Tag: ratchet and clank

Gamer’s Dayjournal; Vol I: 5th Time is the Charm Edition

     Welcome to the inaugural edition of Gamer’s Dayjournal™, my totally serious attempt at a daily chronicle of all the latest gaming news give or take a couple decades. Think or it more as your latest update on whatever game happened across my desk at any given period. While this daily foray into an arbitrary wormhole is sure to set trends and amass a following, if you’re reading this first post then consider yourself a charter member.(Note that charter membership comes with no benefits, intangible or otherwise.)

With that out of the way, let us dive into the uncharted territories of re-charting territories. That is, when to go back to old games in lieu of pulling something from the non-stop deluge of new content constantly being released by the gaming industry.

As a rule, your time is better spent with a good game you haven’t played as opposed to a good game you’re returning to. That is the law of diminishing returns at work, or another way to put it….

This theory did not in fact hold up for the newer episodes of HIMYM.

Obviously there’s risk to diving into something new. Time is a valuable commodity and there’s always a risk that you’ve set forth on a piece of mediocre debris that will gobble up valuable hours before you realize what you’ve gotten yourself into. (The game industry is actually better about this problem than most; critics seem to have a more consolidated opinion about what makes a ‘good product’ than those for other platforms of media, but this is a topic too expansive for an aside.)

As they say, variety is the spice of life and the most fulfilled go out of their way to discover the new/exciting and leave the nostalgia in their memories where it belongs. With that said, I’m replaying Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time for at least the 5th time.

This definitely will end well.

Ratchet and Clank is up there as far as gaming franchises go for me and CiT is the crème de la crème. At times I’ve felt it’s the best game ever made (if you check the under-kept list on the site, it’s at #2 behind Mass Effect 3) and here I am again, putting off gems like Resident Evil 2, Kingdom Hearts 3, and Red Dead Redemption 2 so I can dust off my PS3 and revisit this bad boy.

I don’t feel shame in returning to CiT because it has the ineffable quality. It’s that quality that brings people back to Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. It’s the quality that comes about when you’ve been playing high quality series for years and it culminates in an experience that just works on every level. There is a chemistry in some stories that leave you at a loss at how to describe why you love it, you just know that you want to revisit it as much as possible.

You know, that ineffable quality.

I can begin to dig at some of the things that work so well in CiT. Clank might be the most likable sidekick in any mascot-platformer. Insomniac smartly waited for this to deploy their first recurring villain and the story explores a past and stakes that were set up in the previous game to great effect, making the conclusion of this game all the more rewarding. (Note: Tools of Destruction, while inferior, did a lot of leg work to make the overall story better. I make myself play it before I replay CiT every time.)

It’s also just a really fun game. Ratchet and Clank always is. Still, this is a journal entry, not a review or retrospective or gushfest. (Okay, it’s kind of a gushfest.)

How can you not fall in love with this face?

Future entries can dive into the nuances of what makes this particular game great, but I think there’s an important lesson to learn from just beginning this silly thing:

Embrace the new…. but feel bad about coming back to your old flames every now and then.

Until next time.

If there is a next time

Spoiler-free Review: “Ratchet and Clank”

This is a review for the original Ratchet and Clank, developed by Insomniac and released in 2002 and again in 2012 as part of an HD collection. It does not refer to the game released in 2016 which is a full-scale reimagining. 

Two decades ago, Insomiac Games saved themselves from a dire financial situation by releasing a little game called Spyro the Dragon. The game was successful enough to segue into a couple of sequels and the company was able to stay afloat.

In 2000, the PS2 was released and Insomniac was focused on their first game for new console generation. With a little help from Naughty Dog they managed to launch their longest running franchise about a heavily armed space cat and his robot friend/backpack. 

Ratchet and Clank is a third-person mascot platformer with a heavy focus on weaponry. The game revolves around Ratchet, a lombax (space-cat), and his adventures after crossing paths with Clank, a robot that has uncovered a plot by an evil executive to destroy the galaxy.

The bulk of the game sets up single path levels filled with enemies and gives the player a bevy of weapons to combat them with. The guns range from traditional fare like blasters and flame-throwers to more gimmicky guns like the “Morph-o-ray” which transforms enemies into chickens. What seemed like a massive virtual armory at the time is a little less impressive in the light of almost two decades of game development, but there is enough imagination to separate itself from the average shoot ’em up.

The other method Ratchet and Clank used to forge its identity was its humor. While presenting itself towards younger audiences in the footsteps of Spyro and Jak and Daxter, it snuck in edgy humor aimed at older players. It wouldn’t give up the whole ghost like Conker’s Bad Fur Day, a game dedicated to crude humor. Rather, Ratchet was modeled closer to the Looney Tunes approach, with subtler jokes i.e. naming the game’s ultimate gun the RYNO (Rip You a New One). 

The game balanced these key aspects with a variety of gameplay change-ups including hoverboard races, Clank puzzle sections, manning a gun turret, and grind courses. Somehow none of these minigames flopped or dragged on the flow of the game. The segments came rarely enough that they were always a welcome side-dish from the main course of running and gunning. 

For its time, Ratchet and Clank was amazingly fun with inspired design. Despite this, it’s difficult to recommend it now, multiple console generations in the future. For starters, the series didn’t add functional strafing until its second installment. This is the most constant annoyance throughout the game and it’s notable when the movement function is a default in all modern shooters. 

A less offensive drawback of the game’s age is the total absence of RPG elements. Health leveling also wasn’t introduced until the second game and weapon upgrades are rare, mainly being a factor in the second playthrough. The game is still completely playable but it is a disadvantageous contrast when comparing Ratchet to later installments.

Unrelated to the time it came out, the story has an uncomfortable second act. Without giving anything away, the chemistry between the two main characters is intentionally sacrificed for a plot point and it is not salvaged until the game’s closing third. 

So with all of these weaknesses, why bother with Ratchet and Clank in 2018? Why bother writing a review now even when I already concluded that it probably isn’t worth replaying? Bother with it because it is the start of something special.

The first game launched an amazing franchise that improved on its mistakes with each installment all the way up to the reimagining in 2016. While the 2002 edition is probably skippable, later games in the series aren’t and before I delve deep into those, I need to pay homage to their roots. 

Even with my hesitance, I’d very much recommend people go back and play the HD release of the game on PS3 if they have the stomach for it. The game isn’t a masterpiece by today’s standards, but it by no means broken and can still be a good time particularly for those of us that are nostalgic for the era of mascot platformers.

For those without the stomach or time for playing old games, I recommend reading a plot summary and watching the cutscenes. There was an edge to the first game that wasn’t captured in the 2016 version nor the accompanying movie that is worth preserving.

When that’s done, buckle up. As I said, this is the start of something special.