Ratchet & Clank Series Review

I must admit, this game slipped through the cracks of my library for whatever reason. Maybe it's because I'm not a kid and have spent too much time playing serious games that I wound up overlooking it. It got good reviews on gamefly, they sent me Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, and it was a great game!

First things first - R&C is a series aimed at children with it's cartoony characters, silly dialogue and lack of mature elements like blood and whatnot. It is a shooter but it's a very original and fun shooter.

They boast inventing new, unique weapons and guns (a lot of them!) for every game they release, and they can be as weird as shooting tornadoes out of a gun and whirling enemies around, or as seemingly standard as a missile launcher. It has great range, and they typically do a good job of integrating every gun into your arsenal and making a use for every one.

This game has great range, too. While the cut-scenes are definitely silly, they craft them well and they're pretty entertaining to watch. The story really isn't the backbone of the games, but it at least gives it a reason to advance from level to level (as if blasting people wasn't enough, right?). But the point of the game is essentially "Hey, cool, a new gun! Let's go kill stuff with it!".

Gameplay: This game is a primarily a 3rd-person shooter, but also has several elements of flying shooters, racing, platformer, even side-scrolling adventure and beat-em-up. The main element of the game is exploring areas, finding objectives and, oh yeah, blasting guys with your cool guns, gadgets and other weaponry.

There is a monetary system that R&C uses involving bolts, so you can use these bolts to buy weapons, ammo or armor. You earn bolts by smashing crates or killing guys. It's a common thing among adventure games to have a system like this, but at least in this game you have a big array of choices to make with your money. Although, it's not as if you need to work particularly hard to get all of the items in the game. If you smash all of the crates and even pay a little attention to gathering bolts, you'll be able to afford whatever you want. But, that's good considering the game is so heavily revolving around the concept of "look at all of these cool, wacky guns we made!".

The great thing about this game's gameplay is how it is both linear and non-linear at the same time. There's an obvious path that needs to be followed to get from start to finish, but there are also sorts of other paths you can take to explore to find rare items, fight more guys or do side-missions. In both of the R&C games I've played, a lot of the areas have several sub-missions that are not required, but are very fun and test your skills if you choose to take them on. A staple among the games seems to be a combat arena with all sorts of varying challenges within the "kill lots of guys" objective that the game carries.

Presentation: As I had mentioned, the game is aimed at kids, so it's going to be cartoony, silly and exaggerated. As a whole, it looks fine. No real complaints, but don't expect it to be some gritty, dark game that sets any sort of serious atmosphere. It's a happy-go-lucky game in just about every form.

Theatrics: Their stories, like everything else, are aimed at kids but a slightly more mature range of kids, perhaps in the 9-14 range. Their cut-scenes are very tolerable - no obnoxious voices or ridiculous happenings. They tell a story, have quirky characters, but they're to the point. Overall, it's following the basic rule to cut-scenes: if they have to be there, make them at least interesting to watch.

Controls: The controls are the unfortunate low point of this series. They try their hardest to integrate the controls such as a kid can pick it up and play, but a skilled user can also pick it up and play well. The unfortunate thing is that sometimes it just doesn't work very well considering how crazy some of the fights can get.

Their controls have improved during the life of the series as they made greater auto-aiming so you're not wrestling against the controls and trying to hit somebody when it should be pretty straight-forward pointing and shooting. Their use of strafing or basically operating like a standard 3rd person shooter (basically a 3rd-person shooter with 1st-person shooter controls) has improved also. You can run around firing in the true 3rd-person style the same way a beat-em-up or combo-button-masher game would work, if you want to. I actually played that way for a while until I got adjusted to their strafing controls. They're a little awkward but pretty decent once you get used to it.

One huge down side is their motion sensitive controls. I really don't enjoy motion-sensitive controls only because I think motion sensitivity is a gimmick and most of the games that use them won't be remembered as a great game several years down the road. They almost seem tacked on and entirely unnecessary. Not that a lot of the points of the game use them, but when they're used it's kind of irritating. I'd rather just use my analog sticks and buttons instead of trying to balance a controller in space without wildly flailing around. Maybe I'm just too old school, I don't know.

Replay Value: As far as I know, no R&C game is multiplayer (I've only played 2 of the 3 most recent releases), so it's a 1-player game. As an adult, I played through them both without going through again, and they gave me a good 8-10 hours each. Not bad, but I don't know if I would go through them again. It doesn't seem like there's much I missed during my first playthrough, but I can see myself playing all of the games in the series sooner or later, so I suppose that is a good sign.

My Overall Rating: 8.6
(Keeping in mind that I've only played Up Your Arsenal and Tools of Destruction)

What I'd Change

- I'd get rid of any motion-sensitive controls in the game only because I think they're completely unnecessary and they scream "gimmick" when this game is anything but.

- A little multiplayer would be great. If you could play split-screen multiplayer and fight missions co-operatively, it'd really push this game series to the next level. I actually would not recommend multiplayer against one another just because of how crazy the gameplay is. It's really meant for one vs many, not one vs one.

- You can't ever have too much content. I'd wonder how much better this game would do with more side missions that are non-essential to completing the game and are discovered by wandering around their psuedo-open-world environment.

- I would also cut down on the use of pitfalls, only because I get stuck in them somewhat often by mistake when I'm exploring the area. Pitfalls should be a challenge, not something that's just thrown in there to make a map border or something.