Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal reviewed

Hey guess what? It looks like I'm on Ratchet and Clank kick so since I've reviewed Going Commando, am going to review Arsenal and will review Deadlocked next week. As for the first game, I don't know where that went. Either I sold it or my brother took it and hasn't given it back....or maybe it's hiding out somewhere in the garage...eh, playing that would be bring back some angry memories.  I never got the love for Ratchet and Clank.  The first game wasn't all that good even though it had good ideas.  Going Commando was decent but still flawed. Now for Up Your Arsenal...I did say that was when the series finally found it's identity even though it mostly charts the same course as the previous games. So with that said, let's dig into Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal.

The first game had a boring story. The second game only had 2/3's of a story but it was a good 2/3's of a story. Now combine that good story of the second with a real ending like the first and you got the story of structure of Arsenal. The evil Dr. Nefarious has returned(he was before the games) and you need to grovel at the feet of Captain Qwark, the guy who's been your arch-enemy for the past two games, or you would if he didn't think he was a monkey. So you have to get his memory back, defeat Nefarious and shoot things with your many guns in this fun story.

The character models are detailed better and the worlds are larger here but that's a given. However, a few levels do fall back on the first game's philosophy of "Let's see how many flying cars we can put in this level!". It doesn't happen that much but when it does it's kinda jarring. Especially since the Going Commando distanced itself from that mindset.  The real standout is playing the Captain Qwuark vid-comics since it has that look and feel of an old-school video game complete with animated interludes between the comics.  It's just a great way to distance that from the main game.

At first, I was a bit disappointed that it was just mostly shooting and didn't have any other game-modes other than a side-scroller with the Qwark vid-comics. Then I remembered that those other modes were really frickin' difficult! It also amps up the action with fewer platformer elements and that's pretty good cause the platforming elements never really mesh with the first two games. But they are still there in Arsenal...it's just in death courses which is understandable, they are death courses for crying out loud!

8/10