This is a series I've neglected for a long long time, and I saw the original PS2 games for 300 yen a piece a month or so ago and thought it was a fine time to finally pick 'em up. I've still got the itch for 3D platformers in me after finishing Mario Sunshine and such, so this seemed like a perfect time to give Insomniac's PS2 hit a try. It took me around 11 hours to finish the Japanese version of the game, and I did not go and hunt for more collectibles.
Ratchet & Clank is the story of Ratchet, a wannabe hero who teams up with Clank, a robot on a mission to stop the evil Chairman Drek. Drek is a Blarg, and the Blarg's homeworld was overpolluted and overpopulated, so they need a new homeworld. Drek is harvesting chunks of other planets, destroying them in the process, and using the pieces to make a new homeworld for the Blarg. Clank and Ratchet set out to stop Drek's evil scheme, one step at a time, by collecting infobots slowly revealing where the evil chairman himself is hiding. It's a lighthearted and fairly simple story, but it's packed with lively characters and pretty locations. It's a bit odd hearing the quite iconic voice cast (which I was familiar with despite not having played the games much at all before) in Japanese rather than English (especially Captain Qwark), but it really grew on me after a while, and the dub is well done, as is the localization. Lots of important signs re textured to be in Japanese rather than English, good voice talent, good lip syncing. I admit I didn't get a lot of the story, both because I was often talking with friends onilne while I was playing, and also because the game has pretty crappy subtitles (granted the subs are only in Japanese, of course). For the first part, it hides the option for them fairly well, by not having them in the main menu's option menu, but only accessible from the in-game option menu (for whatever reason), and even then, that's only subtitles for in-game dialogue. Pre-rendered cutscenes never have any subtitles, and that really sucks as far as accessibility options go. The gameplay is a more linear action platformer, but with some adventure game elements. You travel to over a dozen worlds, each having several paths through them that lead to either optional or required items you'll need to progress. All the while you'll be collecting bolts (money) that you'll use to both buy more guns and ammo at the various store around the game, but you'll also need them to buy those required items at the ends of each of those paths (this IS from the Spyro the Dragon devs, after all XD). The levels are mechanically largely the same, but there's usually at least one gimmick in each to make it feel different than the last (including some levels where you play as either just Ratchet or just Clank). The game's combat uses Ratchet's wrench as your default melee attack, but before long you'll get scads of guns to use to blow opponents away. There are some 18 guns in the game (with some quite well hidden super versions of some), and those that use ammo each have their own ammo requirement. You have everything from a flamethrower to a camera-guided missile launcher to a laser that turns your opponents into chickens, and it's good fun smashing stuff and blasting things away. The game can get quite mean with withholding ammo from you, particularly if you die, as enemies rarely (if ever?) drop ammo and ammo crates don't respawn between deaths. This was quite a surprisingly challenging game. You can eventually upgrade your life meter about 2/3rds of the way in through the game, but you spend most of the game with only 4 hits between you and death, and the game is pretty stingy with handing out more health. it's also pretty darn mean with checkpoints and bottomless pits (especially on the magnet boot sections). Tie that all in with how this is a 3rd person shooting game with no strafing mechanic and the fact that Ratchet is pretty slow and has a big turning circle, and you're probably gonna die quite a bit. The game is pretty merciful in that there's no extra life mechanic, but the game has a lot of sections that didn't feel totally fair, and that I had to try over and over to see the best way of not getting overwhelmed by the hordes of enemies. Those enemy horde rooms are just one of the frequent "ugh" aspects this game has to it. A lot of later game enemies both fly, shoot guns, and take several melee hits. Ratchet also has only a couple guns that have any meaningful range to them. I spent most of the game using only a small handful of weapons since your hotbar only holds 8 tools + weapons (and you have 6 tools + those 18 weapons), and only a few weapons seemed all that meaningfully effective. Running out of ammo in the later game is a real death sentence, and it made the action get more often frustrating than tense. Then there's the aforementioned tightrope wakling magnet boot sections, the awful hoverboard races, the turret and ship-flying sections. The game has a lot of rough aspects to its design that make for a game that is just as often fun as it is annoying. For presentation, the game is fairly pretty graphically for a 2002 PS2 game. It's hardly the prettiest thing in the world, but the world has a colorful, fun style to it, and it really helps bring the zany, loud characters to life with how cartoony their designs are. The music is pretty darn forgettable though, and is very much "atmospheric" more than anything else. Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This is on the higher end of my hesitantly recommended list, but I really didn't feel comfortable giving this a recommended. It's not often I'm just "done" enough with a game to not even try to get the collectibles in it, but that was very much the case with this game. I'd say it's worth a shot if you can find it for cheap, but the overall product is such an "early 2000's platformer" for better and for worse that it very well might be more frustration than it's worth for a lot of people.
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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