Platinum thoughts:
Almost every trophy in this game is easily done in a couple tries at best, except for one. After beating the story, my partner and I redid some levels for scores and such, and had everything else after 2.5 playthroughs (including online matches).

There is a trophy in this game for running 26.2 miles, hoverbooting 112 miles and gliding 2.4 miles. After playing 15 full levels worth of this 5-level game, I had run about 20 (estimate), hooverbooted less than 50 (despite doing so everywhere) and glided for less and 1/4 of a mile....

And to make matters worse! Your distance isn't tracked, but there are milestones. The highest hoverboot one is 100 miles, and the highest glide is for 1 mile. So you just have to fkn guess how many of the remaining 12 miles hovering and 1.4 miles gliding you've done. It's inexcusable and I hate it, fuck trophies like this. I will never touch this game again.

As my first game to try out the PS3 Streaming service on the PS5... This game is really bad. Like it's standard Ratchet and Clank gameplay and Ratchet feels pretty much the same with hoverboots and all but there's just something wrong feeling about this game. Like the tower-defense gameplay is alright and has its moments, especially in later levels it actually becomes quite fun. It's just the gameplay has nothing to supplement with. There's only 4 stages, only like 5 enemy types, and basically the same weapons from A Crack in Time. The lack of polish and lag doesn't help things. It's a very barebones experience and really not worth playing.

If I wasn’t aware this was going to be mostly a tower defense game before playing and purchased this thinking it was going to be a Ratchet and Clank adventure I would have been pissed. However since I knew what I was getting into it was an ok experience. There isn’t really much to say about this other than it was an ok tower defense game with some Ratchet gun play involved. To me this game is literally the definition of an average game. Nothing inherently wrong with it but nothing to get excited over either.

This tower defense game sure is a tower defense game, but the true reason I rank this game so low is because of this game's utterly pathetic single player and writing. Everyone rightfully makes fun of the Hashtag Gadgetron in the PS4 game but that's nowhere near as painful as playing this game in the 2020's and being subjected to the stereotypical nerd villain character playing the Trololo song over your spaceship's intercoms while calling you a noob after Qwark talks about his fanfiction. Real "how do you do fellow kids" vibes from this game.

I am gonna try to not write a long review for this one because even though Its a short game, having gone for the platinum it has long overstayed its welcome and Im ready to delete it.

Despite that harsh opening, this game honestly wasnt all that bad. Please dont play this without a friend or friend with benefits or brother or sister or grandma or whatever, because I honestly cant imagine this game being very fun solo. It is fully meant to be a co-op game so maybe skip it if nobody loves you.

So the game is basically ratchet and clank gameplay but in a tower defense format. There is only 5 levels and one of them is a reskin so you're not really getting a lot of content here. There is also a multiplayer but it is beyond dead and Im not convinced would of been worth it to begin with. The game does have some decent replay value through medals and challenges and leveling up weapons, so having to replay the levels for the platinum was more fun then it was a bother. Story is whatever, its mildly funny but just there to string everything together. The game is really quite basic but it still does have all the charm you'd come to expect from a Ratchet and Clank game, so as long as you're playing with the right person you'll find this a fun game to beat in a sitting or two. If not, maybe you're not missing much.

Platinum Thoughts: So for the most part going for this platinum was pretty funny. You got some good miscellaneous ones and in general its just a good small trophy list. The hardest among these is to beat three of the levels with developer times, but as long as you attempt these on a second playthrough after you've upgraded most of your guns its pretty fun to try to beat them as quick as possible. They each took us a couple tries but we always were only short by a couple seconds so its a fair challenge without being too much of a pain. So for the most part its a fun not too demanding platinum. But then theres the one trophy that will long outlast all the others. You have to glide, hoverboot and run for a certain amount of miles that even after having beaten each level 2-3+ times we werent even half close too. This took us a few hours of additional grinding. This trophy is just lame, you'll long since have seen everything the game has to offer by the time you unlock it and leaves the game with an unsatisfying feeling upon completion. Worst part is the skill points you can use to track your progress end before you've met the trophy requirement, so you'll just be wandering around for an additional hour hoping you rack up enough time somehow.

All this being said, trophy annoyances don't equate to quality. You'll find that FFA is a respectable if probably unnecessary little co-op game and its worth the short time you'll spend on it if you've got someone to share it with. I'll always be grateful for series I like getting their own wacky little spinoffs and this is no exception

Trophy Completion - 100% (23/23) Platinum #198
Time Played - 13 hours 16 minutes
Nancymeter - 65/100
Game Completion #64 of 2022
May Completion #14

This game is a short, undercooked, taste of a concept. It feels like an exceedingly polished piece of fanwork. As a product, it's a terrible deal for the price. As a played experience, it is far from the worst Ratchet & Clank game.

I don’t care much for the concept of tower defense games, and given this game’s general reception, it sounds like most Ratchet & Clank fans don’t either. Although I don’t know what makes a good tower defense game, I think complaints of this game’s length is proof that it starts to tap into a flavor of fun before it abruptly ends. Frontal Assault has poppy animation, a soundtrack approaching hummability, and has solid couch co-op multiplayer. Weapon variety is good, and levels are just complex enough to have a few hidden collectibles.

Gameplay overall errs on the easy side, which means the greatest danger is a lower score rather than a game over. Playing it solo can feel a bit restrictive and repetitive, as the nature of tower defense means running back to base and across the map often. When playing with a buddy, there’s just enough happening simultaneously to make delegating tasks feel like a strategic team effort. Though as a duo, the only thing you’re guaranteed to kill is the frame rate.

Trying to play this game online in 2022 was a hilarious exercise in futility. I actually found a single person looking to try a ranked match, which I think started without them confirming to participate. This resulted in my wandering around an empty field until I won by time-out. But I still got credit for the online achievement, so I’ll call it a wash.

In my rating system, 2 stars represents an average, C rank game. I can’t hate Frontal Assault, and think most of the ire directed towards it is a feeling of opportunity cost that effort wasn’t put into making a mainline Ratchet & Clank game. But seeing as I did not enjoy any mainline game released after Frontal Assault, I almost wish Ratchet would have gone the Kirby route and kept trying outlandish game ideas.

I had great fun playing this as a kid. It is a completely different game that other Ratchet & Clank games. Playing split screen with my little brother was also great fun.

Short game with a very short story which isn't really cannon to any of the games.
This is one of the better Ratchet & Clank spin-offs out there, nr. 1 would be Secret agent Clank.

Would recommend (re)playing if you own the game.