Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction reviewed

It's Ratchet and Clank game time once again boys and girls.  And after exhausting all the PS2 and PS2 ports of the PSP games, I've moved on to the PS3.  And this time, the series is going to the FUTURE for some reason.  So what's the future like?  What new changes come with the upgrade to the PS3?  How mighty is Captain Qwark's pecs?  Well...not mighty enough sad to say.  It's just more of the same as I'll explain.

We find our two heroes fixing a hoverbike and taking it easy...again.  Then it turns out there's an alien invasion going on decimating the city being led by the evil Emperor Tachyon, leader of the extinct race The Cragmites!  Tachyon's goal is simple, he wants to destroy all Lombaxes which Ratchet is obviously is.  Eventually both of them race towards the Lombaxes greatest invention which has the power to open up any dimension which could lead to the return of The Cragmites....which is up.  Meanwhile, Clank has been attracting some weird things like The Zoni who are some mystical robot creatures.  Also, robot pirates are involved.

The game play is very similar to most of the previous Ratchet games.  Ratchet and Clank fly to some world, there's a bunch of things to kill and Ratchet kills them with many types of weapons.  When you kill enough things the weapon levels up to become more powerful.  Yeah, not much has changed has it?  I know some people, probably AC/DC fans, are going to be all like "If it's not broke, don't fix it...maaaannn!".  It's not broke, but it's all stale and complacent.

That's the thing, there's nothing fresh or exciting while I was playing this.  I didn't really have much fun and nothing the game did made me forget that I wasn't actually having fun.  Anything this game did could be done on the Playstation 2 with the exception of some of the character models being a bit smoother than they have been in the past.  There's nothing really epic, no big set pieces and nothing really to push the envelope or expand our minds or something like that.

Oh wait, the this game does try to utilize the PS3's SIXAXIS controller which is something different I guess.  If you don't know or remember the SIXAXIS, it's pretty much that you can actually control the game....THROUGH THE CONTROLLER ITSELF!  Whatever way you tilt the controller, that's where whatever you're controlling(not necessarily Ratchet) tilts!  And it's a utter failure since it's way too sensitive and way too frustrating for it be even remotely effective.  Many times I tilt just a little and the thing I'm controlling just goes flying off every which way.

This is the most disappointing Ratchet and Clank game I've played yet.  Sure the PSP ports were somewhat worse but they were ports, I had very little expectations for them.  The only thing I expected out of them was that they not be blights upon humanity and they weren't.  But this one I did have such expectations that it would be good and be grand and be everything it should be on the PS3 and to see that it wasn't really sucks.  It does what it does well, but you can tell the seasonal rot is setting with the exception of the ending in which it promises a whole new direction and fires up my imagination.  But other than that, it's all very meh.

6/10

Secret Agent Clank, PS2 port , reviewed

Well boys and girls, the time has come to say goodbye to the Ratchet and Clank games for the PS2.  After three games, one contested game and two PSP ports I have played every single one of them and reviewed all but the first game.  So for a goodbye, we have this review of Secret Agent Clank, something even more atypical than Deadlocked.  Now just because something is different, doesn't make something bad as long as it still has its spirit.  However, being bad and poorly made does make something bad and that's the case of Secret Agent Clank, the other PSP port in the Ratchet and Clank series.

So you guys remember the show-within-the-game Secret Agent Clank where Clank is James-Bond type and Ratchet played his bumbling chauffeur Jeeves.  It went out of its way to establish that it was fiction when Clank flat-out told the evil Dr. Nefarious that he was an actor before being dismissed as squishy lies.  Yeah, that's false now and Secret Agent Clank is real during real life spying and saying hilariously bad one-liners.  But during one of his missions...in real life, he catches Ratchet stealing the insanely valuable Eye of Infinity and then saying living under Clank's shadow made him do it...and this is Ratchet, not Jeeves.  Of course Clank doesn't believe Ratchet did it and he's out to find the Eye of Infinity and prove his innocence.  Also, Captain Qwark is also there stealing Clank's glories for stories for his autobiography he's "writing".

This game is divided into three or four types of gameplay: Clank, Ratchet, Captain Qwark and Gadgebots if you don't consider them to be sub-missions of Clank.  Clank's sections of the game pretty much plays like a normal Ratchet and Clank game...except it's just Clank.  You have a bunch of weapons at your disposal that you can level up like a boomerang bowtie, a man-eating rose and a flamethrower briefcase.  Sure, you could be stealthy and the game does reward you for that with multipliers for more bolts plus you have a cool little mini-game where you press four-buttons to do a stealth take down.  It's pretty cool.  And every so often you get to play a decent rhythm game including one instance you play it while you play poker.  I never thought I had to type that sentence.

As for Ratchet's section, do you guys remember all those death matches at some coliseum in the other games?  Good, that's exactly how this plays.  You pretty much get all the weapons Clank has to get and/or buy and smuggles them into cakes, then kill everything.  Sometimes there's a secondary objective but if you don't die and don't stop killing everything you should be fine.  But the penal system at least has decent looking prison scenery like the workout area, the cafeteria and even the prison showers.  Shockingly, everybody can get naked in the showers with only censor bars covering their shames.  I wish I never had to type that sentence.

Then there's Captain Qwark's section and it's even more mindless than Ratchet's since you had to change weapons with him.  All Qwark has his fists of heroic punchingness and his mighty blaster.  I would say that if it wasn't for the fact that since this is Qwark writing his autobiography with ghostwriter Barney, it gets twisted into a weird sense of exaggeration and lies.  Qwark would flat out state that monsters were bigger and had laser eyes where they usually had none.  One level, Qwark just decides to have a spontaneous opera about his deeds where it combines him kicking everybody's ass and hilarious lyrics.  I didn't think I had to type that sentence but I'm totally glad I did.

So what's wrong with any of those scenarios?  Nothing really in a turn-your-brain-off wham-bam explosion fest.  However, the way it's actually constructed is horrible.  I already talked about how Secret Agent Clank moved from the holotube or whatever passes for television in that universe to the real world which is already stupid.  But then it basically reduces Clank's levels as barely-coherent setpieces, Ratchet's levels as dramatically inert and boring and Qwark's levels as just there to provide a crappy deus-ex-machina ending.

Obviously, I can forgive that to an extent if that was the only thing wrong with it.  It isn't.  The loading times are simply atrocious!  Each time you load something it takes 30 seconds as opposed to the 10-15 seconds that every other game had...EVERY OTHER GAME including Size Matters.  That is simply unacceptable to me and worse, it's the flying in space animation.  What's wrong with that?  Well, you don't have one level per loading screen, you have two...ok, one if you're playing as Ratchet or Qwark.  But when you're playing as Clank, you have a loading screen of you flying in space and then you come back IN THE EXACT SAME PLACE!  Then when it does have to load, the music starts looping in 1-second intervals scaring me that the game has glitched up.  Nothing happened but what if it did.

The sad thing is that this game had all the right pieces for it to be a good game, at least better than Size Matters.  It's just way too stupid to put them in the right order.  I know some people would like the game since it's the equivalent of a summer movie with explosions and a lack of plot.  I like those movies as much as the next guy but to see something assembled in a ship-shod manner irks me...a lot.  This is only for the die-hard Ratchet and Clank fans.

5/10

Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters review

As you guys should probably know by now, I'm a big fan of the Ratchet and Clank series.  At the very least, these games have provided some great entertainment even if it got off to a rocky start with the first, not-quite-good game.  But those PS2 games from Going Commando to even Deadlocked were all good games.  Then the future happened and the games started going to the PS3 but in between the PS2 era and the PS3 era, there were two games made for the PSP that were ported over to the PS2 and today, I'm talking about the first one Size Matters...the PS2 port of course.

After the events of all the games, Ratchet and Clank are taking a well-deserved vacation and hope to not be kidnapped and forced into a gladiator-reality TV show.  However, a little girl comes up to them and wants the duo to do some hero stuff for her school project and, of course, they say yes.  But then robots come and kidnap the girl with the only clue is an artifact from Technomites, beings that created technology.  So now their vacation is cut short as Ratchet and Clank must find this little girl and learn about the Technomites.  Oh, Captain Qwark is here looking for his real parents for some reason.

Since this is a PSP port, you do have to expect some things to not as good.  For one thing, the graphics are pretty weak.  The colors are all washed-out, the FMV's are fuzzy and it's not as graphically busy as the other games but you expect that with these kinds of ports.  What people should never, EVER expect are piss-poor controls.  There's this sense that something is just off...and then you jump.  That's where the problems begin when jumping is a bit slippery.  Then you try to glide and that is utterly pathetic, you're pretty much going into a near-vertical fall without going forward.  Not to mention that you don't get the rockets but the helicopter...but that's just personal preference.

But what is not personal preference is how bad the camera controls are, as in it works when it feels like it.  And when you do need the camera to work, that's when it doesn't feel like working.  Then you get attacked or you fall through a pit.  And then we get to the skyboarding parts of the game, the obligatory gameplay where you don't go around shooting everything that moves which were always fun distractions.  Not here in which the horrible controls unleash their horrible....uhh...horribleness!  It takes you from a world where the controls may be horrible, but at least they made sense into something where rules no longer apply.  One wrong flick of the analog stick goes you flying 90 degrees into the wrong direction...into a wall...where you wait while everyone else passes you by.  I hate those levels.

However, there are good things in this and all of them relate to the writing.  If nothing else, the story is wonderfully paced and it moves at a very quick clip.  There isn't much chance for boredom to develop.  Also, the duo still has their charms and chemistry to keep things from being a bit too dire.  There's even a couple levels that are actually awesome and work quite well in the confines of a PSP game: a journey into Ratchet's mind and when Ratchet has to go inside Clank to reboot him.  Both levels showcase great visual inventions and even nice throwbacks to the previous games, which makes them the only two levels that are worthwhile.

Alright, despite what I'm saying and that it's even worse than the first game...it's still not all bad.  The game is short enough to not wear out it's welcome, keeping frustration to a manageable level.  Ratchet and Clank still are as fun and as hilarious as ever.  Even the levels are OK with the two aforementioned levels being awesome.  It's a bit sad that the controls don't measure up with the previous games, which gets me thinking if things are this bad with the PS2.  How bad is it with the PSP since I don't think it has an analog stick?  But I digress, you won't suffer too much playing it but it can be safely skipped.

6/10

Ratchet: Deadlocked reviewed

Like I promised, here is my review of Ratchet: Deadlocked ending this improvised theme of Ratchet and Clank reviews...barring the Wolverine review/tangent. So this is a very radical departure from the previous Ratchet and Clank games and I mean radical. Hell, radical might not be a strong enough word for this. But by some miracle, this game still works....I'll explain more on the way!

After your heroic exploits from the past games, the evil Gleeman Vox from the evil Vox network(guess what's it making fun of...it rhymes with Vox) has kidnapped Ratchet and Clank...and the tech guy, Al(he's in the first and third game so he's not exactly new) for a show. A show that kills off some heroes like The Running Man, only without Schwarzenegger or puns. Anyways, you have to survive the games with only your robot buddies as your guide...and Clank, who is demoted to side-character that says stuff like "This item does something awesome." and "Do this to beat the level".

So the game strips away 99% of the platforming elements and sticks to action...and a little bit of the fun. Since you don't have Clank you can't glide or do any fancy Clank-based jumps and come on, that was the best thing in the other games. Granted, you don't need to do those things cause you're too busy shooting stuff but the fact that Clank's not with you is sorely missed. But you two robot buddies who help you kill things, like ROBOT ZOMBIES, are surprisingly competent and will shoot anything that needs to die and not shoot you. At least you have your Charge and Gravity Boots even if the Gravity Boots are so very useless in this. Since when do you need to use them in a plot-related manner!

So in a turn-your-mind-off thing, Deadlocked does its job and does it well as you shoot up things with a vengance. But it's differences from the previous games are shocking and a bit jarring. The best thing you can do is to think of this as a side-story that has nothing to do with the main plot or better yet, just a game based off of Annihilation Nation from Up Your Arsenal.

7/10