Ratchet & Clank

As with Jak II, I had the benefit of coming into Ratchet & Clank one series entry late, where most of the debut’s rough edges had been smoothed out. Going into Ratchet & Clank with curbed expectations, I was surprised to find that it not only plays well but still looks fantastic!

One of the great things of having the PS3 collection is that you get the origin story of the series and see how the series evolved along with Sony's console. More than Sly Cooper and Jak and Daxter, Ratchet & Clank nails that Saturday morning cartoon vibe and keeps the plot interesting through strong writing, endearing characters, and great pacing. It’s strange to hear different voices for the characters and no goofy laughs from Clank, but these are still the same two lovable intergalactic heroes I came to love in following entries.

From the enemy robots' design to the detailed sky box, Ratchet & Clank looks phenomenal for a decade old game. I just can’t get over how detailed the game’s backdrops are with rows of buildings in the distance, flying cars, and birds flying through the clouds. Metropolis was the visual benchmark for the PS2 and it’s fascinating to see how much it evolved over the series.

The original R&C was an innovative attempt to blend third-person shooting with platforming, without the sluggish, awkward controls of Mega Man Legends. By comparison to Capcom’s divisive game, Insomniac really pulled off a miracle here and made a platformer that works just as well as a shooter. However, the controls pale in comparison to the sequels. Ratchet feels slow. Aiming is feasible but hardly intuitive.

I have decided recently to check out classic PS2 platformer series and decided to start with the Ratchet & Clank series due to high praises from a friend. Overall, I'd say I enjoyed this game and it is a promising start to a franchises. However, it definitely suffers from a multitude of issues. Combat and movement in general feel extremely sluggish. With the lack of strafe introduced in later titles, hitting enemies feels like battle more against the camera and your own movement than it is against enemies. Along with that, enemy design in general was not my favorite, with special dislike towards the crab-like enemies on Orxon and the flying robot enemies towards the end of the game on the final level. Hitting them felt like such a chore. These issues with the combat and camera come up most during the final boss fight. With the multitude of robots being spawned, it is extremely difficult to try and clear the trash mobs while kiting them. I felt the level design was great. with a multitude of pathways to take and well hidden secrets to find. Accessibility was of course pretty mediocre due to this being a game from 2002. Having to constantly switch which gear one is using gets pretty tiring. Music was good, some memorable tracks like from the second level. Story was also pretty good, with a charming cast of characters, funny dialogue, and a cliche but good villain. Seeing Ratchet grow as the game went on was a highlight. Overall, a good starting point to the franchise.

Lot of people have written during the years how the next generation of Aesopian Banjo-Kazooie offshoots from the early 2000 saw an increase in weaponization, in deconcentration, in trivialization, in (alas) sexualization, etc.
Yet, what those greys missed out is that this kind of games, unlike their first-person shooting counterparts in the years to come (which are, by the way, even more derivative), these games were also decidedly anti-authoritarian.

Games like this one and Jak2 were exactly the kind of games in which the hateful, greedy, and imperialist dictator of the situation -- be it Jak2's baron Praxis or this game's President Blarg -- were clearly under the lowlight, yet in a way that, before these, in platform action-adventure games it was never to be seen.
Think again of Mario and Banjo-Kazooie, and you'll think at how, influential game dynamics aside, those games were pretty much confined to the old fable dimension of goods VS evil and in particular VS the evil monsters. However, things started to change precisely with these clones -- yet, to be honest, the ideal forerunner and daddy of 'em all was the underappreciated masterpiece Conker's Bad Fur Day, from which these games inherit the furry protagonist (and even the attire), the potty humor, and also the despicable tyrant (and yes, also the weapons).
Perhaps, the great novelty at the time of the 128bit consoles were the dialogs and the facial expressions of anger, sadness, and so forth that -- with the notable exceptions of Zelda and third-party devs -- were notably erased from virtually all Nintendo games, which were impersonal and passive the same way old tragedies demanded the submission of the public rather than reflection -- not surprising, considering how it was the product of a monopoly.

Interestingly, it might have been that the tyranny portrayed in these games pretty much reflected the tyranny of the early days of 8bit and 16bit monopolies -- nonetheless, something else is occurring here. This one in particular, ulinke its sequels and clones, even managed to sneak critiques to themes such as overconsumption (thus hinting at a component of ecologism that would never ever resurrect again in the next years), the engagement of the working class (Ratchet, the hero, is a mechanic), the demise and suspiciousness of mass media and self-celebrated heroes (Quark the impioster; notably, this theme would alos resurrect many times during the franchise), and at last but not at least the humanization of technology and the de-humanization and technologization of humanity (a theme also resurrected fro the 3rd chapter), here best represented by Clank and his quest to understand what is he (as the babbling baby who grasps to understand where do we come from).
As for the osé components (also lost to a degree in later years, except in the 3rd chapter where luxuriousness is even negative, given the 3rd game's titular femenine mass media robotic evil foe), I dare to suggest that these not only reflected juvenile culture of the time (as if execs and the media pretend that their teenage kids at the time would be inhibited to a "Marcelìn Pan y Vin" continuum) but also reflected on the anti-sex censorship exercised precisely in the Nintendo monopoly that pretty much tried to obliterate videogames to a numbing scheme rather to a suggestive, provoking, or uplifting one -- most notably, as in cases such as Final Fantasy 6 and later Final Fantasy 7, which were censored (the devs broke with the Far East giant precisely because of censorship issues) even though the uncensored game was played in Japan by kids of the same age as the ones from the West who were instead playing the censored one(!).
At the time, even Western monopolies were pressuring for similar regulations (a veritable "Hays Code" of the videoludic world), yet it took a swath of violent and suggestive (yet "artsy", to a degree) videogames to put an end to that spell (i.e.: Resident Evil, Parasite Eve, Tomb Raider, and so forth).

Therefore, Ratchet & Clank somehow reflected that more relaxed humor and juvenile preoccupations in a covert manner, essentially being the equivalent to a cross-over between Spyro, Jazz Jackrabbit, and a more acceptable version of Conker's Bad Fur Day.
Nonetheless, it was important in that it correctly captured the dimension in which the authoritarian impulses still thrived under the surface of the early 2000s (and, to be fair, originating in the 1990s), and it was an early warning to the kind of challenges that we face today more than 20 years later.

The original Ratchet & Clank does a lot of things right. It's the most thematically engrossing in its critique of capitalism, it has the greatest soundtrack in the series, and planets are thoughtfully crafted with branching paths. So what's the problem? It just doesn't play very well. Without the ability to strafe and a pretty janky auto-targeting system, combat leaves a lot to be desired. Ratchet feels slippery to control as well, making Blackwater City especially frustratingly to deal with. It's still a worthwhile experience, just the worst of the trilogy.

1. The combat. One of the best combat systems in any game I've ever played, perhaps the genuine best. So fluid, literally explosive, challenging but very fair, so many weapons and memorable one-off sections in this game. Some of the most fun you can ever have in a videogame, straight up. A must-play for this alone.

2. The levels. Each planet is unique and open-ended, and you won't know straight off where the main objective will be. This essentially forces you to explore, and there's always a satisfying reward at the end of each path such as a weapon, gadget or gold bolt. Add on top the cool platforming, amazing environments and the aforementioned combat system, and gameplay-wise you already have a masterpiece.

3. The plot. It's about how Ratchet and Clank are on a mission to stop an evil businessman from building a planet from pieces of other planets in the galaxy, destroying them and stealing their resources. It's clear that the game is a scathing critique of capitalism, since basically everyone you meet in the game is either exploiting others in ways parallel to the main villain, or is a person being confused and exploited themselves in this system. Who wouldn't love an anti-capitalist sci-fi action platformer? It's also neat to meet all these one off characters, its a small thing but these interactions do a lot to portray a much larger galaxy that you're just seeing glimpses of from these people. Nice.

4. THE MUSIC!!! Banger after fucking banger, all the way through! The background music adds so much atmosphere and badassery to the game just on its own, please check it out on youtube at least if you havent heard it before.

5. The graphics. This game is 21 years old, 3 console generations ago, still looks great. It doesnt have super shiny fur effects or anything, but its got that charming aesthetic. I love how junkyard its depiction of these futuristic technologies are. Also, keep in mind the generation before this had SM64, Crash, Ocarina of Time etc. looking games, and then 5-6 years later games were starting to look like this. Awesome.

So basically if you have a PS2 (emulating this game unfortunately is pretty difficult, and the PS3 port has lots of visual bugs), you got to buy this game. I can't speak on the other games since I havent played them, but I know for certain this is a masterpiece.

While this game isnt really as polished and developed as the rest of the trilogy, This game is a bomb-ass game all around. The level design is super on-fleek, the revolutionary ideas are still felt, it's fun and challenging as fuckie, 8/10, Friggin great.