LOS ANGELES — The latest Ratchet & Clank is all about cooperation. And competition. At the same time.

I played the PlayStation 3 title alongside a member of the Insomniac Games development team at E3 Expo earlier this month. The two of us had a hell of a time jumping and shooting our way through Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One’s well-designed platforming levels. While we chased the monstrous Z’Grute beast through the city, we engaged in (somewhat) friendly competition to see who could collect the most Bolts, the game’s form of currency.

Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, which Sony will publish Oct. 18, can support up to four players at once. After Ratchet and Clank themselves, your third and fourth players will be series co-stars Captain Qwark and Doctor Nefarious. The health meters of the enemies you encounter will be raised or lowered based on the number of players.

Players can team up and compete with one another both locally and online, and you can expect to frequently shift between screaming and hugging, depending how much you secretly hate your friends.

Though the idea is to get together and take on levels as a team, it’s more fun to think of All 4 One as a race to see who can get the most points. In order to collect those precious Bolts, you’ll have to break crates and kill enemies before your partners beat you to them. (This push-and-pull between cooperation and competition is similar to The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, a GameCube title that Nintendo will release for DSiWare in September.)

You’ll have access to a variety of weapons along with a grappling hook, which can be used to latch onto your friends and environmental objects. This allows you to leap gaps and swing across chasms in satisfying fashion.

Though you might be screaming at your friends to stay away from your Bolts, certain parts of the game require cooperation. For example, after hitting a certain checkpoint and buying a certain Combuster gun, you and your team will start encountering bigger, badder enemies and obstacles that require simultaneous shots to destroy. In order to proceed, you’ll have to rhythmically tap the Fire button in harmony with your friends.

You’ll also have to work closely with your partners while steering the game’s vehicles, some of which will require you to shift your weight by moving back and forth in tandem as you fly across pits of spikes or electrical fields.

We dove and leaped through a series of platforms and levels, all finally culminating in a battle against the Z’Grute beast that required nothing but good old-fashioned teamwork. Once we used our Combuster guns to knock out the Z’Grute, the demo ended.