Ratchet: Deadlocked Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 1/25/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Ratchet: Deadlocked

Developer: Insomniac

Publisher: SCE

Genre(s): Third-Person Shooter, 3D Platformer

Platforms: PS2

Release Date: October 25, 2005

There was nothing inherently wrong with the action/third-person-shooter-oriented gameplay of Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. Several fans of the first two games in Insomniac’s trilogy of humorous space adventures with a furry, anthropomorphic feline and his robotic backpack at the helm felt jilted at the developers emphasizing the shooting elements of the game while forgoing much of the platforming the previous games featured. While I understand the grievances on the upset of Ratchet & Clank’s gameplay balance, they must understand that platformers became square after years of oversaturation. The greater gaming landscape by the mid-2000s felt the need to incorporate firearms in every conceivable title released, as if the industry was subtly training our youth to form a militia against another potential British invasion. Half of Ratchet & Clank’s gameplay equation already involved guns in a sizable capacity, so hyperfocusing on the side that would smoothly assimilate to the changing trends of gaming was a no-brainer in preserving the series’ relevance. Besides, the moment-to-moment shooting sequences in Up Your Arsenal were dynamite, highlighting the smooth and dynamic evolution of the series’ combat refined through the trials of two previous entries. Ratchet & Clank is still a blast to play while fending off armies of slimy, repulsive tyhrranoids with a treasure trove of intergalactic guns as it is grinding on a series of rails. That being said, if I’m in the minority of fans who enjoy a gung-ho Ratchet & Clank experience, why did Ratchet: Deadlocked fail to capture my attention? This solitary spinoff released immediately after the original PS2 trilogy was wrapped up rejected all pretenses that Ratchet & Clank still had any semblances of a 3D platformer. Really, it’s a spiritual successor to Up Your Arsenal’s combat-heavy initiative. After finally replaying Deadlocked after it disappointed me so many years ago, I have now found the appropriate words to articulate why the action-intensive Up Your Arsenal persisted as one of my all-time favorites and Deadlocked didn’t.

The premise of Deadlocked sees a familiar trope of the series only seen as a subsidiary lark blossoming to the center stage. In both Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal, Ratchet would engage with the challenges of a gladiator-esque combat arena conducted under the guise of a televised program–satirically jabbing at our then-prevalent fascination to watch people in grievous pain on television. Seeing Ratchet dominate the airtime of both Galactic Gladiators and Annihilation Nation was certainly commendatory, but both of those game shows were bush league compared to Deadlocked’s “DreadZone.” While Dreadzone is an intergalactic sensation, they evidently don’t receive too many applicants eager to star on their show. Ratchet learns this the hard way when goons infiltrate the Starship Phoenix and abduct him along with Clank and Al and take them to the grounds of Dreadzone’s space station. Ratchet and friends have been forcefully contracted to compete in Dreadzone’s tournament of champions against their will as “Team Darkstar.” It’s a collaborative effort between all three, but Ratchet is the field man undergoing Dreadzone’s death-defying stunts in the name of entertainment. If they refuse to comply by removing the monitoring collars wrapped around their necks, their termination from the show will carry literal consequences, if you catch my drift. While Clank and Al begin working on deactivating their constricting neck vices, Ratchet must perform to the best of his ability and not succumb to stage fright–ensuring their survival in this sordid state of affairs. If a Ratchet & Clank game was going to verge closer to the spectrum of shooting combat, then expanding the gladiatorial arena aspect of the series to the expanse of a fully-fledged title is a perfect segway into this direction while being faithful to the series’ conceptual properties. All the while, the narrative is elevating the stakes of the premise to something genuinely filled with tension.

Even though Dreadzone televises a good portion of their episodes in a stadium located on their network’s space station, Deadlocked would be quite dull if every waking moment of the game took place in this confined building. Dreadzone is ostensibly such a phenomenon across the galaxy that their budget allows them to acquire filming permits for several different planets. Hell, the courses on each planet suggest that the production values for Dreadzone are extravagant, zoning entire countries of land for the development of their dangerous obstacle courses. While being an indentured contestant on Dreadzone still allows Ratchet to be the interplanetary traveller he’s always been, the locales don’t exactly feel as sprawling and organic as they did across each game of the original trilogy. Think of the linear, mission-based ranger missions from Up Your Arsenal and that’s the construct of Deadlocked’s gameplay in a nutshell. There is an overarching task for each planet divided into four or five objectives that will incrementally complete the primary goal. For the most part, each mission boils down to Ratchet blowing his way past point A to B with a few progression impediments that require Ratchet to make a slight deviation on his trek like screwing in a bolt with his wrench or deactivating a forcefield. Even when these impediments pop up, they’re intended to be dealt with by Ratchet’s new twin battlebot helpers who act as a surrogate for Clank. Having servants do the menial aspects of fieldwork is nice and all, but expediting the objective by enlisting their help makes the already impactless mission seem more trivial. When the mission bears some heftier narrative context like reactivating a forcefield for a planet that’s bound to be bodied by a storm of meteors without it, it’s not enough to distract the player from realizing that it’s the same old song and dance as every other mission in the game. Vehicles are incorporated into at least one task per planet, but they tend to wear out their welcome as quickly as the missions performed on foot. Not even the reinclusion of grind rails adds a hint of spice to these stale, bland levels. The only moments in Deadlocked that maintain a certain thrill due to their restrained presences are the exterminator duels, Dreadzone’s brick walls intended to smite contestants when they surpass their expected airtime that serve as Deadlocked bosses. Ranger missions in Up Your Arsenal were an adequate change-up from the standard Ratchet & Clank levels in moderation, and the same can be said for the cavalcade of challenge courses that Annihilation Nation offered. However, a game composed entirely of their simple, linear tasks will severely underwhelm the player and grate on their attention spans.

Naturally, Dreadzone is inclined to make their television product more interesting by unleashing their throngs of murderous machines into the fray. Dreadzone’s attempts to pulverize Ratchet with their malicious mechanized contraptions is what facilitates the series’ shooting gameplay, scattering the areas with the staticky nuts and bolts of the fallen enemies in Ratchet’s wake. Above all else, the Ratchet & Clank series is best known for its roulette of eclectic and creative weaponry, and each title in the original trilogy refreshed Ratchet’s arsenal for each subsequent entry to keep the player salivating at what kooky firearms the developers would devise. In Deadlocked, the weapon count has been reduced to about only a dozen, and they’re easily the least creative batch in the series thus far. At this point after three titles, the weapons of Ratchet and Clank have been cemented into archetypes, or at least it seems that way from what Deadlocked displays. The Magma Cannon is the same shockwave shotgun as the Blitz Cannon was back in Going Commando, The Arbiter is the latest incarnation in a long line of powerful missile launchers, and it's no coincidence that the Fusion Rifle can be used as a juggernaut weapon at close range just like the Flux Rifle despite its intended functionality. I’m convinced Ratchet conveniently had the Mini Turret Launcher tucked away in his pocket from the previous game. In the midst of all of these derivative copycats is the Scorpion Flail, the one exemplary pick from Deadlocked that kicks like a mule and is a more functional evolution of the supercharged melee alternative weapon that the Plasma Whip introduced. Alas, caving in the heads of enemies with the cybernetic medieval device is not enough to carry the weight of its half-assed contemporaries. One slight point of variation with the weapons that Deadlocked does implement is streamlining the elemental modifications that are purchasable from any vendor. The ability to equip any mod to any gun (even if it’s nonsensical like a bomb launcher that turns enemies into farm animals) is a true quality-of-life enhancement that can add a bit of flavor to the weapons if deemed necessary. Still, the ability to pick and choose whether to deprive a weapon of its maximum amount of ammunition and rate of firing acceleration seems silly to me.

While Deadlocked’s gameplay attributes are generally uninspired, the narrative is conversely pulling all the punches of another piece of Ratchet & Clank social commentary. One of the more understated elements of the Ratchet & Clank series is its penchant for subtly sprinkling biting comments on modern society at large through the lens of a lighthearted, cartoonish video game set in a future possibly several millennia away. Usually, Insomniac finds it imperative to critique capitalism and society’s fascination with celebrity culture. Deadlocked expresses the most overt commentary on these particular subjects, but this does not mean that the game doesn’t deliver something poignant. The series has already prodded at the exploitative nature of reality television, but Deadlocked dives deeper into the subject of who is profiting off the exploitation of others. Like Chairman Drek before him, Vox Network CEO Gleeman Vox has no scruples in how he rakes in the gonzo bucks. I’d compare his unmitigated avarice to a shark, but the developers already beat me to the punch by externalizing him as such. The form of a creature associated with cold and bloodthirsty character traits is quite fitting for Vox, for every bit of carnage he enables through his hit gameshow makes him salivate at the prospect of viewership boosting the ratings and how much commercial time he can put in to potentially make more millions selling his products. Death and destruction are what he craves to bolster his eminence as a media mogul, making him the most despicable Ratchet & Clank antagonist even without the developers giving him a Napoleon complex and a ponytail to do so. On the celebrity side of the satire coin, Vox’s favorite tool to use in his mission to fill an Olympic swimming pool with blood money is Ace Hardlight, the de facto star of Dreadzone due to his esteemed rank as the show’s top exterminator. I use the term “tool” almost literally, as Ace has no agency in his career thanks to Vox dictating his every action to keep him presentable to the public. Ace compromises the code he used to abide by as a hero, turning him into a megalomaniac as detestable as his corporate puppet master. Despite his name, status, and persona, the game effectively depicts Ace as pathetically as possible. He’s emblematic of the truth that any dashing big screen icon that people admire and or envy for their lavish lifestyle often has an ugly force of evil pulling their strings.

Unfortunately, the satirical story of Deadlocked is only substantial in a vacuum. Some Ratchet & Clank fans often express disappointment that Clank’s role has been reduced to a fly-on-the-wall tutorial like Bently was in the first Sly Cooper game. To compound on this gripe, I’d argue that the same impersonal regression applies to Ratchet. Sure, he’s still center stage as the protagonist, but it always seems as if he’s a secondary component to the narrative and it’s all happening around him instead of him driving it. The gladiator helmet that obscures his face isn’t only to protect Ratchet from bodily harm or possibly provide oxygen–it’s a muzzle that muffles his personhood. Outside of speaking to Clank and Al in between rounds, Ratchet doesn’t interact much with the Dreadzone-centric characters until he confronts both Ace and Vox near the end. By then, we almost forget that he has any relevance to the other characters. The conspicuous characters in Deadlocked’s story seem to be the corny and irritating commentators of Dallas and Juanita, plus Vox on the sidelines. Every moment on the field seems to be dedicated to their inane chatter, and most of the cutscenes involve them recapping Ratchet climbing up the Dreadzone ranks. They’re effective characters for the greater scope of the statement the game is trying to make, but their greater presence in the narrative over the titular character makes me wonder if Deadlocked could have existed as its original IP rather than branching off of an established one. It’s not as if Ratchet & Clank have a trademarked stranglehold on futuristic, animated shooter games with tidbits of satire abound. Because Deadlocked diverts the focus off the chemistry between the unlikely duo we all know and love, Deadlocked loses the classic Ratchet & Clank charm.

Replaying Ratchet: Deadlocked has affirmed the lukewarm feelings I’ve always felt towards it. However, re-evaluating this bite-sized serving of Ratchet & Clank content has made me question why I’ve always held Up Your Arsenal in high esteem. Does my exhaustion regarding Deadlocked’s shooting combat expose the faults of Up Your Arsenal’s concentration on this aspect of gameplay? While the combat in Deadlocked shares a stark similarity with Up Your Arsenal’s, the last entry in the PS2 trilogy was not solely a string of tests that proved the player’s shooting moxie. Up Your Arsenal still shared the plucky, yet epic adventure atmosphere of the two previous games despite it making a discerning effort to inflate the shooting aspects. Deadlocked, on the other hand, is essentially one long checklist of straightforward tasks that involve shooting, and the story isn’t so riveting that it prevents the tedium of playing through it to set in quickly. Speaking of Deadlocked’s story, it lacks a certain charisma that comes with the notable characters, choosing instead to have the game revolve around new faces that pronounce the satirical equation of the series more overtly than usual. Deadlocked verges too harshly in a narrower direction than anything the original trilogy presented, congesting itself with too much of one thing and making the player sick as a result. If Deadlocked is an isolated experiment to see where the combat threshold of the series is crossed, I’d say it stepped over the border about three planets in.

Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave 4/14/2021)

[Image from igdb.com]

Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal

Developer: Insomniac Games

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Genre(s): Third-Person Shooter, 3D Platformer

Platforms: PS2

Release Date: November 3, 2004

It's funny to me that Insomniac thought this game would be an utter disaster. They were given a deadline for November of 2004 and weren't 100% confident that they wouldn't deliver on the same level as the previous Ratchet & Clank titles. They shipped this game on the designated deadline, crossed their fingers, and hoped they wouldn't be responsible for the franchise's demise and Insomniac games' bankruptcy. It turns out that not only was this game a success, but it is by and large considered the best Ratchet & Clank game even after years of graphically superior sequels. The game that Insomniac worried would jeopardize their careers turned out to be the peak of Ratchet & Clank. This was also the game that made me a massive fan of the franchise and the one that cemented itself as one of my childhood favorites. It really begs the question as to why the finished version of Up Your Arsenal (which is an even better and raunchier title than Going Commando and also caused controversy. Europe and Australia didn't even think of a comparable substitute and just went with "Ratchet & Clank 3") made the members of Insomniac sweat. I don't think it's due to the developers' lack of confidence, considering this wasn't the case for the two previous games. If this is the game Insomniac released on a wing and a prayer, how did it become everyone's favorite Ratchet & Clank game, myself included?

Personally, this is my favorite Ratchet & Clank game because this was the one that introduced me to the franchise. This was the first I played, and it solidified Ratchet & Clank as one of my favorite video game franchises as a kid. Over the years, I've gone back and forth, deciding between Going Commando or Up Your Arsenal as the supreme Ratchet & Clank title. One would think it wouldn't even be close, considering the stellar reputation Up Your Arsenal has over every other Ratchet & Clank game. There is something slightly different about Up Your Arsenal from the previous two titles. As I've stated ad nauseam, each Ratchet & Clank game is a progression of what was already established from the previous games. Going Commando was exactly this for the first Ratchet & Clank. Up Your Arsenal, however, deviates from the original formula ever so slightly. When considering the make-up of Up Your Arsenal, my assessment proves to have cracks in it. Up Your Arsenal improves on aspects of Going Commando, but it is slightly different from the first two games.

The third Ratchet & Clank adventure begins as the titular duo is playing a game of intergalactic chess and watching TV in Clank's apartment from the previous game. While watching the latest episode of Secret Agent Clank, they get a breaking news flash that Ratchet's home planet is being invaded by an alien race known as the Tyhrranoids. They jet back to the Solana Galaxy and help the Galactic Rangers expel the invading Tyhrranoid forces. You might notice that this tutorial level is longer and busier than the tutorial levels from the previous two games. This level isn't just to teach newcomers the basic components of Ratchet & Clank: it's to ease veteran players into the very combat-centric gameplay Up Your Arsenal presents. If the first game was a platformer with rough shooting elements, Going Commando is the fine-tuned mix of both, while Up Your Arsenal is a shooter with some refined platformer elements. For those few that do not sing the same high praises for Up Your Arsenal, the combat-centric gameplay is the biggest point of contention. It's not the combat itself; it's just as solid as it is in Going Commando, if not arguably better. The problem is with how the combat eclipses every other aspect of the gameplay. Up Your Arsenal is easily the least diverse game in terms of gameplay variety, and the combat tends to overstay its welcome.

In Going Commando, the levels became more hectic due to all the advances to combat like strafing and the Nanotech health system. The gladiator arenas were added to further accentuate the combat and provide alternative gameplay from the standard platforming and level exploring. Up Your Arsenal has all of that, but it feels like it's the focal point instead of a piece of variety to deviate from the main type of gameplay. Almost every level feels like a warzone, especially any level with the thyrannoids. In fact, most levels featuring the slimy, googly-eyed "puss-buckets" are literally warzones. One new gameplay features heavily implemented in this game is the ranger missions. These occur on five planets and involve Ratchet and the rangers storming the thyrannoids or defending them from taking over a planet. Some are completely optional, but some require doing every single sub-mission. There are about five to six different sub-missions per Ranger mission, and they all pretty much involve defeating swarms of different types of thyrannoids or activating defense systems by turning screws with your wrench. These missions aren't bad by any means, and they are a great source of extra bolts, but why did we need more combat-based missions in a game that is already heavily combat-focused? On some of these planets, you already blast through waves of thyrannoids to get to the ranger missions, where you blast even more thyrannoids. The repetition tends to make the combat very stale sometimes. At least the vocoded banter between your distressed robotic comrades during these missions is always entertaining.

The gladiator missions are back on a single arena, broadcasted throughout the galaxy on the hit show "Annihilation Nation." Like the gladiator matches from Going Commando, you'll face waves of different enemies (not thyrannoids for once) with some varying themes to some of the matches and an occasional boss battle. Some differences are that sometimes a turret that looks like a disco ball emerges from the lava pool in the middle of the arena, and the commentator sounds less like a monster-truck rally announcer and more like a snarky wiseass like Norm Macdonald on Weekend Update. There are also obstacle courses on Annihilation Nation where you dodge lasers, falling platforms, fire pits, and enemies to make it to the end of the course. If you liked the arena challenges from Going Commando, Annihilation Nation will satisfy your bloodthirst...is what I would be saying if this wasn't the case for the rest of Up Your Arsenal. The Annihilation Nation challenges are similar to the gladiator matches in Going Commando. Still, they aren't as impactful as they were in the previous game because the rest of the game is, in essence, a gladiator match. Having the foreground of a televised gladiator arena doesn't make a difference when the rest of the game feels exactly like a gladiator arena. Not to mention that this idea was already done in the previous game. The obstacle courses deviate from the combat a bit, but once you've done one of them, you've practically done them all. There are about 30 or so different Annihilation Nation matches. They are good for bolts, but trying to do all of them gets to be mind-numbing. I much appreciate the limited number of gladiator challenges in Going Commando.

The saving grace of combat is the weapons. As a collective, the weapons in Up Your Arsenal are definitely the best of the PS2 trilogy. There are so many weapons that Insomniac had to implement a second weapon wheel to fit most of them. They upgrade exactly like in Going Commando, but each weapon upgrades four times instead of only once, making each weapon adapt incrementally instead of just evolving once fairly early on in the game, not adapting to the difficulty curbs. I tended to keep more weapons around in Up Your Arsenal because the advanced weapon upgrading gave me more incentive to keep them around for much longer. This improved upgrading system also makes every weapon useful throughout the entire game giving the player leeway to maximize the two weapon wheels instead of just having to capitalize on a few late-game weapons like in Going Commando. The standard weapon types are back, with the N60 Storm being the blaster weapon, the Nitro Launcher is the close-range bomb weapon, the Shock Blaster is a shotgun-esque weapon like the Blitz Cannon, and the "sniper rifle" weapon is back in the form of the incredibly powerful Flux Rifle. Some weapons from the first game like the Suck Cannon and the Agents of Doom make a come-back and are treated to the weapon upgrading system to make them powerhouses. The RYNO in this game is so powerful that you can only buy it on NG+. Some of the weapons from Going Commando are for sale, and they are sold by none other than Slim Cognito, my favorite seedy pair of eyes. Yes, of course, the morpho-ray is back, and it turns your enemies into ducks, and with the upgrade system, the ducks shit fire that can take out a whole fleet of enemies in closed-off spaces. The original weapons in this game are all useful and such a blast to use. The Spitting Hydra will target up to six enemies and shock them with electricity, the Rift Inducer will suck enemies into a black hole, and the Infector will confuse enemies to make them fight for you (not the most useful weapon, but a weapon that spurts mucus at enemies is worth an honorable mention). The weapon system introduced in Going Commando is perfected here, and it's the biggest factor in making heavy combat consistently enjoyable.

There are plenty of levels in Up Your Arsenal that are a bit less combat-oriented, but none of these levels are quite as multifaceted as the ones from the previous two games. Instead of dropping Ratchet off at a new planet and having him choose a path, most of the levels in Up Your Arsenal are linear paths with only one objective. There are levels with more than one part, like Florana and Aquatos, but the journey to each part of the level is usually a straight path. The previous games had different paths that would lead you to different objectives, some with new gadgets, plot points, bosses, etc., but the linearity of Up Your Arsenal reserves some levels for only one of these things. Obani Draco is a straight path to a boss fight. Zeldrin Starport, not counting the spaceship you go to through this level, is a run to a gadget. Because many levels only have one objective, many tend to feel very brief. The only level reminiscent of a level from the previous two games is Daxx which has three different paths with a new gadget, plot points, and a boss fight. It's not my favorite level in the game. Still, it begs the question as to why Insomniac chose linearity when they were obviously capable of delivering a level with branching paths like the first two games. The most unique level in Up Your Arsenal is definitely the Starship Phoenix, the first Ratchet & Clank hub world. It has a cozy atmosphere and feels really lived in because of all the familiar characters roaming around. There is plenty to do on the Starship Phoenix, and the game constantly has you coming back at certain plot points.

Most of the other gameplay modes from the previous games are totally gone. There are no ship battles, no racing, not even any grind boot levels. Nevertheless, Up Your Arsenal tries to diversify the experience besides blasting away at enemies. There is more Clank than in the previous game, but each of his parts has turned into an escort mission with Skrunch the Monkey. Thank god Skrunch doesn't have a health bar. Giant Clank only makes one return with a boss battle. The infiltrator puzzles are back again in an entirely new form with the bluntly named Hacker. The infiltrator puzzles have been shifted into full-fledged mini-games that can get pretty tense sometimes. I'd appreciate these much more if they didn't have so many waves to them, prolonging the length to an unnecessary degree. Crystal hunting makes a comeback in the complex sewer system of Aquatos. Each crystal you collect can be sold for bolts by the recurring series plumber who is apparently giving these crystals to his wife for an anniversary present. How...sweet of him? Unlike the open wastelands in Going Commando, the sewers are a dizzying, claustrophobic maze. With the gravity boots, it almost feels like navigating an MC Escher painting. With the music accompanying this place, it feels like Ratchet is on a surreal sewer odyssey. The only thing is that I never felt the need to collect more than a couple of crystals because, unlike in Going Commando, there are no monetary fees that inhibit your progress in the story and the weapons are all reasonably priced. That, and if you stay here for too long, you'll be hearing ameboid noises in your sleep.

The most important and unique alternate method of gameplay is easily the Qwark vid-comics. Every so often, you'll unlock a vid-comic to play on the TV in the entertainment room in the Starship Phoenix. You finally get to play as the spandex-wearing buffoon in goofy 2D platformer segments where you jump around punching and shooting enemies with a surprisingly diverse set of weapons for each level (I suppose it's not all that surprising considering this is a Ratchet & Clank game, but this is just a silly mini-game). You also collect arbitrary "qwark tokens," and if you collect all 100 of them per level, you get a platinum bolt. Every Qwark vid-comic level is fun and the most refreshing alternate mode of gameplay Up Your Arsenal offers. The vid-comics also arguably have the best presentation in the game. I love the artwork in the beginning and ending cutscenes of every vid-comic so much that I wish there was a Qwark comic series with this art style. Each vid-comic also gives us insight into the questionably accurate misadventures of Captain Qwark, hilariously narrated by him and a narrator who is rolling his eyes at the ridiculous scripts. The vid-comics give Qwark so much more of a presence in the game where he just seemed like a secondary villain in the previous two games, even at the end of Going Commando when the reveal happens, which might put the greatest strength of Up Your Arsenal into perspective.

The refined weapon upgrading system and all of the guns you can use are certainly a highlight of this game, but it is not the reason why Up Your Arsenal is as lauded as it is. Up Your Arsenal's writing surpasses the previous two games by a gigantic margin. I enjoy the early dynamic between Ratchet and Clank in the first game, and I like the mystery of Going Commando, but Up Your Arsenal is funny, narratively focused, and the first truly character-driven Ratchet & Clank story. After the tutorial mission, it's revealed that the thyrranoids are being manned by an evil robotic supervillain known as Dr. Nefarious, who wants to exterminate all organic lifeforms by turning them into robots. According to the president of the Solana Galaxy, only one man has ever stopped Dr. Nefarious before, and he's living in the jungle. To everyone's surprise, the mysterious being is Captain Qwark, who has gone off the grid since his last embarrassing failure. Once he regains his memory, he forms the Q-Force on the Starship Phoenix to stop Dr. Nefarious's schemes. If there were any vague parallels between Captain Qwark and William Shatner/Captain Kirk before, then the developers are certainly exhibiting them here. You might recognize some members of the Q-Force from the first game. Helga, the German authoritarian fitness robot; Skidd, the famous hoverboarder; and Al, the tech-nerd with an unfortunate lisp. You might also not recognize them from the first game because they were blips on the radar, nameless NPCs encountered only once. The direction Up Your Arsenal takes in fleshing out a few characters and making their presence better known in the story is much better than encountering nameless NPCs to further the plot.

It's difficult to pinpoint what the funniest moment of Up Your Arsenal is. A few highlights for me are the Q-Force's master plans being crudely drawn in crayon by Captain Qwark, failing the Thyra-guise sections to make Ratchet spew some absolute nonsense, or Clunk, the evil version of Clank with red eyes. It's really funny to hear Clank say and do insidious things. If I had to give a crowning achievement to one character that heightens the humor of this game, it would definitely be the main antagonist, Dr. Nefarious. There's a reason why Insomniac decided to keep him around as a mainstay series villain. He's a riot whenever he's on screen. His flamboyant mannerisms, his excitable nature, and his pension for yelling so loudly that he short-circuits and an old soap opera plays out of his head are incredibly entertaining. The dynamic between him and his robot butler Laurence is like Mr. Burns and Smithers, but if Smithers was incredibly passive-aggressive.

Dr. Nefarious might be entertaining, but is he a villain of substance? The satirical elements found in the previous two games were completely lost on me here. I was about to write off Up Your Arsenal as being a shallow superhero story that uses humor as a crutch, but I realized that I was searching in the wrong place. Up Your Arsenal isn't a satire on the foibles of capitalism but on the absurd veil of celebrity culture. I mentioned before that Clank had become a silver screen superstar in time between Going Commando and this game through his hit TV show Secret Agent Clank, so everyone treats Clank with giddy praise like they would a real celebrity. Ratchet, on the other hand, plays a lowly butler on the show, and everyone clowns on him even though he's the real hero. Dr. Nefarious is such a huge fan of Clank's work that Clank finds it "rather disturbing" (a line in this game that always gets me). Dr. Nefarious goes to the length to hire Clank and Courtney Gears, a pop star with obvious parallels to a real-life star, as associates in his diabolical plans because of their status. Dr. Nefarious might also be a stab at the way celebrity culture negatively influences one's own perception of himself. It's revealed in a Qwark vid-comic that Dr. Nefarious used to be human, a small, ugly geek with a head shaped like a cucumber. Quark used to be his school bully and accidentally killed him trying to stop one of his schemes, or so he thought. Physically remodeled as a robot, Dr. Nefarious is a tall, imposing force with his intellect intact. He is finally confident in himself but still obviously holds a vendetta against organic lifeforms because he perceives his organic form as weak. Perhaps this is because of so much robot influence this galaxy has?

I don't think there is any bigger parallel to the vapid absurdity of celebrity culture than Captain Qwark. It's been explored with his character in the previous games, but the theme is put on full display here. He's the embodiment of the phrase "never meet your heroes." Once he's given a chance to be a hero leading the Q-Force, he takes it to relish in fake glory like an actor in a heroic role. He cowers away, lets Ratchet & Clank do the real work, and shamelessly takes the credit for it. When he's on an actual mission with Ratchet and Clank, he fakes his own death to go into hiding when he realizes that being a real hero requires you to take serious risks. He redeems himself at the end when he helps you beat the Biobliderator, completing his character arc (but he couldn't have helped me during the Nefarious fight? I could've needed it, considering it's by far the hardest fight in the series.) The funny thing is that everyone in the galaxy, including Nefarious, actually brands him as a formidable force for good. The William Shatner/Star Trek parallels could be made here because every massive Star Trek fan was probably crestfallen when they learned that he was just a pompous douchebag with an ego the size of his TV spaceship. This reminds me more of the film Galaxy Quest, a film that satirizes the fandom of the show and the actors on it. Captain Qwark is that film's parody of Captain Kirk/William Shatner, an arrogant assclown who is given way too much credit by his fans and a surprisingly real foe who allows him to be what people adore him for. Captain Qwark is essentially an actor who can't play his own role when given a real-life opportunity.

I realize that it sounds like I'm heavily criticizing Up Your Arsenal and that it's a huge step-down in quality from the first two games, or at least a step-down from Going Commando. Keep in mind that this is still my favorite Ratchet & Clank game, and the fact that it bears a great sense of nostalgia in me has nothing to do with it. I like the combat imperative of Up Your Arsenal, and while each level is linear, none are boring or tedious. My only honest criticism is that the emphasis on combat is so heavy that it becomes repetitive, especially since the previous two games had so much more variety. The combat and level linearity are just popular points of criticism from people who feel like Up Your Arsenal is disappointing or underwhelming in comparison. Comparing Going Commando to Up Your Arsenal ultimately boils down to what you prefer, platforming with multifaceted levels or blowing shit to smithereens with a smattering of creative weapons. Personally, I enjoy both, but the strengths of Up Your Arsenal cannot be ignored. If Insomniac made Up Your Arsenal exactly like Going Commando, it would've faltered due to banking off another game's identity like many sequels. If that kept the developers up at night, they shouldn't have worried. They did a fantastic job.

Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/4/2021)

[Image from igdb.com]

Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando

Developer: Insomniac Games

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Genre(s): 3D Platformer, Third-Person Shooter

Platforms: PS2

Release Date: November 11, 2003

It’s funny to me how Going Commando was a controversial title for this game. The phrase “going commando” just seems so silly to me. It’s only known as “Going Commando” in North America, so do I just have more jaded American sensibilities? The guy who decided to title the Ratchet & Clank sequel with a double entendre deserved a promotion. It was a perfect way to market the game, showing confidence in a sequel to a great platformer. It’s a shame that everywhere else in the world censored the title and went with the lamer title, “Locked and Loaded,” in which the use of alliteration doesn’t even titillate me. As it turns out, the second Ratchet & Clank game didn’t need a raunchy title to bolster its own confidence. It wasn’t just a sequel; it was Ratchet & Clank 2.0. It was an improvement in every aspect that practically rendered the first game obsolete. That may be a bit of a stretch, but the vast improvements Going Commando made to the previous game cannot be understated. If the prime strength of the Ratchet & Clank franchise is an evolution of the foundation made in the first game, Going Commando is the most significant leap in this regard.

As I discussed in my review of the first game, the Ratchet & Clank franchise has always followed a specific formula that gives it a concrete identity. The games are 3D platformers with a heavy emphasis on shooting gameplay with myriad creative weapons. The presentation is charming and takes place in a comical, cartoony, futuristic universe that implements biting commentary about capitalism and the foibles of modern society through a futuristic lens. These features are present in the first game but are elevated and refined to a much greater quality. The story of Going Commando takes place a few months after the first game's events. Ratchet & Clank have been enjoying the perks of being a galactic hero and basking in the limelight. Months later, they are bored and itching for action. They are then teleported to a far-off galaxy and assigned a mission by a Mr. Abercrombie Fizzwidget, the CEO of Megacorp and a kooky old man who talks like a kid who obviously broke out a thesaurus for a book report and doesn’t understand any of the words. Ratchet has to retrieve a stolen Megacorp project, and Clank rents a space in the galaxy to get pampered.

The tutorial mission in this game is Ratchet intercepting the thief’s fleet. Immediately, you will see and feel the improvements this game made from the first game. The first thing that you’ll probably notice is that Ratchet is decked out with armor and a visor. Insomniac did away with the typical 3D platformer health system of the first game and implemented a health system that fit more with the shooting intensive gameplay. You start with four bars of health made up of a single block. Once you collect more bolts by defeating enemies, your health increases in a bolt of energy by one bar, like gaining EXP in an RPG. The damage that Ratchet can take ranges from depleting one bar of health to several blocks depending on what he gets hit by. This system is more aligned with how you take damage in a shooting game than a platformer. There are also armor upgrades you can purchase (for many bolts) when the game gets harder, and every hit takes off a third of Ratchet’s health. You’ll also notice in the tutorial that the controls have been heavily refined. Ratchet moves much more smoothly, and his jumps are much more precise. The added strafing feature is a godsend as it makes combat tens of times easier than in the first game. Insomniac finally realized that to fully implement the creative weapons to the best of their utility, Ratchet & Clank would have to play more like a shooter, and thank the lord that it does. The game also stops once you are selecting a weapon as well, which is a gigantic advantage over panicking while making a selection because you’re being shot at. It always felt like relief playing Going Commando immediately after the first one. It feels like getting your car washed or waxed and realizing you had a sweet ride.

New RPG-esque elements also seep into other aspects of Going Commando. You might notice that when you use one of the weapons for a little while that a small orange bar increases in length underneath the selected weapon in the weapon wheel. Once the bar is nearly full, a cutscene occurs where the weapon experiences the same burst of energy you get when your health increases. This means that the weapon has been upgraded to be either a stronger version of what you were already using or something completely different. Most of the time, it’s just a stronger version of the same weapon. The upgradable weapon system in this game apparently also shows that if Insomniac implements a new idea or feature to the franchise, it will take another entry to perfect that new idea. I love a lot of the different weapons in this game. They function a lot like the weapons from the first game, a ton of creative weapons that have their own special uses in combat. The Lancer is a long-range automatic weapon like the Blaster, and the Gravity Bomb is a short-range explosive weapon like the Bomb Glove. There are also unfamiliar weapons like the Blitz Gun which acts like a shotgun, and the Lava Gun, which spurts, well, lava at enemies at a relatively close range. There’s also the Spiderbot Glove that I ironically love because I think it’s adorable (and utterly useless). The Morph-O-Ray is also back in a sheep variant, and I can actually use it this time around because of the strafing feature. The juggernaut weapon in this game is easily the Bouncer, a cluster bomb launcher that can either take out mobs of enemies or a single tank with one bomb. Why even bother with the RYNO when this weapon costs a tenth of the price, and you can get it as early as the middle of the game? The Plasma Storm is also an effective alternative for the Bouncer when you are low on ammo.

At the end of the game, all I ever used were these two weapons. Not because they were my favorites but because none of the other weapons made a dent in any of the enemies later in the game. My biggest gripe about Going Commando is that none of the weapons you use earlier in the game are useful by the end of it, even the upgraded versions. In any shooting game, I like to use various weapons to get the most out of the game. Every Ratchet & Clank offers a large variety of weapons that are useful in unique ways, but the new upgrading system makes some weapons barely usable by the end of the game. An entire load of Mini-Nuke ammo could take out maybe one enemy on one of the final planets. The Vaporizer, a high-powered sniper rifle (of questionable scope considering you can almost use it as a shotgun, too), could barely destroy a tank on the final planet. It’s an unfortunate hiccup with the new weapon upgrading system. You can also purchase weapons from the first game as a nostalgic lark, but these weapons don’t even upgrade, so don’t bother with them. I can use the Walloper exactly as I did in the first game, but one thing I don’t remember is the Walloper being a useless piece of junk. The only exception is the RYNO which doesn’t upgrade, but you obviously don’t need it. I’d put this in my array of useful weapons, but it costs over a million bolts. This is also in conjunction with another weapon called the Zodiac, which costs even more than the RYNO.

I can say for certain that the weapon system in this game is faulty, but that hiccup might actually not be unintentional. If the developers wanted you to experience all of the weapons, they wouldn’t have made them so damn expensive. In fact, whoever at Insomniac created the Spyro character Moneybags just decided to make the entire Bogon Galaxy Moneybags. Most of the areas in Going Commando are ritzy, gentrified metropolises. Megapolis on Endako is a bustling metropolis made of silver with skyscrapers so tall that they enclose everything. Canal City on Notak is what I imagine Milan will look like over the next century. Silver City is so busy that it has you dodging traffic. Even a hostile place like Snivelak looks like it has its own septic system, and each Thugs-4-Less member has a 401k. For Ratchet and Clank, Bogon Galaxy is like a tour of New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, and every other ridiculously expensive city worldwide. Several fees block progress in the game which even frustrates Ratchet. Some of these are economical donations, but some require you to be excessively charitable. What the fuck does a mutated crab living on a cargo planet need with 40,000 bolts? Just because you’re the only one in your species that can articulate themselves and you wear a bowtie and tophat does not mean I feel THAT sorry for you. He probably took my bolts to go do some space-age crank of some robot stripper’s metallic ass crack. Keep in mind that you also have to spend a lot of money on weapons and armor. You’ll never get a chance to be frugal in this galaxy.

Despite the more opulent foreground of the Bogon Galaxy, it’s designed exactly the same as Solana. Each area has two or three branching paths with different objectives. Some paths will unlock the next world, some will grant you a new gadget or weapon, and some are miscellaneous objectives. I guess they figured that if the level design wasn’t broken, there was no need to fix it. The difference is that Going Commando has so much more to offer besides routes that further the plot. All alternate gameplay modes that deviate from platforming are drastically improved from the first game. The economic prosperity of the Bogon Galaxy obviously gives way to better diversifying the gameplay, or at least that’s what I’ll go with. I’m glad Insomniac decided that hoverboarding was lame and that tweaking it would result in nothing good, so they replaced it with hoverbike racing. Unlike the racing segments from the first game, the hoverbike races in Going Commando are consistently speedy without any awkward slow-downs, the boosts actually make a difference in speed, and the weapons are guaranteed to work. They feel like the races from the Star Wars pod racing game on the PS1. Besides putting more enemies in a single space, Going Commando also highlights the more combat-intensive gameplay in the foreground of a futuristic gladiator arena. The gladiator arenas are in the scope of a popular televised game show in which competitors can win grand prizes for battling waves of robots with chainsaw arms and beefy aliens with morning stars. Needless to say, the guys who run this TV show never hand out many prizes, but you are a spunky space cat with a lot of useful toys. From the fair challenges to the fun, varied boss battles, the gladiator arenas are a welcome addition to the franchise. On the more desolate planets, you scrounge the area for crystals to give to this space-age hippie fucker for money. If I had to guess what he’s doing with these crystals, I’d say he’s probably smoking them. Finding all of them can be a tedious affair, but it’s the most reliable source of extra income in this game without repeating levels to grind. The sand planet is manageable, but the snowy planet is another story. Let’s just say it’s like Wampa mating season on Hoth, and you’ve just interrupted it. Run for your life. There are two flight gadgets, one lets you glide, and the other lets you levitate upwards. The glider is about as easy to control as an actual paraglider, and the levitation gadget will result in many close calls and missteps. They can be kind of challenging, but they always feel exhilarating.

There are also a few familiar features that make it into Going Commando. I can’t really declare if the returning features are improved upon as a whole because each of them varies in quality. There are only two parts where you get to play as Clank, and both of them are pretty brief. It’s not enough Clank for my liking. Giant Clank gets a little more limelight here, and he’s gone full kaiju. Each Giant Clank section is a boss battle that plays like a typical monster movie. You fight another hulking giant and a giant spaceship, destroying a whole city for extra health and ammo. I wonder what they call Giant Clank in Japan? The gravity boot's platforming sections are much better as they don’t force you to use only the wrench. Infiltration puzzles are back, but they are less puzzle based and act more like mini-games. The Electrolyzer mini-games are nice and quick, but I swear that the Infiltrator puzzles are RNG based. The water platforming gimmick has shifted from displacing bodies of water to freezing them with the Therminator (I can’t decide whether this reference is lame or awesome). It’s a fine platforming mechanic, but it doesn’t make sense when it causes the platforms floating over the water to freeze. If you were a big fan of the grind rail sections from the first game, you are in luck. The grind rail sections are long enough that they count as whole objectives. The same goes for the ship sections, but the added length here is not a plus. Most of the space objectives are dog fights, and Ratchet’s ship never feels readily equipped to take on hordes of enemy ships. They’re not difficult, but they tend to be a bit tedious.

As I consider all of the elements that make up the distant land of the Bogon Galaxy, I can’t help but make comparisons to our 21st-century Earth. The hoverbike races and the gladiator TV shows could be parallels to the extreme sports craze of the early 2000s. The sumptuous planets may reflect a burgeoning 21st century stamped with progress. Do you want to know what I remember about the early 21st century? Burgeoning technology, yes, but also wide global panic. 9/11, the Anthrax scare, the DC Sniper, that “global terror” alert, etc. Suppose the first game is about one diabolical person taking advantage of a capitalistic society. In that case, Going Commando is about a capitalistic society imploding in on itself, reflecting the early 2000s global panic, or maybe it IS about a single person exploiting capitalism…

After the tutorial mission, the thief takes off with “the experiment” and then makes several threats to Ratchet to stop pursuing them, even killing Clank as a threat. Don’t worry. Ratchet brings him back easily enough, but it’s still a dick move on the thief’s part. The thief also sics a shady bounty hunter group called Thugs-4-Less, run by a big, intimidating reptilian man who talks like he’s from Brooklyn. These guys are continuously on your tail for most of the game while you chase down the thief. Once you defeat the Thief, you take “the experiment,” a shaggy, fuzzy little creature, back to Fizzwidget who then tries to abandon you to die in a hostile desert. Ratchet shrugs it off and thinks that Fizzwidget’s brain has smoothed over due to old age, but something fishy is going on. The persistent thief tracks you down on the desert planet and accidentally reveals themselves as Angela Cross, an ex-MegaCorp employee who was trying to take back the experiment to make improvements on it. (By the way, is the shocking twist here that the thief is a woman? She certainly presents herself as a man, and she totally cloaks her voice, so I guess there is still a glass ceiling in the distant future. I’m surprised Ratchet wasn’t shocked to see another lombax. Isn’t Ratchet one of the only few left?) You go to places where the experiment is being tested to find out that the experiment is a malevolent, blood-thirsty creature capable of eating people. It turns out Angela was right, and this is very distressing news, but in attempting to warn Fizzwidget, he hires Thugs-4-Less to track you down, and they throw you in prison. Once you break out, you save Angela on the Thugs-4-Less’s home planet, arguably the hardest planet in the game, where you fight the most unorthodox boss. Once you free Angela, it’s too late as Gremlins in space have begun, and the protopets are terrorizing the citizens of Bogon Galaxy. Everything is in a state of pandemonium. You infiltrate the Protopet headquarters with Angela (with the best, most foreboding final-level music in the game) and discover another shocking twist.

Remember that assclown Qwark from the first game? Well, he’s fallen on hard times since you defeated him in the last game. He’s more washed up than David Hasselhoff when he ate a cheeseburger off of the floor. It turns out that the senile Abercrombie Fizzwidget you’ve been doing jobs for is Qwark wearing his skin like Buffalo Bill (which hilariously explains his nonsensical vocabulary). I thought this twist was mind-blowing when I was a kid, but the constant foreshadowing in the VH1-esque “Behind the Hero” cutscenes ruins the surprise due to a lack of subtlety. It would have been much funnier to have Qwark come out of nowhere. Quark purposely lets the Protopet run amok to save everyone from what he caused to make him seem like a hero. It’s terribly pathetic, but in a way, it’s brilliant. You see, Megacorp is not just the Gadgetron of the Bogon Galaxy. I got the impression from the first game that Gadgetron was just a popular weapons/gadgets corporation in Solana Galaxy. On the planet Barlow, there are the ruins of a Gadgetron facility where you buy weapons from the first game, meaning that Gadgetron used to be active here but got blown to the wayside by MegaCorp. With all of the cutscenes detailing MegaCorp products for anything, it shows that MegaCorp has an absolute monopoly on every commodity in the galaxy. Producing something as faulty and dangerous as the Protopet under a MegaCorp license would be catastrophic, considering there is nowhere else to turn to for a similar product. MegaCorp is synonymous with high quality, considering how lavish the Bogon Galaxy is. Am I giving Qwark too much credit as a futuristic Marxist exploiting the faults of capitalism? Probably, considering after he reveals himself, he enlarges a Protopet on accident and gets eaten by it.

As good as the twist is, the entertaining story of Going Commando is almost ruined by an underwhelming final boss and an anticlimactic ending. To fix the protopet epidemic, the Giant Protopet is the final boss. It seems a little underwhelming compared to the diabolical yuppie that was Drek and his multiple-phase fight, and that’s because it is. For some reason, I was intimidated by the Giant Protopet when I was a kid that I grinded for hours to get the RYNO. Of course, the RYNO made short work of it, but I didn’t need it. The Giant Protopet has one phase, and it can be easily beaten with most of the upgraded Bouncer’s ammo and the enemies that aid it during the fight. After that, it is revealed that Angela’s gadget to domesticate the protopets works, and the batteries were inserted backward. Ha. Whoops. The real Fizzwidget is revealed and fixes everything, Ratchet and Clank go back to Clank’s apartment with Angela, and that girl robot that follows Clank around and (probably) gets laid, and MegaCorp rips Qwark’s dick off. No, seriously; as punishment for impersonating their CEO, MegaCorp rips his dick off. As ritzy as Bogon seems, this sure is a barbaric punishment.

The first Ratchet & Clank was a solid 3D platformer with a heavy emphasis on shooting, but it needed to be improved upon to buff out the scratches. Fortunately, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando does this with great stride by making a bigger, fine-tuned, more bourgeois experience. So many of the old mechanics are drastically improved, and the new ones prove their worth. The story is a more interesting take on a humorous, satirical stab at the commodities of society that the franchise is known for. If Gadgetron is the first game, then MegaCorp is Going Commando, bulldozing away what came before and erecting a superior product.

Ratchet & Clank Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 3/18/2021)

[Image from igdb.com]

Ratchet & Clank

Developer: Insomniac Games

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Genre(s): 3D Platformer, Third-Person Shooter

Platforms: PS2

Release Date: November 4, 2002

It's funny to me that Ratchet & Clank was the one PS2 mascot franchise that survived. In the preceding console generation, every Playstation exclusive platformer franchise went to the wayside after only a few games on their debut console. Insomniac and Naughty Dog lost their respective rights to both Crash and Spyro after their prime on the PS1. Both franchises lived on, but only in the vein of mediocrity. As for their original developers, they moved on to new horizons with the Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter franchises. Sucker Punch followed with the Sly Cooper franchise making a trio of quality platformer trilogies on the PS2 and, by proxy, immortalizing their place in the nostalgic wonderment of my childhood. Alas, what happened to Crash and Spyro a generation before fell onto Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper as their companies lost the rights to both franchises.

The only difference was that the flow of total inferiority from third-party developers stopped at only one game for both franchises instead of a constant slew of disappointment, indefinitely shelving Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper into the memories of the early 21st century. Ratchet & Clank, on the other hand, lived on. Insomniac held on to the duo like a child holds on to their favorite toy and gave them life in a new generation on the PS3. Ratchet & Clank was treated to spinoffs, mobile games, and a new mainline trilogy that arguably rivals the original three games on the PS2. How did they manage to do this? Was it just luck that Insomniac never let Ratchet & Clank abscond from their watchful eye? Perhaps, but I don't believe in luck. These aforementioned PS2 trilogies are like my children, and I refuse to pick one over the other (because I honestly can't decide which one I like the most). However, if I had to attribute a superior factor to the Ratchet & Clank franchise, it would be consistency. Ratchet & Clank had a winning formula of platforming and shooting with a humorous, cartoony presentation. This formula was tweaked over time instead of revamped like the other two PS2 franchises. This is even apparent from Ratchet & Clank's first outing in 2002.

It's hard for me to discuss the first Ratchet & Clank without comparing it to Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal. I played the trilogy backward as a kid and was spoiled by the advancements brought about by the sequels. The first Ratchet & Clank was still solid, but it was rather underwhelming comparatively. I'll try my best to highlight the strengths of this game on its own merits as if it's 2002 and I'm just playing this game for the first time.

Comparing the first game to its sequels is much easier with the Ratchet & Clank games than the other PS2 trilogies because Insomniac never strayed too far from the foundation they laid out. Ratchet & Clank is a platformer that emphasizes using a myriad of futuristic weapons and gadgets to traverse each level. If there's anything that the Ratchet & Clank franchise is known for, it's the level of creativity Insomniac implements in crafting unique weapons and gadgets. These were even the game's selling points in the commercials that aired in the early 2000s. The weapons can range from a blaster that shoots individual rounds at a quick pace to explosive items that are used at a shorter range to dispatch a larger array of enemies. There are also melee weapons that can be substituted for Ratchet's trusty wrench. There are also more creative weapons, like one that shoots electricity and one that dispatches a little army of tiny robots that attack enemies. If you're familiar with this series, you know as well as I do that the best weapon in the game is the ray that turns enemies into farm animals. I will not debate this with anyone.

The design philosophy for each level is rooted in the standard variety of platformer games but under a different scope. Space is the place in the realm of Ratchet & Clank, and space is limitless. The titular duo travel to a smattering of different planets across the universe, and the infinite space allows them to visit many places differing in ecological climates. There are fire worlds, ice worlds, grass worlds, urban worlds, etc. In the language of the platformer, these are the standard levels that give a variety to the game. The unique way that Ratchet & Clank gets away with this without seeming derivative is in the natural vastness of space. No one questions the fire, ice, grass, water, etc. template at play here because the foreground of space travel suspends any disbelief. Each level consists of one or more straight paths to some endpoint or loop around the beginning. Even planets with multiple routes end with either a dead end or a loop around with a flying car or another vehicle taking you back to your ship. It's hard to get lost at a Ratchet & Clank level. Some objectives will take you further into the story, some of them will give you the coordinates to a new planet, and some of them will earn you a new weapon or gadget.

The game is also incredibly charming. It has the art style and presentation of a Saturday morning cartoon. The game is really funny and the characters, major or minor, amount to the overall comedic and light-hearted tone of the game. The science fiction elements presented in Ratchet & Clank take inspiration from Star Trek, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Futurama. It's a zany, science-fiction universe where every possible futuristic trope seems to have come to fruition. Everything in this universe has progressed so far past the 21st century that the stretch of time between our world and the game's world is unfathomable. The crux of the humor in Ratchet & Clank is a satire of society, corporations, and commodities. It's sort of like Futurama for kids, and it mirrors the foibles of present-day society through a futuristic lens. Ironically, in a time where flying cars, teleportation, and intergalactic travel exists, no one has found a cure for depression, bad breath, or erectile dysfunction (or so to speak), and the mother of invention is still active in the form of first world capitalism.

Of course, this brief analysis summarizes the entire Ratchet & Clank series, not just one game. The formula for the franchise has not stagnated, and it seems to have gotten better and more refined over time. It had to start somewhere, however, and the first Ratchet & Clank served as the building blocks to expand on. Nowadays, the first game feels like a beta test for what is to come. The foundation was there, but it's a tad rough around the edges. This does not mean that the first game cannot stand on its merits.

The first Ratchet & Clank also serves as an origin story for the duo. Ratchet is a humble ship mechanic living in a small area on a remote planet. Clank is a very small robot, a dud that malfunctioned from a conveyor belt. They meet each other by circumstance when Clank crash lands on Ratchet's planet looking for Captain Qwark, a celebrity superhero who Clank thinks is the only person capable of stopping Chairman Drek, the game's main antagonist. Ratchet and Clank start looking for Qwark and then find a way to stop Chairman Drek. Ratchet and Clank work off each other well in this game because their first adventure is a growing period. Their contrasting personalities work off each other quite well in the first game. Ratchet is an everyman protagonist with the flaws you'd expect from a guy who accidentally had to be a hero at the spur of the moment. He's capable, but he's distracted. He's more focused on using this opportunity for fame or to meet famous people. When he does finally meet a certain famous person, this ends up biting him in the ass and makes him bitter. His character comes to its closure when he realizes that this mission isn't about him, and he finally gets to live out his full potential. His voice and demeanor in this game also remind me of Jeff Spicoli. Clank, on the other hand, is more pragmatic and is a great foil to Ratchet. Since I was more used to the less character-driven sequels, I thought it was upsetting that Ratchet and Clank bickered with each other for more than half of the game. I've grown to like the dynamic here because this is the only game (out of the original trilogy) in which the duo grows as characters.

So what are Ratchet & Clank fighting for? To stop the enterprise of one Chairman Drek, an intergalactic imperialist of short stature, an iron-pressed suit, and a black ponytail. If Napoleon Bonaparte and American Psycho have taught anyone anything, it's that short imperialists and yuppies are both terrifying. Drek's home planet has been polluted to the point where it has become absolutely uninhabitable by anything or anyone (except for ugly hostile creatures like red-eyed toads and long-necked beasts with eight legs. You visit his home planet at least three times in the game). He decides to make a new planet from parts of already existing planets, sucking up their resources whether they like it or not. The ecological premise here turns into a biting take on capitalism when it is revealed that Drek polluted his own planet for financial gain and intends to eventually do the same for his new planet. Drek isn't my favorite Ratchet & Clank antagonist, but he is arguably the most effective when establishing an evil, foreboding villain. He's pure scum, and the scariest aspect of his character is how his business tactics resemble some powerful men in real life. On the other side of the coin, Captain Qwark is a villain you can forgive. His character becomes likable as he tries to redeem himself, but in the first game, he's just a pathetic tool. He's secretly working for Drek on the promise that Drek has endorsements for him that will resurrect his career. He sets Ratchet & Clank into a trap and becomes the focal point for a good portion of the game, directed by Ratchet's selfish anger towards him. Quark's presence in this game is middling, but I think that's the point. He's a satire of the dark side of celebrity life, a buoy trying to stay afloat, so he doesn't have to start sucking extraterrestrial cock for food.

The first Ratchet & Clank is a platformer first and a shooter second. The elements that are readily apparent in this game scream second-generation 3D platformer. It has all the common tropes like double jumping, gliding, wall jumping, etc. All of these tropes are executed quite well, and the phenomenal framerate really helps. However, the same cannot be said for the shooting. The more close ranged weapons like the Bomb Glove, and the Pyrocinator do just fine with multiple enemies. I have to give a special shout-out to the Walloper for being my favorite weapon in the game and being a fine substitute for the wrench. Long-ranged weapons like the Blaster and the Devastator are essential in combat but not utilized to the best of their abilities because of the game's shortcomings. There is a green circle that indicates that your shot with these weapons is likely to hit, but nothing is guaranteed. In spots with multiple enemies that you can't approach directly, I ended up taking them out from a distance which never feels like the intended method, but it turns out to be the most practical one. The RYNO might be the most powerful weapon in the game, but good luck trying to target enemies with it. I love the Morph-O Ray, but I never use it because I can't target an enemy with it without potentially harming myself in the process. Speaking of harming myself, the health in this game is a series of single hits. You have four blocks of health that deplete after getting hit by anything. Whether it's an explosive or a shot from a blaster, it all takes away one block of health. It works in a game like Crash Bandicoot because Crash isn't supposed to get hit more than maybe twice. It's different here because the range of obstacles is more diverse. It's an exemplary system, but it's very indicative of the developers emphasizing platforming rather than shooting.

Besides jumping and shooting, the game provides many other opportunities to switch up the gameplay. On several levels, there are physics puzzles involving draining water to reach a higher point or swimming through a series of tunnels. I wouldn't mind these so much if the swimming controls weren't so inflexible. This problem is done away with once you acquire the H2 Mask. There are also security puzzles in most of the levels that require you to match up beams with the colored slots. One could argue that these puzzles require you to completely stop breaking the game's pacing, but I quite like them. It feels like I'm breaking into an inaccessible place when I succeed at solving them. The turret sections can be difficult only because a lot is happening simultaneously, and the PS2 controls are inverted. There are space battle sections that just come and go and seem trivial. As a result, not even the space battle against Qwark proves to be a challenge. The stealth sections where you disguise yourself as a clunky robot minion are quite tense, and it's hilarious that you can sneak past these hulking tin cans without them even questioning your shorter stature. The racing sections are garbage. This was when X-games and extreme sports were popular, so I guess Insomniac figured that this radical trend would persist into the future in hoverboard fashion. However, it's not radical to control the hoverboard sluggishly and become as fragile as a piece of glass. I'm definitely glad they did away with these in the sequels.

My favorite sections that deviate from platforming as Ratchet are each section you can play as Clank. How could the Clank sections not be everyone's favorite? He goes from being Ratchet's backpack to outcharming him in every cutscene, so getting to play as him becomes a point of curiosity. Clank can't dole out a lot of damage, but he can command tiny robot minions to attack enemies and open doors for him. It's platforming with minor changes, but getting to play as Clank is still fun. Unlike another certain small platformer sidekick on the PS2, Clank proves to be useful as he can traverse sections that Ratchet can not, like the space station and the polluted planet Orxon. This game probably has the longest Clank sections in the trilogy, so that is definitely an advantage in my book. Coincidentally, my least favorite area in the game is the only one where you can't use Clank, so that adorable little toaster is more than just Ratchet's sidekick. He's my favorite part about these games. Giant Clank is also a blast.

The Ratchet & Clank franchise has remained one of the lasting franchises in the now unfashionable 3D platformer genre. As much as I'd like to attribute this to Insomniac being a little more assertive in keeping their IPs than other developers, I've played too much of Ratchet & Clank to chalk it all up to luck and persistence. It's one of the most consistent franchises I've played. The first game of the series may be a little elementary in comparison to its sequels, but all of the elements that make Ratchet & Clank a beloved franchise are all here. Fortunately, it gets much better from here.