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If you live in Burbank, California — or just happen to be there Friday, October 23 — you should drop in on Insomniac for a Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time party.

Last year, the developer threw a similar Community Day to celebrate Resistance 2. Apparently, it was such a success that they’ve decided to give Ratchet & Clank the same treatment with rare swag giveaways and free food. There will probably be less crazy-fragging in multiplayer, given that it’s not Resistance, but you still probably get to play the game.

Only the first 120 people are getting in, so be sure to hit up Insomniac’s Facebook event page to make your intent-to-arrive known. Then it’s only a simple matter of showing up and boom! Ratchet & Clank party for you!

Insomniac Games Community Day to Celebrate the Launch of Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time! [PlayStation Blog]

I was jealous when I heard Stephen Totilo played Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep at the Tokyo Game Show. But even if he saw it first, it looks like he didn’t see everything.

Apparently there’s a board game-type of mode in Birth By Sleep that breaks up the hack ‘n’ slash monotony many non-KH fans complain about. The first I’ve heard of it appears in this magazine scan dug up by fans. According the amatuer translation, the board game mode is called Command Mode and playing the mode rewards you with power ups for your Command attacks in regular gameplay. I can’t tell if it’s optional like a lot of Final Fantasy grind-reducing mechanisms, or mandatory like the $#&%ing Gummi Ships.

The fan translation goes on to suggest that Board Points control movement on the Command Board and you get them by rolling dice. Landing on event spaces triggers chance cards and special characters will somehow help you during the board game by jacking Board Points from your opponent.

Hm. Didn’t Devil May Cry 4 have something like this…?

Oh, also, there’s a new character that appears in the scanned page. His name is something like “Master Eraqus” in English and the scuttlebutt is that this is supposed to be “Square” backwards. You know, like Disney’s “Yen Sid” character.

New Scan Shows off Apprentice’s Master, Land of Departure, Command Board [Kingdom Hearts Insider]

Kotaku has seen God of War III being played, and hot diggity, did it look good. Played it, too! Would you like to play it? Would you?

Sony Japan is giving out codes to download God of War III from the PSN Store as part of the promotion for Infamous.

The God of War III demo will be available on November 19 in Japan, and these codes can be redeemed between November 19 and February 2010. No word whether the demo will be available to those without these codes.

The game is expected to be out next March in North America.

God of War III Demo Dated [Siliconera]

Hideo Kojima might be making Metal Gear Solid games right now, but he’s made other games in the past. Games like Zone of the Enders. But when will we get that game?

Kojima tells PlayStation.Blog.Europe:

A lot of [people] love Zone of the Enders, and we love the title as well, especially at Kojima Productions and we always want to create one for the next gens as well.

Of course, Kojuma Productions has a long list of things we want to bring out, and of course Zone of the Enders is one on the top of the list.

However, we have to manage staffing and work around projects therefore it’s not going to be out too soon, but we are really considering it.

He also says that he wants to create an original title and he could produce Z.O.E.

Oh, and Kojima-san doesn’t have to make Metal Gear Solid anymore. Kojima-san doesn’t have to make Metal Gear Solid anymore. Kojima-san doesn’t have to make Metal Gear Solid anymore. Kojima-san doesn’t have to…

Kojima on Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker [PlayStation.Blog.Europe via VG247]

Remember that huge PSP in New York City’s SoHo? The one that was up since 2005? It has been taken down, sadly. But Sony has put up a new PSPgo billboard in SoHo — albeit smaller.

That’s okay! The PSPgo is smaller, and the economy is crap. And who can afford enormous PSP billboards these days?

PSPgoes For Smaller Visual Placement [Pasta Tech] [Pic]

I’ve always wondered if Pepsi guys, on vacation with the fams, ever pull into a McDonald’s and go, the hell with it, gimme a Coke. Of course, that’s a smidge different from deliberately buying and complimenting a competitor’s flagship product.

But give the Major his due, the Xbox Live community guru Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb has tweeted that he’s going to pick up Uncharted 2. If the context of this story escapes you and you also live under a rock, the game is a PlayStation 3 exclusive. And it speaks to the overall excellence of a game when your No. 1 competitor’s public face says he’s paying retail for it. Tweeteth the Major:

I’ll have to pick up UnCharted 2 this week. It’s being very well received. Congrats to @Naughty_Dog on a job well done!

Very nice gesture, but let’s not make a compliment of Microsoft into something greater than the credit Naughty Dog and Sony are due. Uncharted 2 is legitimately such a great game that it can be said everyone’s buying it.

Xbox’s Major Nelson To Buy PS3’s Uncharted 2 [Hot Blooded Gaming]

Drugstore Cowboy director Gus Van Sant and America Psycho novelist Bret Easton Ellis are partnering to pen a script based on the 2008 Vanity Fair article The Golden Suicides about the dual suicides of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake.

The film will be produced by Lionsgate, and Van Sant is currently involved only involved as a scribe. He and Ellis will be based on the original article written by Nancy Jo Sales. “There had been reports they had become ‘paranoid,’” wrote Sales, “obsessed with conspiracy theories, believing they were being harassed by Scientologists.”

Theresa was best known for her work on CD-rom game, Chop Suey, while her husband was a digital artist and graphic designer at Rockstar. She overdosed on pills, while her husband walked into the ocean and never came out. On the back of a business card, Blake wrote, “I am going to join the lovely Theresa.”

Gus Van Sant and Bret Easton Ellis Team to Write Suicide Film [Slash Film]

Popstar Nana Tanimura poses with a Ken from Fist of the North Star statue. As seen on Inside Games.

I’m glad Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron’s space-to-ground transitions made it into the multiplayer –- there was some initial confusion about whether or not the PSP Infrastructure could handle it.

But the final answer is yes. Yes, Elite Squadron can handle all 16 players leaping from space combat to ground battles and back again almost at once. Yes, it can get hectic and confusing. And yes, you will totally love it.

What Is It?
Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron is the latest in the cross-platform Battlefront series. This installment on PSP and Nintendo DS keeps level with the series’ theme of dropping players into “everyman” Star Wars characters with some special chances to play as “hero/villain” characters in certain levels.

What We Saw
I played six multiplayer Conquest Mode matches with an assortment of other games journalists and QA testers who totally owned our collective face. The worlds we saw are: Tatooine, some Clone Wars planet I didn’t recognize, Hoth, Kashyyyk, Dantooine and Mustafar. Conquest matches, for those of you unfamiliar with the series, involve capturing command points and destroying enemy spacecraft in a certain amount of time.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is out November 3.

What Needs Improvement?
Hey! I Didn’t Want To Go Planetside! If you’re flying a spacecraft, the game sometimes takes liberties with your locations. For example, you can hop in an X-Wing on the ground and try to jet up to space by flying skyward and pressing up on the D-pad – but the game doesn’t think you should be up there quite yet and so it either doesn’t send you right away, or it doesn’t send you at all. This same thing happens in the space-side of levels as well, which gets really annoying if you’re flying close to the planet while trying to shoot somebody and the game decides to send you planetside even though you didn’t press the D-pad.

Tough To Change Targets: You can lock on to enemies both in space and on the ground – but I was having a heck of a time figuring out how to change targets if I didn’t want keep shooting at something. This really became a problem if I happened to be targeting a turret on a Star Destroyer because my ship would automatically angle toward it even as I tried to jet away from the ship so I wouldn’t crash directly into it.

My Kingdom For A Melee Button! It seemed like you’d automatically melee-attack somebody when pressing the shoot button if they got close enough, however it didn’t happen all the time. I know there are some weapons that are automatically melee-only (e.g. lightsabers) – but if everybody has the potential to melee with their guns, I’d really like a separate button for it. I’m a huge fan of the pistol-whip.

What Should Stay The Same?
Space Combat: Loved it. Loved it so much, I actually started to avoid going planetside.

Escape Pods: A big part of the battle phase is destroying the enemy’s command ship that’s hovering above the planet. You accomplish this by bringing down the enemy shields (with the ion cannon that’s planetside) and then boarding the craft with your ship (easier said than done). Once inside the ship, combat changes to the ground format where you’re running around as a trooper, a droid or a special character. You’ve got to get to the reactor core station inside the ship and wreck it, whereupon it triggers a timed explosion. You’ve got about two minutes tops to either fight your way back to the ship you boarded with (assuming it wasn’t shot up) – but the best option is to grab an escape pod which sends you right back down to the planet.

It’s What Multiplayer Was Meant To Be: If you’ve ever gotten together a bunch of gamers to take a crack at any multiplayer mode, you know when things are going well. People enjoy themselves and really get into the rivalries. When a big event happens – like a command ship exploding – there’s a cry from the victim team and a cheer from the aggressor team. When somebody morphs into a Jedi at a random point in battle (depending on how well you’re doing), there are squawks of disbelief to see a lightsaber on the field. And when the match ends, there’s a collective groan because it felt like it ended too soon.

Final Thoughts
I’m buying it. I really hope my PSP-owning friends do, too, so I can gun them down in space.