Ratchet & Clank

Everybody take notes from Insomniac because this is how you reboot a franchise! The PS4 keeps delivering with it's exclusives and this game is no exception. Ratchet & Clank here is a remake/re-imagining/re-do of the first Ratchet & Clank from back on the PS2. The original game turned some heads with it's cartooney visuals, charming story, fun platforming, and of course it's insane gadgets. This new game essentially recaptures all of those elements but re-imagines them in a more.... Next gen sense. Insomniac is revisiting this world now with the mountain of experience they've gained perfecting the Ratchet & Clank formula, and playing this game I realise why this was such a smart move on their part!

First off the most noticeable upgrades are with the visuals, man does this thing pop. The lighting is great, the worlds are bursting with colours, and the animations (particularly in cutscenes) would have the likes of Pixar nodding their heads. Ratchet's new look in particular is adorable, and the designers bring out character's facial expressions wonderfully. The narrative of this game is based off of that from the first game but it does implement some key plot changes and differences. How Ratchet & Clank meet is effectively the same, as is the Galactic Rangers plot points and the hilarious captain Qwark revelations. Chairman Drek is still the established villain and he's still trying to destroy planets; only this time the menacing Dr. Nefarious plays an important role and there's a new and unexpected plot twist near the end that I won't spoil. Obviously the dialog is completely overhauled here, but the writing is just as humour driven as ever and the roles are performed with lots of passion and soul.

The level designs are where things get interesting. Roughly the first half of this game has you revisiting the same planets and locations from the first game, with virtually the exact same environmental layouts and objectives as before (just with up res'd visuals). They threw in some entertaining airship battles, and changed up the Clank sections to make way for some new cognitively challenging puzzles. The planet Gaspar in particular has been expanded upon greatly and you can now explore it fully with an awesome Jetpack upgrade! There are some new locations thrown in during the latter half of the game like the Warbot factory in Quartu and the giant Deplanetizer space station. There are many planets missing from the original game, where there were 18 or so locations in the first game there's only about 13 in this one. So yeah the game is quite a bit shorter in length, but it's certainly a more concise game than the original.

This game takes some pretty big game-play strides over the original game. First off, you can strafe now!!! And the addictive upgrade system from previous R&C game's has been carried over into this one. This game also refines the weapon roster and adds some fantastic new ones like the Pixilator (which turns enemies into 8-bit sprites) and the Groovitron (that makes enemies spontaneously break out into uncontrollable dance!!!). Plus classics return like the Glove of Doom (a glove that spawns evil minions!) and the Morph-O-Tr..... Erm, I mean, Sheepanator (a gun that turns foes into sheep... although it was chickens in the first game...). And who could possibly forget the massive and terrifying RYNO!!! :O The grind boot sections are back and are as fun as ever! Plus, the hoverboard racing mini-game has returned and there are two different courses to race in! This game is just constantly throwing new ideas at you and having you do different kinds of tasks!

The newly revamped Ratchet & Clank doesn't try to be anything but fun. It may be short in length, and it may stick a bit too closely to the original, but it's a very concise game from front to back. It's got a fun story with charming characters, and loads of imagination with it's combat, there's no going wrong here! I can't wait for the sequels! :3

O remake do jogo que iniciou a franquia é um caso curioso da série: tem toda a cara de algo encomendado pra acompanhar a (péssima) animação lançada no mesmo ano, mas, ao mesmo tempo, é bem polido e diverte bastante enquanto dura.

Muito longe de ser o ápice de criatividade da Insomniac (ainda mais considerando os jogos que vieram depois), Ratchet & Clank 2016 é uma jogada certeira e segura de um estúdio que claramente estava focado em um outro projeto - Marvel’s Spider Man, no caso. Por isso o saldo é bem mais positivo que negativo, apesar da familiaridade que a essa altura estava se tornando costumeira demais.

Ah, e eu não hesitaria em trocar as corridas de hoverboard por outra arena de combate. Vacilaram nessa.

Ratchet and Clank pretty much gets an unnecessary reboot, well technically a remake but this remake feels a bit different and cuts out a lot of content that it is basically its own thing to me. It has decent controls and feels like Ratchet but it just feels like something is missing. There was a charm to the original trilogy back on PS2, the PS3 games were fun but just didn't have the same feel and this PS4 remake just feels like it doesn't have the same passion behind it. The characters aren't as funny, there are missing planets, bosses and weapons, the design feels a lot more generic.

The only improvement this game really makes over the original is the controls and camera, but I mean thats to be expected. This is a decent enough platformer/exploration game, and it doesn't really do anything bad or offensive to the franchise, but there is just no reason to recommend this over the original and is really only a game to play once you beat the original trilogy and just want to see a deafferent take but with a lot of the charm and humor taken out. Its a shame because Ratchet actually had a chance to be a huge franchise for Sony and the recent Rift Apart on PS5 was a pretty solid game, but now due to the poor sales of that we aren't getting another Ratchet game until 2029 and the series is basically on life support and Insomniac has basically turned into a Marvel game studio, and frankly I'd rather go to the timeline Insomniac is focused on making Ratchet and Clank and aren't working on a Marvel game until 2029.

To be honest, Aside from how it butchers the original story of all intresting qualities and how its not that intresting of an entry in the RnC catalog, This is a good ass game. Especially with waking up this once dormant franchise. The controls are super snappy, the levels are pretty tough and neatly designed, And its pretty fun. Its a pretty decent start point if youre looking to dip your toes in this franchise. 7/10.

I mean, it's fun... it's Ratchet and Clank. Not pushing any boundaries or introducing anything new at all, but it's solid and got me my fix. I hated the trespasser puzzle segments though - they were like a wall in a game with an otherwise good flow.

I can see how there are likely some very good games in this series. The shooting mechanics are a solid groundwork, and each level seems designed so that you have to manage your weapons and ammo for the right situation, constantly switching between weapons for the right situation. (Not unlike a survival horror.) A lot of the weapons in this game are fun to use, and while I couldn't get a handle on all of them, I still kept a consistent rotation of about 8 weapons, which is pretty good variety. And it's not like the weapons I didn't use were bad - I just didn't bother to learn them. I generally stuck to the basic stuff - a shotgun, a rocket launcher, things like that - but there's some fun, unique weapons, like the one that stops enemies from attacking by causing an instant dance party, or a drone that sends out a consistent pulse that attacks enemies in a large area. I only played the normal difficulty, but I imagine on harder difficulties, managing all those weapons can be a fun task. (To a certain point, anyway, since the checkpoints in this game are fairly generous.)

That said, I don't get the sense this is anywhere near the best that the franchise has to offer. Like nearly every other 3D platformer to come after Super Mario 64, it's, uh, not actually very good at the platforming parts. For some reason, the two lessons from SM64 that never stuck were how good the movement was and how freely you could interact with literally everything in the environment. Even if you broke the game, you were still interacting with it. Without those things 3D platformers tend to feel inhibiting and, more importantly, kind of boring. Both of those things are a real problem here, and I think that having movement that integrated the platforming and the shooting together more would go a long way to making both sections more exciting. (And sure enough, it looks like that's a big improvement for the upcoming sequel Rift Apart.) That goes for the level design, too - the levels in this game by and large feel a little generic, choosing not to force the player into unique situations where they would be more forced to integrate new gameplay styles into the game. Everything just kind of blends together into mush.

The locations don't even hold much narrative weight, since this game's writing and plotting is abysmally dumb even by 3D platforming standards, having been written as a tie-in to a kids' movie with jokes that seem to insult even childrens' intelligence. (I've heard suggestions that other Ratchet & Clank game's aren't this bad, but the Miles Morales jokes also tended to fall pretty flat, so I'm wondering how much is just an Insomniac problem.) You don't even have interesting visuals to latch onto - these characters are all very generic mid-'00s DreamWorks shit, with Ratchet in particular being probably the worst looking of all the PlayStation platforming mascots.

Playing this game is just kinda... Going through the motions. Those motions had been fine-tuned for 15 years at that point, so that's not a completely bad thing, and the shooting is by-and-large fun. But it seems like there was an unnecessary reinvention to renew interest in the franchise (which, for what it's worth, seems to have worked from the buzz surrounding Rift Apart) that ironically feels very perfunctory, where a brand new game could have provided something interesting.