.

This week we don our finest not-getting-shot trousers to review the awesomely mean but very playable Operation Flashpoint: Red River, and we also catch-up with two of our most anticipated games of the year: Batman Arkham City, with a brilliant interview from Rocksteady Studios, and Battlefield 3.

We’ve also got a reviews round-up of recent PS3 releases including movie tie-in Rango and geek-chic slash ‘em up No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise. Then we’re wading through mucky manbits as we deliver our verdict on Bulletstorm online, chat to Guilty Gear and BlazBlue brains Daisuke Ishiwatari and Toshimichi Mori, and because it’s Easter and we love you, list our favourite PlayStation easter eggs. Oh, and there’s our regular screenshot galleries too, this week including The Darkness 2 and Alice: Madness Returns.

All of this comes for the teeny price of 99p, which can be made even teenier if you buy a 12 week subscription at £8.99.

We always want to hear your thoughts and feedback, so get in touch on FirstPlay@futurenet.com, or we’re on Twitter at @firstplay_uk. I’m @nathanditum, producer Dave is @bodbod and assistant producer James is @James_Jarvis.

And don’t forget you can sign up for the FirstPlay newsletter at http://www.firstplay.co.uk/register to have regular news and content updates delivered directly.

See the Future of PS3. First.

A week ago, Sucker Punch shared a couple of new inFAMOUS 2 missions, as well as the full download, so to speak, of the game’s User-Generated Content tools.

A full UGC suite in a game like I2 is a new experience on PS3, so what can you do with it? And how difficult is it to put something together? Sucker Punch Senior Game Designer Karl Deckard sat down with us to demonstrate how to remix something fun.

As a huge devotee of the first inFAMOUS, I was eager to get my hands on the DualShock 3 to try out the new single player levels. Here are my impressions to go along with the video:

“Forced Conduits”

This mission from the 2nd island of New Marais finds me stepping into the trainers of Evil Cole. He’s got a sickly pallor, and his every attack glows a fierce red. Eeee-vil.

This mission sends Cole on a search for a blast core – and more power – somewhere in the warehouse district. As I make my way towards the target on the mini-map, I try out the revamped parkour system. Those who thought Cole was a bit too sticky in the first game will find that smoothed out. Jump and towards a handhold, and he’ll do the rest. Scaling is quicker, and overall Cole just seems to move a bit faster.

Blasting open some crates, I discover a safe. Sorry Cole, but our Blast Core is in another warehouse! We don’t come up entirely empty-handed – inside is the deed (and location) of 3 potential hiding places for our treasure.

I’m now set upon by ice-imbued bad guys with frosty shields that resist my electrical attacks. I throw a handful of mini-grenades over one enemy’s head. Not only do they take him out from his unprotected flank, but they also destroy the wall from behind him – a nice surprise. In general, the city itself is not impervious to Cole’s attacks. The damage makes you feel like even more of a bad-ass.

On the hunt for the core, I run into more frozen foes: troops who skid across the ground on a path of ice (a la Iceman), and a huge Ice Crusher, who promptly starts kicking my ass.

As I enter the 3rd warehouse, enemies seal me in and fill the place with gas. I climb to above the plume, and ponder an exit. That’s right – the grenades! I blow out a wall, sending the gas streaming out through the hole. The safe I find, however, is empty. One more to go.

This one must be it – not only due to process of elimination, but because it’s crawling with enemies. Screw entering from the door – I blow a hole open in the wall and make a beeline for the safe. All is well, except for that huge ice boss!

Some well-placed grenades take off his left arm. Then his right. I now have the option of launching into a QTE. I don’t mess these up… Ah, but I didn’t plan on the snipers shooting me from the warehouse rooftop above – they pick me off before I can pry that beast apart, and by the time I recover, so has he – with a pair of new arms.

Fortunately, you’re not forced to repeat the process – with enough of an ass kicking, he goes down. The Blast Core is in my possession, along with a bonus: Bertrand’s briefcase. The day is mine!

“Demons”

The demo opens with Cole searching for an “old man,” presumably Bertrand, in the remains of a crashed helicopter. Instead, he finds a 10-story-tall hard-shelled Behemoth that’d be at home at the Cloverfield family reunion.

The beast’s carapace deflects everything I can throw at it, and its only weak spot seems to be in the mouth – when it’s open. Running away from it, I zoom in with a tap up on the D-pad when I can and unleash a sniper shot. Shooting over the shoulder is easier said than done, but the shot packs a mean wallop when it lands.

Violence begets violence, and the creature’s response is significant. It starts spitting acid and kicking cars at me, keeping me on the run. After receiving another massive hit on the kisser from Cole, it rears up on its hind legs, its ribcage swinging open like the gates to Minas Tirith. Revealed within, some brightly lit and tender looking parts, which I’m all too willing to shock with Cole’s powers.

The stakes are raised – the beast calls for reinforcements, in the form of crawling larvae and a horde of man-sized mutants (which should look familiar if you’ve seen previous I2 demos). They only complicate the matter as I split attention between the hulking monstrosity’s weak points and fending off the smaller attackers with melee strikes from the Amp (which feels awesome, btw).

The New Marais’ townsfolk now start pitching in, taking shots at the fell beast with RPGs and whatever else they have at hand. The behemoth turns down another street, and I double back from behind. Seeing no weak point, I run through its legs, only to find that I’ve gotten too close – a tentacle grabs Cole and is pulling him in – only a well timed shot saves our hide.

It’s time to end this. Discovering one of Cole’s new powers, I levitate a cop car using R2, and then aim and hurl it into the beasts final functioning organ.

The day is won. But what *was* that thing? I’ll find out soon, along with the rest of you.

Just a few days ago we hosted a large press event with editors from the US and Europe where we gave everyone a first taste of our expansive multiplayer mode in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. I’m sure you’ll easily find your way to the many articles that hit the net today if you want to check out an independent perspective of what was shown. Read on for our own rundown – we’ve got so much to share that I don’t even know where to start!

First off, Uncharted 3 multiplayer is a complete evolution from the initial foray we made into multiplayer with Uncharted 2. The leap forward in gameplay, technology — not the least of which is 3D stereoscopic support — and depth is nothing short of astounding, no joke. Our goal has always been to take the signature Uncharted gameplay and our penchant for awesome set-piece moments to serve as the key building blocks for creating a multiplayer experience like no other. We dipped our toe in with Uncharted 2. Now, with Uncharted 3, we’re diving in headfirst.

The Uncharted 3 Multiplayer trailer, which was JUST released today, is the best crash course on everything we’ve revealed about our competitive multiplayer modes — and more. Check it out below.

At the event we provided the assembled editors hands-on time with two of our multiplayer maps – The Airstrip and The Chateau. Both are great examples of the whole spectrum of map design and dynamic environments we’re aiming to have available in Uncharted 3.

The Chateau is a more traditional style arena map, with multiple levels to take advantage of our unique Uncharted traversal options — including ziplines. The Airstrip is a two-part map where the location and map layout actually changes in the middle of the match! The first part of the match takes place on a massive cargo plane being chased by trucks, with players jumping from truck to truck and between the cargo plane and the truck convoy. You can see some of this better in the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer trailer we released today. The second part of the match begins when the cargo plane is about to take off from the runway. After takeoff, the match changes locations for all players to the airstrip hangar area for a slightly more traditional multiplayer setting and layout. Just watch out for the fighter planes that will inevitably come in for a strafing run.

We revealed two of our new competitive modes, along with the perennial favorite Team Deathmatch. One is Three Team Deathmatch, which is a small-team 2 vs. 2 vs. 2 variation on Team Deathmatch. The other is the oft-requested Free For All – with every player out for themselves. Over the months left until release – that’s about six-and-a-half months if you’re counting – we’ll detail all of our competitive modes.

As you’re looking to get into matches, we’ve made some updates to make it easier to get into games quicker, and with your friends. The first is Late Join, which is a staple of many online games and for good reason. It ensures that matches stay full, that you can get into matches faster and you can get into your friends matches faster if there’s a slot for you, instead of waiting for your friend to finish their current round. We’ve heard that many of you want to play with a friend on the same couch and we’re really proud to say that we were able to not only implement same-console split screen but you can log into two independent PSN IDs for most gametypes – the ones you can’t are to prevent unfair collusion between players.

Playing with friends and creating a team environment is extremely important for us and we’re trying to encourage this with the Buddy system. Each player will be partnered with a Buddy and you’ll be able to collectively share your successes throughout the match with each other. You can even pick up Treasures — more on that later — for your Buddy. The Buddy system also allows you to choose to spawn on your Buddy if they are safely out of combat so you can jump into the action together quicker. This is key since most of our game modes are all about team play and teams that stick together will do far better than teams who don’t.

New to Uncharted 3 multiplayer is character customization. Both heroes and villains skins will have a hundreds of customizable parts, from accessories to shirts and pants to a deep weapon customization feature. Even named characters, like Drake or Sully, will get plenty of options to make your character your own. Hand in hand with customization is our emblem editor. If you’ve worked with emblem editors in other games, you’ll be pretty familiar with the one we’ve implemented in Uncharted 3. Our emblem editor extends the level of customization of your online profile with hundreds of decals, three layers, rotate and scale functions – you’ll see your final emblem on your character and even possibly in the environment during matches.

Speaking of weapon customizations – it goes beyond the cosmetic. We have weapon mods that not only change the look of your weapon of choice, but they are functional too, adding precise scopes, bigger clips and more!

Boosters are back in Uncharted 3, but we didn’t just carry over the Booster selection from Uncharted 2. There are a few old favorites in there, but we’ve created what we feel is a more satisfying mix of old and new based on your feedback and selection patterns. We’ve extended the Booster system with a special subset of Paid Boosters, give you a one-time Booster that you spend some cash to have the option of using during a match. There are still other ways to get minor advantages during a match. You have to option to select a specific Medal Kickback, which activates when you’ve racked up the required number of Medals for that specific Kickback. You can see this in the Multiplayer Trailer when the RPG Kickback is activated at 00:50 into the video. You’re taking a little chance when you select these, as some really choice Kickbacks require you to get a significant number of Medals before you can activate them.

Those are a TON of customization options you can pick through and we know that you don’t want to be bogged down in menus in the limited time before the match begins trying to figure out which sets of customizations you want to slot for that match. We’ve introduced four slots to save specific loadouts — your starting rifle, starting sidearm, weapon customizations and mods, Boosters, and Kickbacks.

All of these customization and modifier options allowed us to extend our in-game reward system. No longer is everything tied to level gain or cash. During matches, you’ll have the opportunity to get items from treasure chests on the maps. You’ll also be able unlock a wide variety of items and modifiers through Missions. There are two types of Missions – some are instant missions and others, accessible from the Multiplayer menu, are more long term. Instant missions can appear in the middle of a match and provide a target that you can complete within a few matches tops. The Missions you select from the Multiplayer menu will take significantly more time, days of playtime possibly, and the rewards will be accordingly more significant.

A couple of things we’ve learned over the past year and a half of reviewing thousands upon thousands of Uncharted 2 matches is that it really sucks to be blown out on the way to losing a match and that winning or losing a tightly contested match by some kill made way off-screen is a bit of a letdown. We’ve thought of some ways to make these inevitable multiplayer moments a bit more exciting and satisfying. Power Plays activate when one team is way behind in the score count. They provide the team on top with an opportunity to maximize their cash for the match, while evening the odds a little for the team on the losing end of the equation and giving them the opportunity to close the gap a little.

If matches are too close to call as they get close to the end, Overtime will activate, giving either time an opportunity to win the match by more than one point within a limited time. If the game is still too close to call, the match enters Sudden Death. Sudden Death is similar to Elimination – there are no respawns and the last player standing wins the match for their team.

We’ve also made it easier to share your passion for Uncharted 3 multiplayer with your real life friends and family through social media hooks we’ve added to the game. We’ve integrated Facebook into the game in a way unseen on a console game so far – way more than just sharing videos and photos, or updates to your Wall. USA Today has an exclusive look at our plans to bring social networks into Uncharted 3. Cinema mode has gotten a revamp allowing you to create clips from full matches and upload them directly to your own YouTube OR Facebook account (or both). We’re streaming a tightly curated list of awesome Uncharted videos created by you – our community – back into your multiplayer menu via Uncharted TV. We’ll have more details on all of the above over the next few days.

Oh yeah, and we have a brand new Sprint button. Don’t hate on it until you’ve had a chance to go hands on! We feel it works extremely well and, of course, we’ve built Uncharted 3 multiplayer to take into account that you can sprint.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about competitive multiplayer, but what about co-op? Fear not, co-op is most definitely IN Uncharted 3 multiplayer and it too has been vastly expanded upon. We didn’t cover anything co-op related at our multiplayer event last week – everything and anything co-op will be revealed further down the line.

When can you get a crack at Uncharted 3 multiplayer? In just a couple of months – the Multiplayer Beta for Uncharted 3 begins WORLDWIDE on June 28, 2011, with early access for PlayStation Plus members or by purchasing copies of Infamous 2 (excluding Australia).

Stay tuned as that date draws nearer for more details!