(Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/14/2025)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time
Developer: Insomniac
Publisher: SCEI
Genre(s): 3D Platformer, Third-Person Shooter
Platforms: PS3
Release Date: October 27, 2009
Calling A Crack in Time a “Ratchet & Clank” game is a bit of a misnomer at this point. An honest reworking of the title should have “& Clank” in parentheses because the two titular characters are still estranged due to the circumstances that concluded Tools of Destruction. Ratchet is still searching far and wide across the solar system for his cerebral chum, but unlike Quest for Booty, which puts the player alongside Ratchet’s aimless goose chase, the opening sequence of A Crack in Time takes us directly to Clank’s whereabouts. The inner sanctum of the enigmatic Great Clock not only finds Clank suspended in one of its chambers, but two more familiar faces that PS2 series veterans should squeal with delight upon seeing once again. The asteroid that was carrying the hilariously maniacal Dr. Nefarious and his deadpan, posh butler Lawrence has finally managed to magnetize to a planet’s gravitational pull and save these two tin cans from their eternity of surfing throughout the oblivion of space and from being every game’s throwaway post-credit gag scene. This lucky occurrence (for us, not the characters) allows the series' fan favorite villains to reclaim their positions of steering a Ratchet & Clank game’s conflict in the narrative. In this case, Dr. Nefarious has been collaborating with the Zoni to gain access to The Great Clock’s volatile core, known as the Orvus Chamber. Dr. Nefarious wishes to visit the sacred section of the universe’s time equalizer as its foretold to harness the potential to change the course of the space-time continuum and alter the past, which is exactly why the Zoni intervene in his schemes and bar his entryway into the chamber. Once Nefarious ends his partnership with the Zoni, the confrontation that ensues awakens Clank from his slumber, which leaves him free to navigate through the grounds of his supposed birthright. Meanwhile, Ratchet is on cue continuing his quest to reunite with his robotic buddy, with Captain Qwark serving as emotional support. However, Qwark retrogresses to his consistent series role as a recurring character when Ratchet learns of the existence of another Lombax named Azimuth (or “General Alister Azimuth” if you’re inclined to feel formal), who is also en route to The Great Clock in hopes of using its time-bending capabilities to reverse the tragedy that befell the Lombax race. Because Angela was actually a termite or dalmatian or something, the excitement we’re intended to derive from such a pairing is Ratchet interacting with someone of his own species for the first time in his life. Beyond their shared furry surfaces, Azimuth’s age and relationship with Ratchet’s father situates this curious stranger as a beacon of wisdom and enlightenment to potentially quell Ratchet’s questions pertaining to his origin and background, something vital in expanding our understanding of Ratchet that even the calculating Clank can’t possibly provide. Honestly, I was kind of enjoying the shared screen time between Ratchet and Qwark, for the deluge of drivel that is constantly downpouring out of this dunderhead makes me appreciate Ratchet more as a protagonist.
It should go without saying at this point that Ratchet & Clank in high definition still looks like a million bucks. Still, A Crack in Time continues to add some flair to the “Future” presentation that warrants discussing it past Tools of Destruction, laying the glossy groundwork. I suppose that I’ll summarize the subtle presentational quirks in A Crack in Time with a question: Does Ratchet & Clank fit the distinction of a “shooter” game? One certainly spends an inordinate amount of time shooting an eclectic selection of guns across the Ratchet & Clank series, but it hardly shares much commonality with the undeniable examples of the genre like Half-Life and BioShock. It’s like debating whether or not golf and billiards are sports or if Alice in Chains and Soundgarden are heavy metal bands: the mix of non-traditional elements at play makes the consensus rather complicated. Regardless of whether Ratchet & Clank firmly fits the bill with the generation-defining giants of the PS3 era, it sure does borrow enough of their framework in order to proclaim some kind of overt association. When Ratchet and Qwark were being escorted through the ancient Temple of Zahn by the native fongoid chief, an audible “hmm” reverberated in my larynx when their conversation hadn’t been transferred over to an automated cutscene as per usual. While Qwark was characteristically fretting over the potential danger that might confront them in this dank pit, Ratchet was free to jump around like an idiot, similarly to Gordon Freeman eradicating a man’s lunch in the microwave when he’s supposed to be preparing for the test chamber, if you can catch the correlation I’m alluding to. The aforementioned steampunk undersea odyssey also implements seamless cutscenes into its gameplay, but the connective comparisons between it and A Crack in Time are far clearer when Ratchet purchases a new weapon. The GrummelNet vendor now provides animated orientations that instruct the player on what to expect when they invest their bolts into their deadly wares. With the quaint animation style of a 1950s TV commercial or PSA on display, humorously depicting acts of violence with these weapons, I could’ve sworn that I had sunken back down to the depths of Rapture and was dispensing my ADAM at a Gatherer’s Garden machine. These little presentational kinks are admittedly minor and don’t impact the series in any significant fashion, but they do suggest that Ratchet & Clank want to be contenders like Marlon Brando in the then-trendy shooter landscape of gaming instead of festering further in the 3D platformer genre that was already bleeding when it was born.
As much as I am amused by their entertaining advertisements, I don’t really need any commercial incentive to maximize the space of Ratchet’s arsenal. The arsenal in question seems to follow the same pattern as that of Tools of Destruction, in that a plethora of genuinely interesting and innovative picks are slotted in with the standard, safe regurgitations. There’s a laser pistol, a bomb chucker, a missile launcher, and I’m pretty certain that “Buzz Blades” is the exact same variation of the swarming saw blade dispenser ripped straight from Tools of Destruction. Did they not catch this mistake, or are they now beyond their former capacity to care in the slightest? This unfortunate boner notwithstanding, I can’t declare total creative bankruptcy on Insomniac’s part because A Crack in Time does incorporate some truly ingenious ways to blast bolts out of enemies. Another tactic that this selection evidently seems to utilize is disguising established weapons with a new design. I’ve shredded the paint off of machines with a concentrated boom of offensive energy before, but it’s never been channeled out of the gastric eruptions of a creature’s belches with a frequency meter attached to increase its range of effectiveness. The “Sonic Eruptor” is quite disgusting if one pauses for a second to think about the schematics of its usage. Ratchet has also summoned a floating robotic helper to shoot enemies for a short period, but the “Agents of Doom” can’t quite match up to the personality and bloodlust of “Mr. Zurkon.” The “Negotiator” may seem like the series standard sniper rifle, but we can’t forget that all previous examples of this long-range firearm were inappropriately utilized as a sort of narrower shotgun. Conversely, this variant of sniper rifle will only prove effective if the player uses the scope to dispatch enemies from a distance, and I can’t tell if using it in this traditional manner is a downgrade or not. The “Constructo Shotgun” should accommodate close-quarters combat, even if calling a weapon a “shotgun” seems rather crude for a Ratchet & Clank game. Some of the more unique weaponry at Ratchet’s disposal here includes constructing an electric fence with the “Tesla Spikes” and calling forth a Lovecraftian superbeast to snatch enemies with its tentacles to presumably devour them from an interdimensional portal with the “Rift Inducer 5000.” Even with intergalactic travel as a feasible convenience, there still exists the disquieting element of the unknown in this universe. The Raritanium upgrade system that Tools of Destruction introduced has been totally omitted in favor of simple, streamlined leveling, minus a few modifications one can make to some choice weapons. The concept of “items” has also been wisely removed, which means that this game’s Morph-O-Ray (which transforms enemies into apes this time around) and the distracting disco ball summoner have been promoted to indispensable inclusions in Ratchet’s arsenal. Oh, we’re getting down tonight, alright.
A Crack in Time’s weapon selection seems like the sparsest the series has seen thus far, but maybe that’s an illusion caused by the gadgets being assigned to the respective cardinal directions of the controller’s D-pad instead of clogging up the weapon wheel. The “Slingshot” persists as Ratchet’s mode of crossing chasms, and his boots are still multifaceted enough to climb on magnetic surfaces and skate on lengthy, looping rails. Ratchet’s boots also foster the game’s greatest innovation on the gadgets, which many returning players may not even recognize as a spin on an old classic. Remember the Hover Boots? The auxiliary attachments to Ratchet’s footwear that allowed him to turbo boost for a second and then hover about a meter above the ground at the languid pace of an airport travelator? Do you also recall that they had next to no utility? Well, A Crack in Time has officially decided that the hoverboots should be propelled out of their pointlessness to the forefront of the game’s alternate instances of traversal. One aspect of innovation implemented into the hover boots is serving as Ratchet’s gliding mechanism in lieu of Clank’s absence, so not every double jump has to be coordinated with perilous precision. Instead of instantly petering out, this brand of hover boots does the inverse. The player can manually rev the boost feature of the hover boots to exponentially increase the leisurely speed of their base movement. Rushing at a precarious velocity is also incorporated into the pervasive platforming ramps, where Ratchet will thrust himself upward like he’s ski jumping and bounce off a series of airborne platforms to eventually reach solid footing. Knowing the year of this game’s release, it’s a miracle that quick-time events weren’t factored into the zigzagged leaping. Because of their augmentations and ubiquitous usage, I now take Ratchet’s rocket shoes seriously and often find myself zooming around with them even when there are no ramps around. I’m also easing up on them because I can now shift my mockery towards the “Omnisoaker,” a new gadget that acts as an all-purpose liquid dispenser. Sure, the fact that it can absorb water to grow plants, oil to crease rusty wench hinges, and spurt the nectar that the throngs of those ground piranhas crave is nifty. Still, the best that a series synonymous with mechanical ingenuity can come up with is a glorified Super Soaker? Lame.
Outside of the few ways that A Crack in Time’s settings shuffle the standard rate of traversal with a few platforming mechanics, they barely shake the mold of a Ratchet & Clank level. The environments that encompass this quadrant of the Polaris galaxy include your muggy jungles, crowded metropolises, a space station or two, a gladiatorial arena where Ratchet kills hordes of hired goons for a surplus of bolts, etc. I enjoy the open range at the center of Krell Canyon and the all-out battle that commences with Dr. Nefarious’ army, but the atmosphere is not chaotic enough to distract me from the deja vu of riding around the arid areas of series past. Speaking of past peculiarities, the Valkyrie Citadel on Vapedia, where Nefarious’s Rubenesque robot women call home, is practically stripped from a scrapped Spyro level, given its uncanny design and aesthetic to Insomniac’s former IP. Amongst the prevalent repurposing of level themes, A Crack in Time does actually showcase something unprecedented that is perfectly aligned with the game’s greater narrative foundation. The fongoids are a tribal race of creatures that have a significant screen presence in A Crack in Time due to Dr. Nefarious's crash landing near their civilization in the Tombli Outpost of Zanifar. Since taking an interest in him, Dr. Nefarious has naturally been exploiting their unadorned naivety for free labor, and it’s had a seriously deleterious effect on their society and environment. Because Nefarious’ influence has rendered Zanifar a blustering tundra, the seeds that sprout the gigantic vines cannot grow, and therefore, Ratchet cannot use them as organic grind rails. That is, until Ratchet uses a time portal that transports him back to a prosperous moment for this planet and plants seeds that then transform into massive green stalks that rival those from famous fairy tales. Similarly, the fongoid population of the planet Morklon is retroactively saved when Ratchet jumps backwards in time and intervenes in a bloody battle between them and the brutish agorians. With Ratchet’s assistance, the setting transforms from a desolate realm of failure to a thriving fongoid community who erect a commendatory statue in his honor. These are the only two instances where time travel is a key component, and it’s rather disappointing considering how pertinent the science fiction concept is to the overarching narrative and how it reinvigorates level progression. The Zoni and Orvus harp on the fact that time is a constant that shouldn’t be altered or taken for granted, but could we bend those rules a bit to give A Crack in Time some much-needed distinction?
If the levels insist on treating their new time travel mechanic with unnecessary restraint, the player can still find broader strokes of innovation elsewhere in A Crack in Time. Interplanetary travel in Ratchet & Clank was formally conducted in a scrolling menu once Ratchet returned to his ship, and the process of arriving at the selected destination was but a series of automated scenes with Ratchet darting around the blank regions of deep space. While the straightforwardness of this method has never totally disillusioned me, it is admittedly the epitome of a dry and direct method of orchestrating travel in a video game–so much so that I’ve used it as an example of such for other titles that implement something similar. Occasional bouts of flying around in Ratchet’s snazzy space vessel were prominently featured in the first two PS2 games before Up Your Arsenal deemed them unfit for a combat-intensive title and Tools of Destruction watered them down by automating the acceleration like a rail shooter. When Ratchet left the first planet to rescue Qwark, and I was commanding his ship, I was relatively pleased to see that the space missions had returned. When there was no immediate directive steering the scene, my moment of clarity upon realizing the bigger picture caused my eyes to widen with sheer surprise and elation. The outer space medium between every planet in the Polaris Galaxy is now a fully interactive sandbox where the player can pick and choose objectives on their own volition. Such objectives run the gamut of alternative activities typically offered in this non-linear dominion, including side quests involving errands done in the interest of the mechanical vullard merchants and escorting various NPCs to their desired destinations by tethering them to Ratchet’s ship. Satellite drones are in abundance and will sic a battalion of battleships on Ratchet, so his ship’s artillery isn’t neglected, and each portion of the galaxy features a half dozen moons to explore and potentially grab a stray zoni or any of the game’s other collectibles. Walking around one of these gravitationally thin orbital bodies evokes the same feeling as wandering around on the Obani Moons of the Solana Galaxy. The sublime, impeccably dazzling atmosphere exhibits the indescribable beauty and wonder of the final frontier. The shooter genre may have been the special item on gaming’s menu during this era, but the liberal space that the open-world format newly enabled thrust the medium into truly radical parameters. Once the breadth of the open-world design became comfortably tamed with time, Ratchet & Clank used it to correct its most underwhelming gameplay aspect marvelously.
Similar to when Mario obtains a star spirit in Paper Mario, Ratchet hyperdriving to another sector of the galaxy upon finishing his business in the previous one briefly shifts the scene to Clank and his current on-goings. While speculated to be oppressively held captive like Princess Peach, the Zoni are rolling out the welcome wagon for Clank as an esteemed guest in the nucleus of the universe. In fact, since Clank is apparently the offspring of deceased Great Clock caretaker Orvus, all of his screen time is spent training to take his mantle with the aid of a goofy trashcan droid named Sigmund. The tasks assigned to assess Clank’s professionalism are what fundamentally distinguish his gameplay this time around from how it was performed before, unless one wants to argue that his new time staff makes him more adept in combat. Between whacking enemies with the staff in the interest of pest control, Clank’s priorities will be focused on two distinct minigames. One sees Clank dragging a laser over a model of a planet being afflicted with “time anomalies.” The scope of the objective here seems like suitable work being conducted to keep the universe in a state of homeostasis, but Clank will become profoundly bored because he could perform this task in his sleep (if he slept). On the other side of the coin, I’m not entirely certain what sort of omniscient healing is done with the temporal recording puzzles, but they do genuinely give the ol’ noggin some exercise. Essentially, Clank must satisfy pressing a sequence of locks simultaneously, which is achieved via recording himself performing one or two of the required steps and materializing the actions as a “ghost” of sorts. Unlocking the exit after the circuitous and entangled process always fills me with a rush of gratification, as any worthy puzzle should. Clank’s periodic limelight time has never had this extent of prominence, and the puzzle-intensive sections here solidify the gameplay yin and yang between him and his action-oriented furry friend. It’s a shame then that only one minigame satisfies that stark dichotomy between them.
The eventual teary-eyed reunion of Ratchet and Clank also isn’t the game’s climactic resolution as one would probably expect. Fortunately, neither is the defeat of Dr. Nefarious. While I appreciate the entertainment factor that the cone-headed mad machine still displays, his returnee status, matched with his lackluster motive for warping space and time, makes his presence poisonous for the crux of the story. Somehow, the developers recognized this and have simply propped Dr. Nefarious up as a red herring for the true antagonist of the story. Once Ratchet clobbers Nefarious enough to where his head is playing space-age Young and the Restless on a loop, Azimuth murders Ratchet in cold blood after his plan of reverting time to save the Lombaxes is vetoed by our heroes. Clank slightly defies his father’s wishes by turning the clock back marginally enough to prevent Ratchet’s untimely death, and then they both face off against an enraged Azimuth in the final stretch of the story. People often express shock and sadness at Azimuth’s heel turn, but the writing was all over the walls. During a cutscene, one character calls the Lombax elder something of a “disgrace” to his people, and this negative reputation likely stems from the fallout of the Cragmite War, considering that Azimuth speaks of it like a broken record. Given the context behind his initiative, we can infer that the supposed nobility of his aspirations is marked by hints of selfishness. This is why even upon hearing of the unfathomable devastation of toying with the Clock and what it will do to the universe, he doesn’t bat an eye. He’d rather erase everyone who thinks of him as a failure if he never gets the chance to rectify what created this public consensus in the first place. Azimuth’s character depth and the pacing throughout his time in the spotlight make the game’s falling actions effective, but he infects the narrative with more melodrama than a Ratchet & Clank game can handle. Good thing that Dr. Nefarious can still crack smiles!
Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time is a game that demands your respect. No, I’m not exclusively referring to the weight of its semi-emotional story, although it would indicate some sense of intended sincerity. Ratchet & Clank was blessed when it outlived its PS2 platformer peers and has decided not to take its second wave of relevance for granted. Ratchet & Clank had to adapt to the conditions of the ever-changing gaming landscape, and all of the nip and tuck operations performed certainly maintained its youthful glow amongst the new wave of intellectual properties. The free-ranged space sections should persist as a series requisite, and the game achieves an organization standard with Ratchet’s arsenal that every first-person shooter should take note of. There are still some signs of series stagnation, but at least A Crack in Time makes a significant effort to spruce up its elements instead of relying on the 720p output of the PS3 as its mark of evolution. Tools of Destruction made me weary of how the franchise would carry on past its PS2 prime, but A Crack in Time’s “future” is bright enough that I’ll at least apply some sunblock to be safe.
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