time, Jak 3 was being developed by Naughty Dog, a company closely tied with Insomniac. Naughty Dog's Jak & Daxter series and the Ratchet & Clank series are in similar genres; each game in both series' has been released at a similar time and both contain references to each other. Ryan Schneider, an employee of Insomniac, said, "The analogy that I like to use is that at Insomniac we like to look at it as how Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant act when it comes to their professions. We don't really look at it as how we compare to other athletes or other games, we just try to do the best that we can and elevate the sport." Reception Before its release, IGN was highly anticipating the final version of the game as they had played two previous versions of the game already. Concentrating on the multiplayer aspect of the game, they praised the developers for moving a solely platform game into the multiplayer genre so well. Up Your Arsenal was featured at the E3 games festival in 2004, where there was a playable demo. Only the multiplayer Siege mode and a single-player demo were available but they were enough to get 1UP.com's award for best action game at E3. Soon after its release, Up Your Arsenal received critical acclaim. GameSpy awarded it 5 stars out of 5, and IGN said that "You MUST buy this immediately" due to its extensive line-up of weaponry, high quality graphics and polished sound effects. IGN did, however, believe it was easier than the previous game, Going Commando, while GameSpot thought that the gameplay was too similar to the previous title, but both reviewers considered these as minor issues and they made little difference to the overall score. Gaming magazines GamesTM and Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine both mentioned that the offbeat comedy that was apparent throughout the majority of the game was one of the points that made it unique. X-Play said "A mixture of excellent gameplay tweaks and new activities make the third one easily the strongest game in the series and one of the best games of this year" and giving it a full five star rating. According to Metacritic's collection of reviews, 12 separate reviewers gave the game the highest possible score. In 2006, Edge Magazine featured a "Time Extend" article on Up your Arsenal and among other