Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal

Up Your Arsenal’s improvement and redirection for the franchise is subtle but an unmistakably bold move for Insomniac Games. Not only did it put the emphasis on shooting more than ever, the game now had a multiplayer mode that was surprisingly great with a Battlefield-esque capture the nodes mode called Siege, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag. Throw in the gadgets from single-player and some vehicles and you have one of the best multiplayer modes of its era.

For most people, the single-player of UYA will be enough. It’s Ratchet & Clank at its most focused and fun. Every level is full of unique moments, compelling scenarios, and intense firefights to be had. Smart additions like blocks to take cover behind, a new control scheme that adds free aim, and a way to swap between weapons quickly make the already great gameplay of Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando into a thing bordering on perfection. Whether you are in a mech fight with Clank or bashing things with Ratchet’s wrench with the new Inferno ability, UYA is one of those rare games that makes me smile every minute of the way.

Up Your Arsenal isn’t just the high-water mark for the series’ PlayStation 2 days, it was the pinnacle of the 3D platformer in its generation. No other genre entry stood as tall until Super Mario Galaxy [スーパーマリオギャラクシー] and A Crack in Time.

Coming to this game immediately after Going Commando I wasn't sure how Insomniac would change the formula. I see that in this entry they decided to go all in with combat focused design, with levels mostly linear and platforming being give less importance than the previous two games in the series. For some, I could see this as a positive. With linear levels, shorter playtime, and a much better weapon upgrade system (which I'll be getting to) it makes sense why for some this game would be their favorite in this series. It lends itself well to replaying the game over and over, upgrading your weapons further and becoming unstoppable, which for some is what they play these games for. Along with that, it features a better story, better music, and much better boss fights than the second game. Gary and Helen I think are better than any boss found in Going Commando. Dr. Nefarious is easily the best boss fight the series has had so far. The weapon upgrade system is much better than Going Commando, with each weapon now having five levels to go through, with the final level giving the weapon something new, like a new form of attack, extra effects, bigger impact, etc. The weapons are also varied and fun, personal favorites being the shock cannon, nitrogen gun, and plasma whip. The artstyle is also great. It has aged much better than the first two games and it is still a gorgeous game. However, even with all of these positives, I do not think it is better than Going Commando. Going Commando had great level design, with multiple pathways for the player to explore and a wide arrange of puzzles. Up Your Arsenal has pretty much done away with puzzles, the only "puzzle" mini game just being entirely about fast reactions. Going Commando's levels also had great platforming sections, while Up Your Arsenal, as mentioned previously, pretty much has no platforming sections to be found. While some may not have been a big fan of them, I found the ship and jetboard sections in Going Commando to be great changes of pace that stopped the flow of gameplay from becoming monotonous. In Up Your Arsenal, these have been done away with for either arenas (like in Going Commando), battles with either an objective to destroy or just kill waves of enemies, and a ship that I feel is worst than the ship sections from Going Commando since it was much slower and just involved moving from point to point destroying enemies (could be a bit biased, I recently played DAH 1/2 which had very similar sections.) This led to Up Your Arsenal feeling much more stale than going Commando even though it is much shorter. The previous two games took me about three days to beat each, this I beat in a day. Overall, I can understand why for some this is their favorite in the series, however, for me, Going Commando still reigns supreme.

Likely a byproduct of annual releasing, Up Your Arsenal really shows that each game in the franchise feels like a compromise. This time around, they crafted the most compelling cast in the franchise, fleshing out underutilized characters from previous games in the process. However, there's an evident lack of motivation in Nefarious's goals or any theme tying the plot together. Where did the anti-capitalist message of the previous games go? It returns in Deadlocked.

That being said, your arsenal is the best its ever been, with the expansion of upgrades providing meaningful increments, sometimes changing them mechanically. My gripes really set in with the apparent lack of enemy variety and level design. Prepare to fight the same robots, Tyhrranoids, and robot Tyhrranoids endlessly. It can get pretty exhausting, despite increasing options to deal with them. When it comes to planets, they may set themselves apart aesthetically, but the art direction feels less inspired this time around, branching paths are a rarity, and some hardly even feel like levels at all. Enemy variety ties into this problem as well, making them feel more homogenous and less thematically separated. Worst off all, the addition of battle missions recycles multiplayer maps and they're as bland as can be.

mmm. christmas of 2004.

Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando was almost perfect. Insomniac found the perfect balance of shooting, platforming, exploration, and change-of-pace minigames. A weak final boss and an absolutely godawful turret-based boss fight mar it slightly, but Going Commando is about as close to perfect as a game can be.
Up Your Arsenal improves upon the shooting, at the expense of the platforming and exploration. Next year's Ratchet: Deadlocked would do the "all shooting" Ratchet game better than UYA, leaving this game as a bit of an awkward stepping-stone between the franchise's two best games.

The main problem with Up Your Arsenal, however, is in its change-of-pace minigames that break up the shooting, which drag on far too long and absolutely cripple the game's pace. The first of these is the 2D side-scrolling levels where you play as Captain Qwark. Despite some excellent framing cutscenes, these levels are a mediocre-at-best experience, and there are five of them sprinkled throughout the game. God help you if you mistakenly think the second and third are optional because of how nonchalantly the game throws them at you, because then you'll be stuck playing three in a row at a key point in the game's narrative.
These levels are very forgivable, however, in comparison to the true backbreaker for this game: the hacker. Up Your Arsenal loves to throw hacker puzzles at you in the middle of levels. Not just one per level, but usually three or four in the levels that feature them. The hacker puzzles take up what feels like ages as you monotonously spin a barrel to shoot red pieces and pick up green ones. And then you learn that these puzzles can and will have multiple layers. The late game features four-layer hacker puzzles that absolutely tank the levels' pace. You're having fun, then BAM you'd rather be doing your taxes. More often than not, I stop playing this game after its first act due to the introduction of the hacker.
When this game is hot, it's on fire. So much, in fact, that Insomniac calls the fire department to spray you down with a high-pressure hose of monotony.

O pessoal da Insomniac deve ter notado que o combate em terceira pessoa é o que torna a série verdadeiramente especial, e dessa constatação surgiu Up Your Arsenal.

Por mais variado que seja o antecessor, nada substitui essa espécie de run ‘n’ gun em terceira pessoa que caracteriza Ratchet & Clank, e o maior foco neste aspecto faz de UYA um absoluto deleite do começo ao fim.

Com uma narrativa bem construída e um ótimo clímax, o terceiro jogo da série supera Going Commando, que só é melhor na parte de coletáveis e recompensas.