I got a closer look at Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time at a press event last night, and I came away with a pretty convincing reason to want to play it.

But before I share that reason, I should point out two things: 1) I'm officially designated as one of the top fifteen fans of Ratchet & Clank in the entire world. I have the wall-mounted certificate to prove it. 2) Ironically, I haven't been very excited about the last few games. Sure, I enjoyed them, as was my obligation as one of the top fifteen fans of Ratchet & Clank in the entire world. But since Going Commando -- or was it Up Your Arsenal? -- I've felt that the developers at Insomniac have been resting on their genius laurels, basically reiterating their genius forumula with slightly misguided ideas about what to do differently: add multiplayer, make it more like an arena combat game, focus on super-duper upgraded PS3 tech, and so forth.

So naturally, when it came to A Crack in Time, due out next month, I was only as excited as was necessary to retain my status as a top fifteen fan. But then I saw what Sony unveiled last night.

I'll tell you about it after the jump.

In the past, the Ratchet & Clank games have consisted of charming and bright cartoon worlds. You jumped from one to the other, usually by sitting through a loading screen of Ratchet flying his ship through space. In a couple of games, you could sometimes play a glib but enjoyable space shooter interlude between certain planets. But when it came down to how the galaxy was laid out, it's wasn't really a galaxy. It was a list. You chose the world you wanted to visit from the list. It was making a menu selection instead of flying to a planet.

A Crack in Time changes that.

Now the galaxy is laid out as a sort of space overworld. You fly an upgradeable ship through a wide-open "sector", visiting moons to collect parts to upgrade your weapons and ship, unlocking planets by taking out their defensive satellites, and even just exploring. It's not exactly Grand Theft Spaceship, but it is a wide-open space adorned with Insomniac's attempts to make a living world. Traders go about their business, a brilliant comet soars past, asteroids hover about in a thick cloud, and majestic planets loom in the background. Yes, you can fly to them. There you'll play the platforming/combat/non-space parts of the game.

But there's no hurry. Along the way, visit some of the many moons out here. Some are platforming puzzles, others are battlegrounds. To visit them, you fly your ship to a beacon, land, get out of your ship, and get busy, all without a loading screen. You can refer to a map, which indicates what upgrades and advantages you get for visiting optional moons, each a delightfully round world. To some players, these Little Prince scale worlds will recall Mario Galaxy. But us top tier Ratchet & Clank fans remember these miniworlds as a Ratchet & Clank innovation long before Mario took to the stars.

There's no Z-axis in the space areas, which means you're flying on a flat plane, so you can't go up or down. This keeps things manageable and arcadey, as does a clear radar display in the corner of the screen. There's plenty of shooting, but it seems that you can take out the enemy ship generators when you're ready for some peace and quiet (assuming you've got the firepower). These sectors are full of optional challenges for players who want to power level before progressing along the storyline. Alternatively, you can always go back and forth between the game's five "sectors", each its own expanse of space, unlocked as the story progresses.

One of the things lacking in the previous Ratchet & Clanks was a sense of a unified world. The games have been brilliant, but they've lacked any sense of wider setting or geography. They were lists of levels. A Crack in Time changes that. Although Insomniac's main bullet point so far has been the new time-bending tricks, they've obviously given a lot of thought to space as well.