[PS3] Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time Review

[AgtFox]

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time Review

Title: Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time
Platform: PS3
Developer: Insomniac Games
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
ESRB: E10+
MSRP: $59.99
Editor: Loren 'AgtFox' Halek

What's Hot: Graphics; well written story; humor in spades; voiceovers are well done; a return to form for the series; controls are tight; nice and smooth camera; actual exciting boss battles; worlds are huge and designed beautifully

What's Not: The need to land on a bunch of small planets and capture Zoni in order to upgrade the ship to get beyond an invisible wall gets tiring; why aren’t subtitles used all the time?

Truth be told, Sony has had an excellent year when talking about first-party game releases. We may disagree with them taking so long to drop the price of the system to a reasonable level, but there is no doubt games like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and this game, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, have solidified Sony as a strong first-party company right alongside Nintendo. This game is really a return to form for the series, even more than the other two games in this next generation trilogy: Tools of Destruction and the downloadable only Quest for Booty.

Insomniac has obviously listened to us after years of asking for close to or equal gameplay for Clank as there is for Ratchet. At the beginning the two are still separated from what happened back in Tools of Destruction. Each of our protagonists has a story. Ratchet is still trying to find his friend and Captain Qwark has decided to help him after a television reporter points out how much Ratchet has done to save the universe versus how much he has. Yes, we actually get to see Qwark in action this time around and it is just as hilarious as everything else about him is.

Clank on the other hand is being held prisoner by Dr. Nefarious and his loyal servant Lawrence at the center of the universe (or within 50 feet of it) at the Great Clock. He of course escapes and finds a robotic Junior Custodian that helps him get past locked areas in the base. Clank’s missions are based around the manipulation of time and are often more about thinking than action. Early on he gets a time bomb that allows him to slow down time in an area by throwing it with the R1 button. He will also come upon parts where there are multiple colored squares and he has to record actions on each square in order to get past the section. You do one action and then pop back to the squares, go onto another one and record another action. When you start recording you see the old you do what you just did. The key is to use the multi-colored Clanks to open up the door and allow the real Clank to continue onto the next area. If the puzzle is too difficult and you can’t pass it, and trust me there are some doozies, eventually the game gives you the option to skip it. Only problem is you don’t get the payoff with lots of bolts for finishing the area. The game also talks about the loss of skills, although I never saw any skill won by finishing an area.

Ratchet on the other hand is more action based. With his trusty Omniwrench by his side and the aforementioned Quark early on, Ratchet sets out to find Clank. He eventually comes across another Lombax making him not as unique as once thought. I don’t feel there is much of a spoiler there because there has been plenty of stuff showing the new Lombax. Ratchet’s gameplay is much like the previous games. He can use the wrench or use weapons that he buys along the way from Grummelnet, some of which you’ve seen before and some new ones as well. I love when a new weapon becomes available because you can show a short cartoon of it in action. These little things are just done so well. Ratchet starts the game with some of the gear he had in Tools of Destruction like the gravity boots and the grappling hook that you can swing with or pull items when presented with the R2+square items. Along the way he gets the use of hoverboots, which are quite useful and readily available whenever you want them with a push of the right d-pad.. This allows you to traverse areas faster because you can hit the R2 button to get turbo. It’s an excellent way to get away from overwhelming odds for a while.

The other section of Ratchet’s gameplay has to do with his ship. He travels around different sectors with his ship. In some cases he has to shoot a number of enemies or he has to go to the different planets and land on them. From there the gameplay is much like those Clank ones from Tools of Destruction where you are moving around a circular planet. This time around Ratchet is trying to collect Zoni in order to upgrade his ship. The one problem here is that it is sometimes a necessity to upgrade the ship in order to progress in the game. This means you find yourself jumping to planets and getting Zoni. Some of the planets are short, some are long. It just gets a bit tiring and keeps the game from being absolutely top notch.

The story of course has to do with time and you will find the characters going forward and backward in time with Clank having time powers. I won’t divulge the story here, but let’s just say the old status quo is eventually met and it will be just like old times. The story and the way Insomniac tells it is truly a thing of beauty. The only problem I had is that even with subtitles on they didn’t subtitle every line in the game and sometimes the voices are overpowered by the sound and music. You can drop each of those down under the voice volume, but it would be cool to have them all at the same level and be able to hear everything.

As usual, the loading screens are few and far between. It happens whenever you hit a planet and when a cutscene starts up. Outside of that the stages themselves stream all off the disc like previous games in the series. Draw distance is far and the framerate of 60fps only takes a dip when there are a lot of enemies around and you’re trying to turn the camera around with the right analog stick. The camera for the most part treats you well and you have lots of control over it and it is a very smooth movement with the aforementioned 60fps.

Insomniac has possibly created the best game in the Ratchet & Clank series with A Crack in Time. There’s enough Clank stages and the fact they are actually important to the overall story already makes it better and it means the developer listened to a bunch of our criticisms. The story is very well told, the graphics are phenomenal and the gameplay is varied enough between the two main characters that the overall game flows together perfectly. Much like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, this game belongs in your PS3 library just like the early Tools of Destruction did. If you like a top notch platform game with action and puzzles that woudl even be exciting for the children in your life, you can't go wrong with this game and hopefully you will pick up some of the previous games as well and see how far this series has come. Highly recommended and a must buy for anyone that loves platformers and has a PS3.

Score: 4.5 out of 5 CoGs


Loren says, ”Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time is quite possibly the best game in this fantastic series so far. Finally we have valid Clank stages where he isn’t Ratchet’s sidekick and he is just as important as Ratchet in the game. The flowing of the story and the gameplay itself over this 10 hour plus game is just fantastic. An excellent game that even children and families can play.”

Please note that this game along with Little Big Planet are offered in a Black Friday deal at Best Buy (towards bottom of post) with a 120GB PS3 Slim system for the regular system price of $299.99. You really can't go wrong if you don't have a PS3 since you get two of the best family style games on the system for basically free.

[Wilkz07]

great review. i always enjoyed playing the ratchet games (even Deadlocked). Played the demo now and it took a little bit of time to figure out the time buttons (mainly because I didn't listen to the instructions). Will be picking it up today if its all rented out at bbv.

[Gorvi]

I'll definitely agree that it's the best in the series, it feels great. I didn't have the Zoni problem that you stated mostly because I did every single one of those planets as soon as they came available just because they were so much fun. Well, aside from the "kill every enemy" planets, but there weren't many of those.

One of the bigger pluses for me was that there is a Hard mode you can play from the very beginning, though even that isn't too tough until maybe the final (optional) arena fight. Even that isn't too bad once you get the Ryno.

It would have been funny if they could have gone with the original title they wanted to use for the game: Clock Blockers.

[AgtFox]

Originally Posted by Wilkz07

great review. i always enjoyed playing the ratchet games (even Deadlocked). Played the demo now and it took a little bit of time to figure out the time buttons (mainly because I didn't listen to the instructions). Will be picking it up today if its all rented out at bbv.

Yeah, from the part of the two demos I played they kind of drop you in the middle of the game. The full game does a good job of teaching you all the tricks of the trade.

I will probably go and get all the Zoni, I just felt at points where I wanted to hone in on the story I was met by the impassable area until I reached the next Zoni upgrade level.

[menage]

Still waiting for this to arrive in the mail. The demo was fun though, a return to form so to speak.

[Cyndair]

I'm not very far in but loving this game so far. It is so refreshing to play a fun, colorful, good humored platformer in a world of grey shooting oriented bloodfests (not that I don't like said bloodfests but they wear on the soul after awhile).

[Norse]

I played ToD, but skipped the downloadable episode. Should I buy the episode to get the whole story or can I skip straight to this?

[Gorvi]

Originally Posted by Norse

I played ToD, but skipped the downloadable episode. Should I buy the episode to get the whole story or can I skip straight to this?

You can skip it. It's good, maybe about 3-4 hours long, but you don't need to play it, as you get a recap at the beginning of A Crack in Time.

[Kelegacy]

There is an Amazon Lightning deal today at 12 EST. I am waiting with bated breath. If it's $30, I'm jumping on it. I loved ToD so much and have been craving more Ratchet since I beat ToD 2 weekends ago.

[nixpayn]

My GF has been playing this for a couple weeks, she likes it a lot, looks like a lot of fun. I'll take a stab at it when shes all done.

I bought her the game guide cuz she was missing a lot of the hidden stuff - bolts, zoni's and so on :P

It looks good tho, lots to do, cool weapons.

[inmostlight]

pedantic fanboy nitpick: it's Captain Qwark, with a "w" instead of "u".

I haven't played this one yet but am eagerly looking forward to it. Just need to finish some of this fall's other games first...

[AgtFox]

Originally Posted by inmostlight

pedantic fanboy nitpick: it's Captain Qwark, with a "w" instead of "u".

I haven't played this one yet but am eagerly looking forward to it. Just need to finish some of this fall's other games first...

Thanks for the catch. Was obviously thinking about the publishing software for some reason.

[Xydarc]

Originally Posted by AgtFox

Thanks for the catch. Was obviously thinking about the publishing software for some reason.

Or a sub-atomic particle?

Nice review. Will definitely have to pick this one up during a Holiday sale.

[Kelegacy]

The lightning deal was $30 for this game. I missed it. Got distracted and logged in 3 minutes after the sale started. 3 minutes too late.

[TheEpicOfTyler]

My complaints with this game are surprisingly very wide, but I feel like it's the best in the series and my favorite (and this is one of my favorite series of all time).

My number one gripe is that I wish it were longer, quite a bit longer actually. I think that there should've been more planetoids and moons to explore too. I like what is there and what is there is very good, but the game is just over way too soon.

More arena fights! The arena's are some of the best areas in Ratchet & Clank and this one, like the rest of the game, is quite small and not fleshed out. I went through all the challenges in less than an hour, I would've loved to have seen tons more. I think that online/local co-op for the battle arena would've been awesome too, I wish they had done that.

I was also very disappointed in the Insomniac Museum, but I don't think that is much of a valid criticism.

In general the game is quite buggy too, there is a layer of polish missing from the game that was surprising to me. I think that Insomniac's rigid release schedule is starting to effect the games they make.

Clank's time puzzles and the challenge time puzzles really make up for a lot of the game's faults. You will spend tons of time staring at the challenge puzzles wondering how they're possible and wake up in the middle of the night with the solution. Those are great.

Still one of my favorite games of the year, I just hope that if they keep the series going they take their time with it.

[menage]

Just saw a bit of it, my GF is playing it (she bought it). It looks pretty swell, really swell actually. And it looks fun as well. More varied than Future,