Ladies and gentlemen of this website: I have something important to inform you. I have an anxiety disorder. I've had it since I was about twelve years of age, and it's been a regular struggle since then. I constantly worry over the most minor of instances and things I have no control over, I have a hard time mellowing out in social circles, I constantly have negative thoughts, and caffeine is my worst enemy. If I let my anxiety disorder take control of my life, I get really depressed, but I'll be damned to just let it engulf me. I exercise regularly to curb the anxious feelings, mostly very long walks but I do go to the gym regularly (or at least I did before the covid epidemic), and they always help a great deal. I'm telling you this because my journey with my anxiety disorder is a lot like climbing a mountain, an arduous task that takes a bit of discipline and courage, and the obvious metaphor in Celeste for struggling with mental illness. The summit you climb in Celeste is incredibly difficult, as I'm sure you can imagine. What summit isn't hard to climb in real life? It may get so challenging that you'll struggle to persevere. However, Celeste constantly reminds you that you can do it. You have the strength to overcome the seemingly impossible odds. You just have to keep believing in yourself. Once you do that, you will experience one of the best 2D platformers in recent memory.

You play as Madeline, a young woman with strawberry red hair. Madeline is her canon name, but you can name her whatever you want. This is done to project the protagonist's struggle on the player. Madeline's mission is to climb the summit, a daunting task that only a few people have ever done. Her purpose for this isn't really all that clear. Madeline is just climbing the mountain as a means to distract herself from her inner demons and affirm her full potential. I suppose climbing the summit for her is like my walks. It's a therapeutic distraction to calm one's mind. However, the walks I take are not nearly as challenging as the feats that Madeline has to overcome in this game.

If I had to compare the gameplay of Celeste to another game, it certainly reminds me of Super Meat Boy. The fast-paced 2D platforming, the strict margin of error when it comes to dying, and the puzzle-like way of crafting each level. The way these two games differ is in overall tone and direction. Super Meat Boy is high-octane silliness that plays like a seven-year-old after slurping down their first Red Bull. It's supposed to test the limits of your reflexes and your reaction times. Celeste, on the other hand, is more restrained and methodical. The challenges are just as multi-faceted and test your skills, but how you approach them is different. You are supposed to take a deep breath and heavily consider what you are supposed to do. You might fail several times, but each failure is treated as a growing pain before you succeed instead of a slight against your abilities. This game does keep track of absolutely every die you die, however, which I found to be quite irritating. Super Meat Boy would probably be more stressful for me if it were calculating every failure, but I don't think it's supposed to be irritating in Celeste. You're supposed to die a lot in Celeste. I think it's to signify a change in your skill level, and you're supposed to reflect on it once you're victorious. It kind of stressed me out all the same. It's a little counterintuitive to what they were trying to convey here.

There are seven main levels in the story and two epilogue levels. Each level is entirely unique from one another and has its own gimmick. One level uses big, translucent globs of energy to propel Madeline upward or forward. One level uses high-altitude wind as an obstacle. One level, my least favorite gimmick, includes red mold that grows if you step on an area with its premature, grass-like state. If you step on the fully grown mold, it will kill you instantly. There are also mold blobs with eyeballs at this level that shift around in patterns. I don't know why this is my least favorite level, but the mold really stressed me. Some of the levels are totally linear, and some of them are maze-like, involving keys for locked doors and different passages ways that lead back to the main objective. The seventh level is a culmination of all the themes and features presented in every previous level. The level variation is one of the strengths of this game, and the length of each level is perfect. It's mostly a case of your personal skill level more than anything else. The one collectible in Celeste is strawberries. The ending will be determined by how many strawberries you've collected. I don't know the significance behind the strawberries, but collecting them will add a certain level of challenge to the game besides getting past each level.

If you thought the main game was difficult, the B-sides in this game would teach you the meaning of pain and suffering. Every single level has a remixed version that you unlock by finding a cassette tape in each level (and by trying to reach it with the rhythmically challenged, disappearing blue and pink platforms). These B-side levels are serious business. The B-side version of the first level might be harder than any of the levels in the base game. Each section will take a ton of time to master each section and a huge amount of patience. To make matters even more stressful, there are even C-side levels which are the epitome of testing your reflexes. Once you complete these levels, you will feel like you've transcended your human form into a nimble, thumb-having cat.

The game also looks and feels fantastic. The graphics blur the line between 8-bit kitsch and modern indie game flair. The color palette of each level, whether it be lighter or darker, is always vibrant and attractive. One little aspect that I like is being able to always tell what color Madeline's hair is. Red signifies that you can use her boost ability, and blue signifies that you can't. A lot of 8-bit games can come with graphical challenges that would make this hard to discern, but it's always crystal clear in Celeste. The music also blurs that same retro style with modern sensibilities. I wouldn't quite say that it's an 8-bit, chiptune score, but a lot of the music sounds like a progressive electronic group such as Tangerine Dream, filtered through NES-era instrumentation. Another little feature I liked about this is the music being dampened whenever Madeline was underwater. The comic-like animations between levels are nice to look at, and the warbled, theremin-Esque dialogue between the characters is always amusing. If you find it annoying, you can always skip any cutscene. Still, I don't recommend it on your first go of this game because the characters represent a lot in terms of Celeste's overarching theme of struggling with mental illness.

There are only a couple of characters in Celeste, but they are all significant. Madeline, as you know, is the self-doubt-ridden, anxious protagonist on a mission to conquer her inner demons by making it up the mountain. In the first level, she meets a young man named Theo, who is also climbing up the summit, but for much less personal reasons. He becomes friendly with Madeline and says her perseverance reminds him of his sister. He represents the friends of the mentally ill, the ones who are going through the same journey in life but are detached from the experiences of their mentally ill friends. Once Madeline has an intense panic attack, Theo does his best to comfort her, but he still doesn't understand the full impact of what Madeline is going through. He still banters and slightly teases her, but in good taste. The Old Woman lives on the summit and scoffs at Madeline for having ridiculous aspirations to climb the summit, which angers Madeline. They both come around to each other eventually, but she is seen as an annoyance to Madeline. The Old Woman probably represents the people who echo our insecurities whether they mean to or not.

Mr. Oshiro owns the hotel level in chapter three. He's a small, needy, and pathetic man with worse self-doubt than Madeline. He also seems to be in denial about his hotel because it closed down several years ago, and it's become so dilapidated that mold is running rampant (literally) throughout. Madeline becomes irritated with the constant neediness that she erupts on him. Mr. Oshiro becomes so upset that he transforms into a monster and chases Madeline. He represents empathy, or anyone's ability to empathize with someone who is also suffering. Madeline's behavior towards him might represent the struggle to do so when there is already so much on one's plate.

The antagonist, the most important character, is Madeline's inner demon, personified as Madeline with purple hair, dark clothes, and red eyes. She does not have a cannon name, probably to stay consistent with the fact that you can choose Madeline's name, but I think the commonly used name "Badeline" is kind of dumb. "Negative Madeline" pops up for the first time during the second level when Madeline looks in a mirror, a distorted version of her own reflection. She constantly says negative, effacing things to Madeline, trying to destroy her self-confidence. She also chases you during two levels to try to eliminate your chances of ever achieving your goals which is a perfect way to illustrate the feeling of self-doubt. The one keeping Madeline from achieving her goals isn't the mountain's obstacles but herself. She is her own worst enemy. During level six, there is a showdown between Madeline and her negative self culminating in peace between the two. The final level has Madeline working with herself to climb the last few miles up the summit. I think the way Celeste goes about dealing with the antagonist is bloody brilliant. An antagonist, in most senses, is a person or being that should be wiped away by the protagonist to achieve the goal, or maybe defeating them is the primary purpose. This is kind of difficult to do when the antagonist is yourself. By working together, Madeline can boost twice with pink hair and make it through terrain she couldn't before. By making peace with herself, she can now accomplish more than she ever could before. That's exactly the secret of accomplishing anything in life. That is the secret to reaching the top of the summit and completing Celeste.

I've seen plenty of games before tackle issues with mental illness and struggles with one's own personal being, but I don't think any game has done it the same way as Celeste. It represents the struggle of mental illness and self-doubt with cleverness and maturity. It might be a difficult 2D platformer on the surface, but there is so much more to unravel in its presentation. After this game beat my ass repeatedly, I never gave up. Celeste wants you to struggle, but in that struggle, you will emerge as a stronger, more resilient person just like Madeline.

You Can Do It.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

I'm very thankful to have grown up in the PS2/Gamecube era of gaming. It took the early, primitive foundations of 3D gaming and vastly improved them with just one console generation. During that transition, the 3D platformer was still in full force and already established modern classics in the video game medium like Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie/Tooie, Crash Bandicoot, etc. I of course, did not grow up with any of these games because I was way too young at the time, but I constantly heard glowing reviews of them from people who were a little older than me. I went back and played all of these games eventually, and I have a certain sense of respect and admiration for them for laying the foundation for some of my favorite childhood games. I still think the games that I grew up with are objectively better, however, regardless of how many people will say otherwise. I don't think it's a matter of not taking off my perpetual rose-tinted glasses when discussing these second-generation 3D platformers. I could argue the same for those who fondly discuss the 3D platformers of the previous generation that influenced the games I grew up with. I still believe that the second generation of 3D platformers is better. The game that cements this claim for me is Jak And Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. This was an early title for the PS2 and the first of the "PS2 mascot series" to be released. Some criticisms I've heard about his game I grew up with is that it's highly derivative, some even harshly deriding it as a "Banjo-Kazooie clone." After playing the 3D platformers of the previous generation, I can't ignore that Jak And Daxter borrowed several elements from these games. If Jak And Daxter did anything, they took all of these elements from games like Banjo Kazooie and practically perfected them.

The world of Jak And Daxter is a fascinating one. The world's lore is established immediately from the first cutscene. The world has no specific name, but it has a particular premise. An old, gruff voice tells the player about the precursors, the gods of this world who created this world and have left their essence in the form of eco. The voice tells of a great prophecy involving a teenage boy named Jak, destined to align all of the universe's great essences and bring balance to the universe. At the start of the game, Jak and his obnoxious buck-toothed friend Daxter venture off to a forbidden island. They witness a suspicious meeting and are accosted by one of the bone-clad soldiers when Daxter falls into a dark eco pool. He is turned into a small, orange animal called an ottsel, a cross between a weasel and an otter, a fictional animal devised by Naughty Dog. They return to the home of Samos the Sage, the narrator in the opening cutscene. He claims that the only way to turn Daxter back to his normal self is to venture far to the north and speak to Gol, the dark eco sage.

Samos claims that the duo is too young and inexperienced for their journey, so he has the train on a nearby sunny island Geyser Rock. This tutorial level gives you a great feel of how the game plays. As you jump on the ledges and platforms in Geyser Rock, you'll notice that Jak is one of the most fluid characters to play as in any 3D platformer. He can double jump, roll, jump higher when crouching, and execute a rolling jump when timed correctly. This move is guaranteed to be used as the roll in Legend of Zelda for traversal. He can do a punch that propels his whole body, a spin kick that can also double as a means to go further after a jump, a slam down on the ground, and he can perform an uppercut while crouching. Jak has the most versatile moves out of any platforming character I've played, considering all these moves only require his body.

Jak can also use four different types of eco that all have unique uses. Green eco restores your health. Your health is displayed in a heart with four green chambers, and you can get hit a maximum of four times before dying. Green eco is abundant on every level, usually stored in breakable boxes, but the problem is that each eco pellet is only worth one out of fifty to restore a chamber of your total health. Bigger pellets of green eco restore a full chamber, but they are found much less frequently. Thankfully, dying in this game is practically inconsequential. Blue eco helps you run faster, access some precursor doors and other devices, and can be used to activate jump panels. This eco is just as plentiful as the green eco and is arguably the most vital for traversing the levels. Red eco makes you hit harder and is fairly rare, but it's not very useful. Yellow eco makes you shoot fireballs for a brief period. Using it normally is always pretty cool, but anytime you have to use it for an objective, you have to aim accurately using the goggles. It kind of ruins the fun of being able to shoot fireballs, you know? Dark eco is everywhere, but it's used as a stage hazard instead of a limited power source. If you fall into a pool of it, it does not turn you into an ottsel, strangely enough.

The orange rodent, on the other hand, perches himself on Jak's shoulder throughout the whole game and doesn't do anything of real worth. I almost forget that the plot of this game revolves around him. Daxter is only used as the comic relief of this game, bantering with Samos, Keira, and every NPC you come across. I suppose Daxter had to compensate for Jak being an archetypal mute protagonist by being ostentatious. He'll scream obvious tips in your ear when you come across a more puzzle-based section, and he'll frequently roast you when you die. What a great friend he is! It makes you want to wring his yappy little orange neck. Besides the NPCs you'll encounter throughout the game, Samos and Keira are the other two main characters in the game besides the titular duo. Samos is Jak's stern guardian who is also the master of green eco. In terms of archetypal adventure story characters, he definitely fills the role of the wise old aid like a glove. He mostly badgers you to keep on your toes and do the various objectives the game has to offer. Keira is Samos's daughter and is a perky tech-wiz who is also a vague love interest for Jak. Also, she's only fifteen, you degenerates. She is also the curator of the Zoomer, the primary vehicle in this game that you will use for a couple of objectives and traveling across the four main hub worlds. The NPCs you'll encounter don't have the same weight as the main four, but they all serve the game well with their unique quirks.

The fluid movement of Jak is due to the phenomenal presentation of this game. Platformers of the previous generations had dodgy framerate and rudimentary 3D animation. 3D graphics were still in the early stages of development, so those games can be excused, but it's incredible how much more advanced Jak And Daxter looks and feels compared to those games. If every 3D platformer is relative to how long it came out after Super Mario 64, it's unbelievable that Jak and Daxter came out only five years after. It's hard to believe that Jak And Daxter came out in 2001. It must have been the most graphically advanced game at the time, and it still looks great today. This is thanks to the animated graphical style the developers decided to use. Every PS2 game with a more cartoony aesthetic aged much better than the games that didn't. Every character is incredibly expressive and backed by a full-fledged voice-acting cast that did a terrific job with each character (except for Jak, of course. Having a silent protagonist is probably easier to budget). PS1 3D platformers may have had voice acting and charming animated graphics, but the presentation here could be pitched as an animated movie or a cartoon series. It's that impressive.

The aspect that is even more impressive to me is the world of this game. Until I was exposed to the middle ages inspired world of Lordran, this was my favorite video game world. I guess I have a penchant for seamless, non-linear worlds in gaming. The game's world is divided into three hub areas with a couple of branching areas that act as their own levels and objectives. The branching areas are designed very similarly to the levels in Banjo-Kazooie. They are big open spaces without one clear objective but rather a several objectives that can be cleared in any order. The levels in Banjo-Kazooie seemed kind of closed off. Each level felt spacious and rich with detail, but it always felt like there were boundaries that made each level feel restricted. Not only are the levels in Jak And Daxter rich with detail, but the seamless nature of the entire world also erases those superficial boundaries. Every single part of Jak And Daxter's world is so geographically sound that I could map out every single speck of land in this game. To make the seamless nature of this world feel more organic, Naughty Dog opted out of loading screens in place of long elevators and cutscenes to take you to some of the individual levels. I, for one, easily favor this instead of loading screens and can't think of anyone who wouldn't.

It helps that the seamlessly crafted world of Jak And Daxter is so interesting. With the cryptic nature of the lore, the ancient precursors as an ambiguous force that encapsulates this land. The aspect of the precursors that is even more interesting than the eco is the bevy of ancient precursor technology scattered about. It gives Jak And Daxter a contrasting style between fantasy and science-fiction. It's not quite a steampunk world, but it has a quaint, old-world technology aesthetic. The contrast between these can be illustrated by the two vehicles you use in this game. One is the Zoomer, a hoverbike with a propeller, and a Flut-Flut, a fictional bird-horse animal that you hatch from an egg in an early level of the game. It can fly for a short period, break metal crates with its head, and it is as smooth to control as Jak is. I sometimes wish it would eat Daxter, and the Flut-Flut can be my animal companion like Epona from The Legend of Zelda.

The layout of the levels gives the player the impression that the precursors were intelligent beings and purveyors of radical ideas and burgeoning technology. The Forbidden Jungle has an ancient precursor citadel in the center of it that holds a hidden energy source. The Lost Precursor City is a technological wonderment submerged underwater. Almost every room showcases a different system of precursor innovations and is probably my all-time favorite water level in gaming. Gol and Maia's Citadel is the apex of precursor architecture, a precursor skyscraper so gigantic that you can see it at any point in the game. It's like the scope of the precursor technology and architecture tells the lore without using the narrative of the main story. Considering the sub-levels of most 3D platformers in the previous generation had simple themes for level variation, this comprehensive way of world-building was incredibly advanced.

As the game progresses, it doesn't really get any more difficult. The game maintains a consistent difficulty throughout. As I mentioned, dying is practically inconsequential because checkpoints are littered at every point, and health is very easy to find, albeit taxing to collect. The enemies are creatures called Lurkers. I don't know why they are the enemies of this world from a lore standpoint, but every character in the game speaks of them with disgust. At one point, a group of them attempt to blow up a large mountain area, so I guess they are intelligent and malicious enough to rationally dislike. The standard Lurkers are furry purple beasts that are proportional to something of a gorilla, but apparently, every single enemy in this game is a variation of the purple monsters. Some of them are blue and have bone armor, and some look like hopping ice crystals, but apparently, even the fish, frogs, and spiders in Spider Cave are Lurkers. The only distinctive feature they all have that defines them is their big, creamsicle-colored eyes. No matter what variation they are, they all die with one hit. Even the few bosses are an underwhelming exercise in waiting for an exposed weak spot three different times like we've seen in dozens of platformers before. I then realized that the progression in the game is not supposed to be in its difficulty but rather the way the world becomes expanded and less familiar at the start of the game.

Sandover Village is the starting place of this game: a cozy, unadorned place with Samos's hut and a couple of townsfolk. The branching paths are only slightly off the beaten path in a few directions. Sentinel Beach hardly even feels detached from Sandover, and Forbidden Jungle could potentially be a hiking trail if you forget about the giant snakes. The exception to the relative familiarity of Sandover Village is Misty Island, the spooky area from the first cutscene of the game. You fully explore with just a short boat ride, and you can still see Sandover from the shore. The areas between the hub-worlds are passages you navigate through with the Zoomer. The distance between the hub-worlds through these passages can't be determined, but each passage gets longer after each series of levels, and they all direct you north. Rock Village is a dreary place in the perpetual storm, and it's also on fire due to being under attack by meteors. The Lost Precursor City can expand as much as it wants because its underwater nature isn't relative to the rest of the world. Boggy Swamp is much more miserable than the sunny Forbidden Jungle, and the Precursor Basin is large enough where it's strictly a Zoomer level. The third hub world is inside a volcanic crater. It's a neutral zone without any enemies like the last two, but only an eccentric like an eco sage would dare to reside here. The levels that branch off this hub are so big that the developers could only fit two sub-levels here because of restrictions.

The progressively bigger spaces make Jak And Daxter more difficult because this game is a tried and true collectathon, a staple of the 3D platformer genre. Fortunately, the game doesn't get too ambitious and restrains itself to only three collectibles. The main collectibles are power cells and glowing metallic orbs that look like golden atoms. These are the collectibles you gain to further the story, a MacGuffin in the scope of video games, but used as a power source for the Zoomer to withstand heat levels in the lava-filled passages and power a machine to lift a boulder. Every time you collect one of these, a short cutscene occurs with Jak and Daxter celebrating by doing the robot or alley-ooping it into Jak's backpack, accompanied by a victory jingle. Some say this gets old after a while, but I don't feel the same. Another collectible is the scout flies, drone-like devices made by Keira to search for power cells kept in boxes. Good job, Keira. They'll find lots of power cells confined that way. There are seven of them in each level, including all of the passage levels, and collecting them per level will reward you with a power cell. Fortunately, these little buggers make a lot of noise, so they aren't that hard to find. The collectible that acts like currency is the precursor orbs. These can be used to trade for power cells from the NPCs in the hub areas and by the mystical, Dr. Claw-sounding precursor oracles. There are so many scattered about in the game that you needn't worry about finding them to trade for power cells, but I don't recommend collecting all of them if you're a completionist. There will always be one missing precursor orb, and it will always be in a huge area like Snowy Mountain. Trying to find all of them will drive you insane.

Another MacGuffin the game implements is the warp gates between the three hub-worlds. In the language of video game tropes, these are teleportation devices making it easier to traverse through the game after a certain point of progression. In the language of the game's story, Samos claims that the other sages haven't turned on their warp gates in months, and it's not because they seem like an invasion of one's privacy. You discover that the sages have been captured by the two ominous figures from the first cutscene who intend to use their collective power to open the dark eco pillars to adulterate the entire world with dark eco. One of these characters is Gol, the sage of dark eco and the man who was supposed to bring Daxter back to his human form. Instead, he's been corrupted by dark eco along with his partner (wife? sister?) Maia. Of course, Jak and Daxter have to stop them instead of changing Daxter back. It's a good twist, but the game becomes another "save the world" type of story. This is par for the course, considering how many typical fantasy elements are in this game. By the time you get to the citadel, Samos has been captured, and Gol and Maia's mission to bring darkness to the world is almost complete. The last level is their citadel which acts kind of like Ganon's Castle in Ocarina of Time. It's a gauntlet that tests all the skills and eco powers you've been using to the fullest extent. Once you free all of the sages, they use their collective power as a shield, and you have to battle a precursor robot on the citadel's roof. Unlike the other bosses, this is an epic fight that proves to be a fair challenge. At the final stage of the boss, the sage's collective powers form a mythical substance called light eco. This is apparently the substance that could turn Daxter back into a human, but he opts for saving the world instead. It's the most admirable thing he does throughout the whole game. Jak uses the light eco to blast the precursor bot as Gol and Maia are sealed in the dark eco pillars forever. The heroes celebrate their victory on top of the citadel, and Jak and Keira almost kiss, but Daxter deliberately cock-blocks him mid-kiss. I swear to god, Daxter, I'm going to rip you off my shoulder and fling you into the mouth of a fucking Lurker Shark.

Saving the world is not the true ending of Jak & Daxter. If the player collects all the power cells, you can open a door on top of the citadel. Once you open it, it shines with a bright white light and apparently something so sublime that the characters can't even describe it. This ending is not worth the effort considering how ambiguous it is, but this is the true ending to the game considering the beginning of its sequel. Whether they initially had this in mind as a cliffhanger, I'm not sure, but that's how it turned out to be. The real ending to me is reloading the game at the start menu, which will automatically take you to the top of the citadel, but this time there's sunlight and no boss battle. From the top looking south, you can look at all the places you've been to. You can make out the citadel in Forbidden Jungle, the blimp in Boggy Swamp, and the mountains of Snowy Mountain and take in the scope of your journey. Jak and Daxter look at how far they've come with a sense of pride while the wind from the high elevation blows on them. The music is both triumphant and bittersweet. The spectacle of this view had me awe-struck when I was a kid. This right here is one of the most beautiful moments in video gaming. It's the perfect way to cap off this adventure.

Jak And Daxter is a product of years of refining and tweaking 3D platformer tropes. However, just because it's not the most original video game doesn't mean it isn't ideal. Jak & Daxter was a magnificent advancement for the genre and one of the first stellar entries that capped off the PS2 era of gaming. Every single element from titles like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie had been improved significantly from the seamless world design, the impressive presentation, and the elevating scope of the 3D platformer. It might just be the peak of the 3D platformer genre with the advancements it made and its influence on all of the 3D platformer games that followed it.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

It's funny to me that Insomniac thought this game would be an utter disaster. They were given a deadline for November of 2004 and weren't 100% confident that they wouldn't deliver on the same level as the previous Ratchet & Clank titles. They shipped this game on the designated deadline, crossed their fingers, and hoped they wouldn't be responsible for the franchise's demise and Insomniac games' bankruptcy. It turns out that not only was this game a success, but it is by and large considered the best Ratchet & Clank game even after years of graphically superior sequels. The game that Insomniac worried would jeopardize their careers turned out to be the peak of Ratchet & Clank. This was also the game that made me a massive fan of the franchise and the one that cemented itself as one of my childhood favorites. It really begs the question as to why the finished version of Up Your Arsenal (which is an even better and raunchier title than Going Commando and also caused controversy. Europe and Australia didn't even think of a comparable substitute and just went with "Ratchet & Clank 3") made the members of Insomniac sweat. I don't think it's due to the developers' lack of confidence, considering this wasn't the case for the two previous games. If this is the game Insomniac released on a wing and a prayer, how did it become everyone's favorite Ratchet & Clank game, myself included?

Personally, this is my favorite Ratchet & Clank game because this was the one that introduced me to the franchise. This was the first I played, and it solidified Ratchet & Clank as one of my favorite video game franchises as a kid. Over the years, I've gone back and forth, deciding between Going Commando or Up Your Arsenal as the supreme Ratchet & Clank title. One would think it wouldn't even be close, considering the stellar reputation Up Your Arsenal has over every other Ratchet & Clank game. There is something slightly different about Up Your Arsenal from the previous two titles. As I've stated ad nauseam, each Ratchet & Clank game is a progression of what was already established from the previous games. Going Commando was exactly this for the first Ratchet & Clank. Up Your Arsenal, however, deviates from the original formula ever so slightly. When considering the make-up of Up Your Arsenal, my assessment proves to have cracks in it. Up Your Arsenal improves on aspects of Going Commando, but it is slightly different from the first two games.

The third Ratchet & Clank adventure begins as the titular duo is playing a game of intergalactic chess and watching TV in Clank's apartment from the previous game. While watching the latest episode of Secret Agent Clank, they get a breaking news flash that Ratchet's home planet is being invaded by an alien race known as the Tyhrranoids. They jet back to the Solana Galaxy and help the Galactic Rangers expel the invading Tyhrranoid forces. You might notice that this tutorial level is longer and busier than the tutorial levels from the previous two games. This level isn't just to teach newcomers the basic components of Ratchet & Clank: it's to ease veteran players into the very combat-centric gameplay Up Your Arsenal presents. If the first game was a platformer with rough shooting elements, Going Commando is the fine-tuned mix of both, while Up Your Arsenal is a shooter with some refined platformer elements. For those few that do not sing the same high praises for Up Your Arsenal, the combat-centric gameplay is the biggest point of contention. It's not the combat itself; it's just as solid as it is in Going Commando, if not arguably better. The problem is with how the combat eclipses every other aspect of the gameplay. Up Your Arsenal is easily the least diverse game in terms of gameplay variety, and the combat tends to overstay its welcome.

In Going Commando, the levels became more hectic due to all the advances to combat like strafing and the Nanotech health system. The gladiator arenas were added to further accentuate the combat and provide alternative gameplay from the standard platforming and level exploring. Up Your Arsenal has all of that, but it feels like it's the focal point instead of a piece of variety to deviate from the main type of gameplay. Almost every level feels like a warzone, especially any level with the thyrannoids. In fact, most levels featuring the slimy, googly-eyed "puss-buckets" are literally warzones. One new gameplay features heavily implemented in this game is the ranger missions. These occur on five planets and involve Ratchet and the rangers storming the thyrannoids or defending them from taking over a planet. Some are completely optional, but some require doing every single sub-mission. There are about five to six different sub-missions per Ranger mission, and they all pretty much involve defeating swarms of different types of thyrannoids or activating defense systems by turning screws with your wrench. These missions aren't bad by any means, and they are a great source of extra bolts, but why did we need more combat-based missions in a game that is already heavily combat-focused? On some of these planets, you already blast through waves of thyrannoids to get to the ranger missions, where you blast even more thyrannoids. The repetition tends to make the combat very stale sometimes. At least the vocoded banter between your distressed robotic comrades during these missions is always entertaining.

The gladiator missions are back on a single arena, broadcasted throughout the galaxy on the hit show "Annihilation Nation." Like the gladiator matches from Going Commando, you'll face waves of different enemies (not thyrannoids for once) with some varying themes to some of the matches and an occasional boss battle. Some differences are that sometimes a turret that looks like a disco ball emerges from the lava pool in the middle of the arena, and the commentator sounds less like a monster-truck rally announcer and more like a snarky wiseass like Norm Macdonald on Weekend Update. There are also obstacle courses on Annihilation Nation where you dodge lasers, falling platforms, fire pits, and enemies to make it to the end of the course. If you liked the arena challenges from Going Commando, Annihilation Nation will satisfy your bloodthirst...is what I would be saying if this wasn't the case for the rest of Up Your Arsenal. The Annihilation Nation challenges are similar to the gladiator matches in Going Commando. Still, they aren't as impactful as they were in the previous game because the rest of the game is, in essence, a gladiator match. Having the foreground of a televised gladiator arena doesn't make a difference when the rest of the game feels exactly like a gladiator arena. Not to mention that this idea was already done in the previous game. The obstacle courses deviate from the combat a bit, but once you've done one of them, you've practically done them all. There are about 30 or so different Annihilation Nation matches. They are good for bolts, but trying to do all of them gets to be mind-numbing. I much appreciate the limited number of gladiator challenges in Going Commando.

The saving grace of combat is the weapons. As a collective, the weapons in Up Your Arsenal are definitely the best of the PS2 trilogy. There are so many weapons that Insomniac had to implement a second weapon wheel to fit most of them. They upgrade exactly like in Going Commando, but each weapon upgrades four times instead of only once, making each weapon adapt incrementally instead of just evolving once fairly early on in the game, not adapting to the difficulty curbs. I tended to keep more weapons around in Up Your Arsenal because the advanced weapon upgrading gave me more incentive to keep them around for much longer. This improved upgrading system also makes every weapon useful throughout the entire game giving the player leeway to maximize the two weapon wheels instead of just having to capitalize on a few late-game weapons like in Going Commando. The standard weapon types are back, with the N60 Storm being the blaster weapon, the Nitro Launcher is the close-range bomb weapon, the Shock Blaster is a shotgun-esque weapon like the Blitz Cannon, and the "sniper rifle" weapon is back in the form of the incredibly powerful Flux Rifle. Some weapons from the first game like the Suck Cannon and the Agents of Doom make a come-back and are treated to the weapon upgrading system to make them powerhouses. The RYNO in this game is so powerful that you can only buy it on NG+. Some of the weapons from Going Commando are for sale, and they are sold by none other than Slim Cognito, my favorite seedy pair of eyes. Yes, of course, the morpho-ray is back, and it turns your enemies into ducks, and with the upgrade system, the ducks shit fire that can take out a whole fleet of enemies in closed-off spaces. The original weapons in this game are all useful and such a blast to use. The Spitting Hydra will target up to six enemies and shock them with electricity, the Rift Inducer will suck enemies into a black hole, and the Infector will confuse enemies to make them fight for you (not the most useful weapon, but a weapon that spurts mucus at enemies is worth an honorable mention). The weapon system introduced in Going Commando is perfected here, and it's the biggest factor in making heavy combat consistently enjoyable.

There are plenty of levels in Up Your Arsenal that are a bit less combat-oriented, but none of these levels are quite as multifaceted as the ones from the previous two games. Instead of dropping Ratchet off at a new planet and having him choose a path, most of the levels in Up Your Arsenal are linear paths with only one objective. There are levels with more than one part, like Florana and Aquatos, but the journey to each part of the level is usually a straight path. The previous games had different paths that would lead you to different objectives, some with new gadgets, plot points, bosses, etc., but the linearity of Up Your Arsenal reserves some levels for only one of these things. Obani Draco is a straight path to a boss fight. Zeldrin Starport, not counting the spaceship you go to through this level, is a run to a gadget. Because many levels only have one objective, many tend to feel very brief. The only level reminiscent of a level from the previous two games is Daxx which has three different paths with a new gadget, plot points, and a boss fight. It's not my favorite level in the game. Still, it begs the question as to why Insomniac chose linearity when they were obviously capable of delivering a level with branching paths like the first two games. The most unique level in Up Your Arsenal is definitely the Starship Phoenix, the first Ratchet & Clank hub world. It has a cozy atmosphere and feels really lived in because of all the familiar characters roaming around. There is plenty to do on the Starship Phoenix, and the game constantly has you coming back at certain plot points.

Most of the other gameplay modes from the previous games are totally gone. There are no ship battles, no racing, not even any grind boot levels. Nevertheless, Up Your Arsenal tries to diversify the experience besides blasting away at enemies. There is more Clank than in the previous game, but each of his parts has turned into an escort mission with Skrunch the Monkey. Thank god Skrunch doesn't have a health bar. Giant Clank only makes one return with a boss battle. The infiltrator puzzles are back again in an entirely new form with the bluntly named Hacker. The infiltrator puzzles have been shifted into full-fledged mini-games that can get pretty tense sometimes. I'd appreciate these much more if they didn't have so many waves to them, prolonging the length to an unnecessary degree. Crystal hunting makes a comeback in the complex sewer system of Aquatos. Each crystal you collect can be sold for bolts by the recurring series plumber who is apparently giving these crystals to his wife for an anniversary present. How...sweet of him? Unlike the open wastelands in Going Commando, the sewers are a dizzying, claustrophobic maze. With the gravity boots, it almost feels like navigating an MC Escher painting. With the music accompanying this place, it feels like Ratchet is on a surreal sewer odyssey. The only thing is that I never felt the need to collect more than a couple of crystals because, unlike in Going Commando, there are no monetary fees that inhibit your progress in the story and the weapons are all reasonably priced. That, and if you stay here for too long, you'll be hearing ameboid noises in your sleep.

The most important and unique alternate method of gameplay is easily the Qwark vid-comics. Every so often, you'll unlock a vid-comic to play on the TV in the entertainment room in the Starship Phoenix. You finally get to play as the spandex-wearing buffoon in goofy 2D platformer segments where you jump around punching and shooting enemies with a surprisingly diverse set of weapons for each level (I suppose it's not all that surprising considering this is a Ratchet & Clank game, but this is just a silly mini-game). You also collect arbitrary "qwark tokens," and if you collect all 100 of them per level, you get a platinum bolt. Every Qwark vid-comic level is fun and the most refreshing alternate mode of gameplay Up Your Arsenal offers. The vid-comics also arguably have the best presentation in the game. I love the artwork in the beginning and ending cutscenes of every vid-comic so much that I wish there was a Qwark comic series with this art style. Each vid-comic also gives us insight into the questionably accurate misadventures of Captain Qwark, hilariously narrated by him and a narrator who is rolling his eyes at the ridiculous scripts. The vid-comics give Qwark so much more of a presence in the game where he just seemed like a secondary villain in the previous two games, even at the end of Going Commando when the reveal happens, which might put the greatest strength of Up Your Arsenal into perspective.

The refined weapon upgrading system and all of the guns you can use are certainly a highlight of this game, but it is not the reason why Up Your Arsenal is as lauded as it is. Up Your Arsenal's writing surpasses the previous two games by a gigantic margin. I enjoy the early dynamic between Ratchet and Clank in the first game, and I like the mystery of Going Commando, but Up Your Arsenal is funny, narratively focused, and the first truly character-driven Ratchet & Clank story. After the tutorial mission, it's revealed that the thyrranoids are being manned by an evil robotic supervillain known as Dr. Nefarious, who wants to exterminate all organic lifeforms by turning them into robots. According to the president of the Solana Galaxy, only one man has ever stopped Dr. Nefarious before, and he's living in the jungle. To everyone's surprise, the mysterious being is Captain Qwark, who has gone off the grid since his last embarrassing failure. Once he regains his memory, he forms the Q-Force on the Starship Phoenix to stop Dr. Nefarious's schemes. If there were any vague parallels between Captain Qwark and William Shatner/Captain Kirk before, then the developers are certainly exhibiting them here. You might recognize some members of the Q-Force from the first game. Helga, the German authoritarian fitness robot; Skidd, the famous hoverboarder; and Al, the tech-nerd with an unfortunate lisp. You might also not recognize them from the first game because they were blips on the radar, nameless NPCs encountered only once. The direction Up Your Arsenal takes in fleshing out a few characters and making their presence better known in the story is much better than encountering nameless NPCs to further the plot.

It's difficult to pinpoint what the funniest moment of Up Your Arsenal is. A few highlights for me are the Q-Force's master plans being crudely drawn in crayon by Captain Qwark, failing the Thyra-guise sections to make Ratchet spew some absolute nonsense, or Clunk, the evil version of Clank with red eyes. It's really funny to hear Clank say and do insidious things. If I had to give a crowning achievement to one character that heightens the humor of this game, it would definitely be the main antagonist, Dr. Nefarious. There's a reason why Insomniac decided to keep him around as a mainstay series villain. He's a riot whenever he's on screen. His flamboyant mannerisms, his excitable nature, and his pension for yelling so loudly that he short-circuits and an old soap opera plays out of his head are incredibly entertaining. The dynamic between him and his robot butler Laurence is like Mr. Burns and Smithers, but if Smithers was incredibly passive-aggressive.

Dr. Nefarious might be entertaining, but is he a villain of substance? The satirical elements found in the previous two games were completely lost on me here. I was about to write off Up Your Arsenal as being a shallow superhero story that uses humor as a crutch, but I realized that I was searching in the wrong place. Up Your Arsenal isn't a satire on the foibles of capitalism but on the absurd veil of celebrity culture. I mentioned before that Clank had become a silver screen superstar in time between Going Commando and this game through his hit TV show Secret Agent Clank, so everyone treats Clank with giddy praise like they would a real celebrity. Ratchet, on the other hand, plays a lowly butler on the show, and everyone clowns on him even though he's the real hero. Dr. Nefarious is such a huge fan of Clank's work that Clank finds it "rather disturbing" (a line in this game that always gets me). Dr. Nefarious goes to the length to hire Clank and Courtney Gears, a pop star with obvious parallels to a real-life star, as associates in his diabolical plans because of their status. Dr. Nefarious might also be a stab at the way celebrity culture negatively influences one's own perception of himself. It's revealed in a Qwark vid-comic that Dr. Nefarious used to be human, a small, ugly geek with a head shaped like a cucumber. Quark used to be his school bully and accidentally killed him trying to stop one of his schemes, or so he thought. Physically remodeled as a robot, Dr. Nefarious is a tall, imposing force with his intellect intact. He is finally confident in himself but still obviously holds a vendetta against organic lifeforms because he perceives his organic form as weak. Perhaps this is because of so much robot influence this galaxy has?

I don't think there is any bigger parallel to the vapid absurdity of celebrity culture than Captain Qwark. It's been explored with his character in the previous games, but the theme is put on full display here. He's the embodiment of the phrase "never meet your heroes." Once he's given a chance to be a hero leading the Q-Force, he takes it to relish in fake glory like an actor in a heroic role. He cowers away, lets Ratchet & Clank do the real work, and shamelessly takes the credit for it. When he's on an actual mission with Ratchet and Clank, he fakes his own death to go into hiding when he realizes that being a real hero requires you to take serious risks. He redeems himself at the end when he helps you beat the Biobliderator, completing his character arc (but he couldn't have helped me during the Nefarious fight? I could've needed it, considering it's by far the hardest fight in the series.) The funny thing is that everyone in the galaxy, including Nefarious, actually brands him as a formidable force for good. The William Shatner/Star Trek parallels could be made here because every massive Star Trek fan was probably crestfallen when they learned that he was just a pompous douchebag with an ego the size of his TV spaceship. This reminds me more of the film Galaxy Quest, a film that satirizes the fandom of the show and the actors on it. Captain Qwark is that film's parody of Captain Kirk/William Shatner, an arrogant assclown who is given way too much credit by his fans and a surprisingly real foe who allows him to be what people adore him for. Captain Qwark is essentially an actor who can't play his own role when given a real-life opportunity.

I realize that it sounds like I'm heavily criticizing Up Your Arsenal and that it's a huge step-down in quality from the first two games, or at least a step-down from Going Commando. Keep in mind that this is still my favorite Ratchet & Clank game, and the fact that it bears a great sense of nostalgia in me has nothing to do with it. I like the combat imperative of Up Your Arsenal, and while each level is linear, none are boring or tedious. My only honest criticism is that the emphasis on combat is so heavy that it becomes repetitive, especially since the previous two games had so much more variety. The combat and level linearity are just popular points of criticism from people who feel like Up Your Arsenal is disappointing or underwhelming in comparison. Comparing Going Commando to Up Your Arsenal ultimately boils down to what you prefer, platforming with multifaceted levels or blowing shit to smithereens with a smattering of creative weapons. Personally, I enjoy both, but the strengths of Up Your Arsenal cannot be ignored. If Insomniac made Up Your Arsenal exactly like Going Commando, it would've faltered due to banking off another game's identity like many sequels. If that kept the developers up at night, they shouldn't have worried. They did a fantastic job.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

It’s funny to me how Going Commando was a controversial title for this game. The phrase “going commando” just seems so silly to me. It’s only known as “Going Commando” in North America, so do I just have more jaded American sensibilities? The guy who decided to title the Ratchet & Clank sequel with a double entendre deserved a promotion. It was a perfect way to market the game, showing confidence in a sequel to a great platformer. It’s a shame that everywhere else in the world censored the title and went with the lamer title, “Locked and Loaded,” in which the use of alliteration doesn’t even titillate me. As it turns out, the second Ratchet & Clank game didn’t need a raunchy title to bolster its own confidence. It wasn’t just a sequel; it was Ratchet & Clank 2.0. It was an improvement in every aspect that practically rendered the first game obsolete. That may be a bit of a stretch, but the vast improvements Going Commando made to the previous game cannot be understated. If the prime strength of the Ratchet & Clank franchise is an evolution of the foundation made in the first game, Going Commando is the most significant leap in this regard.

As I discussed in my review of the first game, the Ratchet & Clank franchise has always followed a specific formula that gives it a concrete identity. The games are 3D platformers with a heavy emphasis on shooting gameplay with myriad creative weapons. The presentation is charming and takes place in a comical, cartoony, futuristic universe that implements biting commentary about capitalism and the foibles of modern society through a futuristic lens. These features are present in the first game but are elevated and refined to a much greater quality. The story of Going Commando takes place a few months after the first game's events. Ratchet & Clank have been enjoying the perks of being a galactic hero and basking in the limelight. Months later, they are bored and itching for action. They are then teleported to a far-off galaxy and assigned a mission by a Mr. Abercrombie Fizzwidget, the CEO of Megacorp and a kooky old man who talks like a kid who obviously broke out a thesaurus for a book report and doesn’t understand any of the words. Ratchet has to retrieve a stolen Megacorp project, and Clank rents a space in the galaxy to get pampered.

The tutorial mission in this game is Ratchet intercepting the thief’s fleet. Immediately, you will see and feel the improvements this game made from the first game. The first thing that you’ll probably notice is that Ratchet is decked out with armor and a visor. Insomniac did away with the typical 3D platformer health system of the first game and implemented a health system that fit more with the shooting intensive gameplay. You start with four bars of health made up of a single block. Once you collect more bolts by defeating enemies, your health increases in a bolt of energy by one bar, like gaining EXP in an RPG. The damage that Ratchet can take ranges from depleting one bar of health to several blocks depending on what he gets hit by. This system is more aligned with how you take damage in a shooting game than a platformer. There are also armor upgrades you can purchase (for many bolts) when the game gets harder, and every hit takes off a third of Ratchet’s health. You’ll also notice in the tutorial that the controls have been heavily refined. Ratchet moves much more smoothly, and his jumps are much more precise. The added strafing feature is a godsend as it makes combat tens of times easier than in the first game. Insomniac finally realized that to fully implement the creative weapons to the best of their utility, Ratchet & Clank would have to play more like a shooter, and thank the lord that it does. The game also stops once you are selecting a weapon as well, which is a gigantic advantage over panicking while making a selection because you’re being shot at. It always felt like relief playing Going Commando immediately after the first one. It feels like getting your car washed or waxed and realizing you had a sweet ride.

New RPG-esque elements also seep into other aspects of Going Commando. You might notice that when you use one of the weapons for a little while that a small orange bar increases in length underneath the selected weapon in the weapon wheel. Once the bar is nearly full, a cutscene occurs where the weapon experiences the same burst of energy you get when your health increases. This means that the weapon has been upgraded to be either a stronger version of what you were already using or something completely different. Most of the time, it’s just a stronger version of the same weapon. The upgradable weapon system in this game apparently also shows that if Insomniac implements a new idea or feature to the franchise, it will take another entry to perfect that new idea. I love a lot of the different weapons in this game. They function a lot like the weapons from the first game, a ton of creative weapons that have their own special uses in combat. The Lancer is a long-range automatic weapon like the Blaster, and the Gravity Bomb is a short-range explosive weapon like the Bomb Glove. There are also unfamiliar weapons like the Blitz Gun which acts like a shotgun, and the Lava Gun, which spurts, well, lava at enemies at a relatively close range. There’s also the Spiderbot Glove that I ironically love because I think it’s adorable (and utterly useless). The Morph-O-Ray is also back in a sheep variant, and I can actually use it this time around because of the strafing feature. The juggernaut weapon in this game is easily the Bouncer, a cluster bomb launcher that can either take out mobs of enemies or a single tank with one bomb. Why even bother with the RYNO when this weapon costs a tenth of the price, and you can get it as early as the middle of the game? The Plasma Storm is also an effective alternative for the Bouncer when you are low on ammo.

At the end of the game, all I ever used were these two weapons. Not because they were my favorites but because none of the other weapons made a dent in any of the enemies later in the game. My biggest gripe about Going Commando is that none of the weapons you use earlier in the game are useful by the end of it, even the upgraded versions. In any shooting game, I like to use various weapons to get the most out of the game. Every Ratchet & Clank offers a large variety of weapons that are useful in unique ways, but the new upgrading system makes some weapons barely usable by the end of the game. An entire load of Mini-Nuke ammo could take out maybe one enemy on one of the final planets. The Vaporizer, a high-powered sniper rifle (of questionable scope considering you can almost use it as a shotgun, too), could barely destroy a tank on the final planet. It’s an unfortunate hiccup with the new weapon upgrading system. You can also purchase weapons from the first game as a nostalgic lark, but these weapons don’t even upgrade, so don’t bother with them. I can use the Walloper exactly as I did in the first game, but one thing I don’t remember is the Walloper being a useless piece of junk. The only exception is the RYNO which doesn’t upgrade, but you obviously don’t need it. I’d put this in my array of useful weapons, but it costs over a million bolts. This is also in conjunction with another weapon called the Zodiac, which costs even more than the RYNO.

I can say for certain that the weapon system in this game is faulty, but that hiccup might actually not be unintentional. If the developers wanted you to experience all of the weapons, they wouldn’t have made them so damn expensive. In fact, whoever at Insomniac created the Spyro character Moneybags just decided to make the entire Bogon Galaxy Moneybags. Most of the areas in Going Commando are ritzy, gentrified metropolises. Megapolis on Endako is a bustling metropolis made of silver with skyscrapers so tall that they enclose everything. Canal City on Notak is what I imagine Milan will look like over the next century. Silver City is so busy that it has you dodging traffic. Even a hostile place like Snivelak looks like it has its own septic system, and each Thugs-4-Less member has a 401k. For Ratchet and Clank, Bogon Galaxy is like a tour of New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, and every other ridiculously expensive city worldwide. Several fees block progress in the game which even frustrates Ratchet. Some of these are economical donations, but some require you to be excessively charitable. What the fuck does a mutated crab living on a cargo planet need with 40,000 bolts? Just because you’re the only one in your species that can articulate themselves and you wear a bowtie and tophat does not mean I feel THAT sorry for you. He probably took my bolts to go do some space-age crank of some robot stripper’s metallic ass crack. Keep in mind that you also have to spend a lot of money on weapons and armor. You’ll never get a chance to be frugal in this galaxy.

Despite the more opulent foreground of the Bogon Galaxy, it’s designed exactly the same as Solana. Each area has two or three branching paths with different objectives. Some paths will unlock the next world, some will grant you a new gadget or weapon, and some are miscellaneous objectives. I guess they figured that if the level design wasn’t broken, there was no need to fix it. The difference is that Going Commando has so much more to offer besides routes that further the plot. All alternate gameplay modes that deviate from platforming are drastically improved from the first game. The economic prosperity of the Bogon Galaxy obviously gives way to better diversifying the gameplay, or at least that’s what I’ll go with. I’m glad Insomniac decided that hoverboarding was lame and that tweaking it would result in nothing good, so they replaced it with hoverbike racing. Unlike the racing segments from the first game, the hoverbike races in Going Commando are consistently speedy without any awkward slow-downs, the boosts actually make a difference in speed, and the weapons are guaranteed to work. They feel like the races from the Star Wars pod racing game on the PS1. Besides putting more enemies in a single space, Going Commando also highlights the more combat-intensive gameplay in the foreground of a futuristic gladiator arena. The gladiator arenas are in the scope of a popular televised game show in which competitors can win grand prizes for battling waves of robots with chainsaw arms and beefy aliens with morning stars. Needless to say, the guys who run this TV show never hand out many prizes, but you are a spunky space cat with a lot of useful toys. From the fair challenges to the fun, varied boss battles, the gladiator arenas are a welcome addition to the franchise. On the more desolate planets, you scrounge the area for crystals to give to this space-age hippie fucker for money. If I had to guess what he’s doing with these crystals, I’d say he’s probably smoking them. Finding all of them can be a tedious affair, but it’s the most reliable source of extra income in this game without repeating levels to grind. The sand planet is manageable, but the snowy planet is another story. Let’s just say it’s like Wampa mating season on Hoth, and you’ve just interrupted it. Run for your life. There are two flight gadgets, one lets you glide, and the other lets you levitate upwards. The glider is about as easy to control as an actual paraglider, and the levitation gadget will result in many close calls and missteps. They can be kind of challenging, but they always feel exhilarating.

There are also a few familiar features that make it into Going Commando. I can’t really declare if the returning features are improved upon as a whole because each of them varies in quality. There are only two parts where you get to play as Clank, and both of them are pretty brief. It’s not enough Clank for my liking. Giant Clank gets a little more limelight here, and he’s gone full kaiju. Each Giant Clank section is a boss battle that plays like a typical monster movie. You fight another hulking giant and a giant spaceship, destroying a whole city for extra health and ammo. I wonder what they call Giant Clank in Japan? The gravity boot's platforming sections are much better as they don’t force you to use only the wrench. Infiltration puzzles are back, but they are less puzzle based and act more like mini-games. The Electrolyzer mini-games are nice and quick, but I swear that the Infiltrator puzzles are RNG based. The water platforming gimmick has shifted from displacing bodies of water to freezing them with the Therminator (I can’t decide whether this reference is lame or awesome). It’s a fine platforming mechanic, but it doesn’t make sense when it causes the platforms floating over the water to freeze. If you were a big fan of the grind rail sections from the first game, you are in luck. The grind rail sections are long enough that they count as whole objectives. The same goes for the ship sections, but the added length here is not a plus. Most of the space objectives are dog fights, and Ratchet’s ship never feels readily equipped to take on hordes of enemy ships. They’re not difficult, but they tend to be a bit tedious.

As I consider all of the elements that make up the distant land of the Bogon Galaxy, I can’t help but make comparisons to our 21st-century Earth. The hoverbike races and the gladiator TV shows could be parallels to the extreme sports craze of the early 2000s. The sumptuous planets may reflect a burgeoning 21st century stamped with progress. Do you want to know what I remember about the early 21st century? Burgeoning technology, yes, but also wide global panic. 9/11, the Anthrax scare, the DC Sniper, that “global terror” alert, etc. Suppose the first game is about one diabolical person taking advantage of a capitalistic society. In that case, Going Commando is about a capitalistic society imploding in on itself, reflecting the early 2000s global panic, or maybe it IS about a single person exploiting capitalism…

After the tutorial mission, the thief takes off with “the experiment” and then makes several threats to Ratchet to stop pursuing them, even killing Clank as a threat. Don’t worry. Ratchet brings him back easily enough, but it’s still a dick move on the thief’s part. The thief also sics a shady bounty hunter group called Thugs-4-Less, run by a big, intimidating reptilian man who talks like he’s from Brooklyn. These guys are continuously on your tail for most of the game while you chase down the thief. Once you defeat the Thief, you take “the experiment,” a shaggy, fuzzy little creature, back to Fizzwidget who then tries to abandon you to die in a hostile desert. Ratchet shrugs it off and thinks that Fizzwidget’s brain has smoothed over due to old age, but something fishy is going on. The persistent thief tracks you down on the desert planet and accidentally reveals themselves as Angela Cross, an ex-MegaCorp employee who was trying to take back the experiment to make improvements on it. (By the way, is the shocking twist here that the thief is a woman? She certainly presents herself as a man, and she totally cloaks her voice, so I guess there is still a glass ceiling in the distant future. I’m surprised Ratchet wasn’t shocked to see another lombax. Isn’t Ratchet one of the only few left?) You go to places where the experiment is being tested to find out that the experiment is a malevolent, blood-thirsty creature capable of eating people. It turns out Angela was right, and this is very distressing news, but in attempting to warn Fizzwidget, he hires Thugs-4-Less to track you down, and they throw you in prison. Once you break out, you save Angela on the Thugs-4-Less’s home planet, arguably the hardest planet in the game, where you fight the most unorthodox boss. Once you free Angela, it’s too late as Gremlins in space have begun, and the protopets are terrorizing the citizens of Bogon Galaxy. Everything is in a state of pandemonium. You infiltrate the Protopet headquarters with Angela (with the best, most foreboding final-level music in the game) and discover another shocking twist.

Remember that assclown Qwark from the first game? Well, he’s fallen on hard times since you defeated him in the last game. He’s more washed up than David Hasselhoff when he ate a cheeseburger off of the floor. It turns out that the senile Abercrombie Fizzwidget you’ve been doing jobs for is Qwark wearing his skin like Buffalo Bill (which hilariously explains his nonsensical vocabulary). I thought this twist was mind-blowing when I was a kid, but the constant foreshadowing in the VH1-esque “Behind the Hero” cutscenes ruins the surprise due to a lack of subtlety. It would have been much funnier to have Qwark come out of nowhere. Quark purposely lets the Protopet run amok to save everyone from what he caused to make him seem like a hero. It’s terribly pathetic, but in a way, it’s brilliant. You see, Megacorp is not just the Gadgetron of the Bogon Galaxy. I got the impression from the first game that Gadgetron was just a popular weapons/gadgets corporation in Solana Galaxy. On the planet Barlow, there are the ruins of a Gadgetron facility where you buy weapons from the first game, meaning that Gadgetron used to be active here but got blown to the wayside by MegaCorp. With all of the cutscenes detailing MegaCorp products for anything, it shows that MegaCorp has an absolute monopoly on every commodity in the galaxy. Producing something as faulty and dangerous as the Protopet under a MegaCorp license would be catastrophic, considering there is nowhere else to turn to for a similar product. MegaCorp is synonymous with high quality, considering how lavish the Bogon Galaxy is. Am I giving Qwark too much credit as a futuristic Marxist exploiting the faults of capitalism? Probably, considering after he reveals himself, he enlarges a Protopet on accident and gets eaten by it.

As good as the twist is, the entertaining story of Going Commando is almost ruined by an underwhelming final boss and an anticlimactic ending. To fix the protopet epidemic, the Giant Protopet is the final boss. It seems a little underwhelming compared to the diabolical yuppie that was Drek and his multiple-phase fight, and that’s because it is. For some reason, I was intimidated by the Giant Protopet when I was a kid that I grinded for hours to get the RYNO. Of course, the RYNO made short work of it, but I didn’t need it. The Giant Protopet has one phase, and it can be easily beaten with most of the upgraded Bouncer’s ammo and the enemies that aid it during the fight. After that, it is revealed that Angela’s gadget to domesticate the protopets works, and the batteries were inserted backward. Ha. Whoops. The real Fizzwidget is revealed and fixes everything, Ratchet and Clank go back to Clank’s apartment with Angela, and that girl robot that follows Clank around and (probably) gets laid, and MegaCorp rips Qwark’s dick off. No, seriously; as punishment for impersonating their CEO, MegaCorp rips his dick off. As ritzy as Bogon seems, this sure is a barbaric punishment.

The first Ratchet & Clank was a solid 3D platformer with a heavy emphasis on shooting, but it needed to be improved upon to buff out the scratches. Fortunately, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando does this with great stride by making a bigger, fine-tuned, more bourgeois experience. So many of the old mechanics are drastically improved, and the new ones prove their worth. The story is a more interesting take on a humorous, satirical stab at the commodities of society that the franchise is known for. If Gadgetron is the first game, then MegaCorp is Going Commando, bulldozing away what came before and erecting a superior product.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Judging from the status of the Dark Souls franchise by 2016, FromSoft was ready to move on. Bloodborne garnered mass acclaim for taking the Dark Souls formula to another setting, so one could assume that FromSoft would do the same for a few new IPs. Dark Souls seemed like it pioneered a new genre of video game instead of becoming a long-lasting series. Several new IPs have taken the essence of Dark Souls and have rebranded it under a different moniker. Dark Souls became a template instead of a long-lasting franchise. Not to mention that the Dark Souls name was butchered in its sequel, which was made by a totally different group of people. New paths were paved, and the old route was sealed off, or at least suffered from massive fault damage. I’m glad Miyazaki glanced back at the Dark Souls property and decided to give the first game a proper sequel. It would have been a shame to have left the Dark Souls franchise on the sour note that was Dark Souls II. Dark Souls III was a return to form for the franchise. It took everything from the first Dark Souls and revamped it the way a sequel should. For some people, Dark Souls III is the pinnacle of the franchise, taking everything that made the first game great and creasing the hinges for a finer-tuned experience. My opinion of Dark Souls III slightly differs from this. It improves on many aspects from the first game, but I’m only using the word improvement lightly. Dark Souls III takes the base of the first game and buffs the scratches, but it doesn’t really form its own identity in the process.

With the influx of “soulslike” games, it seems like the elements of Dark Souls that made it unique are pretty easy to spot. There’s the level design, lore achieved by world-building, using a consistent marker as checkpoints scattered parsimoniously, and creating a special build by leveling up like an RPG. There are several other elements, but these seem to be the most integral aspects. When it comes to making another iteration of Dark Souls itself, FromSoft tends to unabashedly repeat every single aspect of the first game. The doomed kingdom in Dark Souls III is Lothric, and can you guess what is plaguing this land? The first flame is dying out yet again, and you are the chosen undead who will either prolong the flame or relinquish it. I thought that reusing the plot and lore of the first Dark Souls was emblematic of the lack of inspiration that plagued Dark Souls II, but now I can see that this same loose plot is just the premise of Dark Souls. It’s not the middle ages inspired background mixed with the combat; it’s the damn first flame going out again. This premise carried such a heavy weight throughout the first game, but now it seems trivial because it has just become a common trope of the series.

As previously mentioned, Lothric’s flame is dying out. It can be saved if the five lord souls of Lothric are sacrificed to prolong the flame. However, all of these lord souls are in hiding, and it’s your job as the chosen undead to seek them out like an undead bounty hunter. Essentially, it’s a remix of the second half of the first Dark Souls. Now that I think about it, Dark Souls III is a remix of the first Dark Souls. There are so many moments in this game that scream familiarity. Of course, a sequel is supposed to be somewhat familiar by nature, but Dark Souls III is this to a fault. Lothric is its own sprawling kingdom totally discernable from Lordran in terms of areas and level design, but there are quite a few aspects stripped directly from the first game. For one, Andre the Blacksmith is your main source for modifying and enhancing weapons in the hub world. Andre was probably my favorite NPC in the first game, but why is he here? Did FromSoft really have a hard time thinking of another shredded old man to hammer away all day? This is without mentioning that he resides in a place called the Firelink Shrine, the hub world of Dark Souls III and another obvious call-back to the first game. On another note, the Firelink Shrine in this game is my least favorite hub world across every Souls game. It’s just kind of pale and drab and hard to navigate. It doesn’t have the cozy feeling of the Firelink Shrine from the first game. In fact, it seems a lot more like a “firelink sanctuary” because of how closed off and claustrophobic it comes off as. I’d want to rest at the Firelink Shrine from the first game, but I wouldn’t want to rest at the one here unless I was seeking some kind of refuge. In the Undead Settlement, you come across a man in sturdy onion armor and shriek with giddiness when you think it’s Siegmeyer from Dark Souls 1. You’d be wrong, however, when you discover it’s Siegward, a totally different character with the same armor and name like you’ve just stumbled into some Kafkaesque Dark Souls 1 realm.

Seeing all of these familiar characters in the context of Dark Souls 1 led me to believe that rekindling the fire was the canon ending of the first game. It led me to believe that what the chosen undead of the first game did was birth a new beginning for this land. Perhaps Lothric is the successor to Lordran, and enough time has passed where it’s in the same place as Lordran once was; a once prosperous kingdom showing its age. Perhaps the denizens of Lordran started anew here, which might explain the familiar characters. This theory went out the window once I went past Irythyll of the Boreal Valley into Anor Londo. That’s right, Anor fucking Londo. It’s not the sprawling, picturesque land in perpetual sunset but rather a frosty, nocturnal section of the already cold and dark Boreal Valley. It’s not even there as a lark as one of the main bosses in the game resides in the same arena you fought Ornstein and Smough. You can’t even make out the rest of Anor Londo from the first game because it isn’t there, so where is the rest of Anor Londo, and when was Irythyll of the Boreal Valley built in its place? Did Aldrich devour the rest of Anor Londo along with Gwynevere and Gwyndolin? What the hell is going on here? What is with the inconsistencies?

Trying to make sense of the world in Dark Souls III is very confusing. It seems like Lothric is a revitalized version of Lordran several years into the future after the first game, but including Anor Londo as a part of Lothric doesn’t make sense. It’s not an area of Anor Londo districted off to the kingdom of Lothric because anyone who has played the first game will recognize the building where you fight Ornstein and Smough and the giant blacksmith’s body lies. Did the lords of Lothric revamp Lordran into their own creation after the first flame was rekindled? That might explain why Anor Londo is gone except for the Ornstein and Smough building covered in Aldrich’s sludge. I think the real reason these familiarities are inconsistent lies in a problem outside of the game, and that is Dark Souls III relies too much on the impact of the first game. Dark Souls 1 was an experiment, but Dark Souls III doesn’t take any risks. It’s nice to see Anor Londo again, and it’s nice that Andre the Blacksmith is back, but did we need either of them in this game? We didn’t need to be reminded that this is a sequel to Dark Souls, FromSoft. In fact, all of the callbacks to the first game are total detriments to this one as they project a lack of inspiration and insecurities about this entry into the franchise. Either that or FromSoft ran out of ideas even with Miyazaki back at the helm.

This isn’t to say that Dark Souls III is a bad game. I quite like Dark Souls III and consider it to be a solid entry in the franchise and a great way to cap off the trilogy.
Objectively, it might even be a better game than the first one from a technical standpoint. It may not have the same impact as the first Dark Souls in artistic achievement, but it makes up for it by being the most fine-tuned Dark Souls game. Dark Souls III is the culmination of every previous Souls game, and it also takes elements from Bloodborne. Dark Souls III is a testament to the evolution of the Dark Souls formula. It’s not just a proper sequel to the first Dark Souls, but to every previous game in the franchise.

I mentioned in my Dark Souls II review that all of the changes the game made inadvertently caused it to feel more “video gamey.” These changes cheapened the impact that the first game had because they were so shoddily implemented. In the case of Dark Souls III, the “video gamey” changes from Dark Souls II are improved upon because the impetus of Dark Souls III was to shave off the esoteric aspects of the first game. FromSoft wanted to make a more accessible Dark Souls experience, which they achieved by toning up every aspect of the series. Just to be clear, accessibility is not necessarily a bad thing. All of the “video gamey” changes to Dark Souls II were made to be as inaccessible as possible. Dark Souls III fixed these up and made them palatable.

One of these was the estus system from Dark Souls II. Again, I’m not sure what was wrong with the estus system from the first game, but at least the system in Dark Souls III makes sense. You start with five estus flasks, a reasonable number instead of the rationed one estus flask from Dark Souls II (and no, there aren’t any weird healing crystals that slowly heal you that the developers make you rely on. Miyazaki wouldn’t fuck you over like that). You can explore to find more estus shards to increase the total number of flasks giving you a naturally occurring leveling system for the estus flasks as the game gets harder. There are 15 instead of 20, but I rarely ran dry on estus anyways. There is also an option to divide your estus flasks into blue ashen estus flasks to refill your magic meter. I suppose this is good news for magic users, but I never bothered with them because I am a brutish melee player. The human effigies that replace humanity in Dark Souls II have been changed to embers in Dark Souls III. Instead of restoring your maximum health due to death penalties, embers give you a 30% maximum health boost. They are in finite supply like human effigies, but they occur automatically once you defeat a boss. Once you die, the effect is no longer there. It’s refreshing to be rewarded for victory instead of being punished for failure. One of the negative aspects of “video gamey” accessibility is the placement of the bonfires. I mentioned in my Dark Souls 1 review that bonfires acted as checkpoints but were not dispersed in typical video game fashion like getting to a new area or defeating a boss. In the spirit of accessibility, Dark Souls III gives you a bonfire every time you get to a new area or defeat a boss. Because of this, the intense nature of leveraging your estus and trying to find a bonfire is seldom present. They really implemented this to fault as some bonfires are merely a couple of yards away from one another. Thanks for looking out for me, FromSoft. I’ll be careful not to get massacred walking twenty feet.

The elements Dark Souls III borrows from Bloodborne are even more readily apparent. It seems that FromSoft decided that the more aggressive, faster-paced gameplay in Bloodborne was the optimal approach to combat. In the scope of Dark Souls, it’s a little mixed. The enemies in this game are so relentless that you question whether or not you need a shield since you need to attack them with the same high energy. It works, but it feels a little TOO much like Bloodborne. Following suit with Bloodborne’s unpredictable aggression are the bosses. Not only do they never let up, but each boss has one or two more phases to throw you off. This starts as early as the first boss, Iudex Gundyr, who seems like a simple weapon-wielding humanoid boss to teach new players how to dodge attacks or parry. That is until he sprouts a tar-black, reptilian-looking demon out of his orifices at half health, and you start pelting firebombs at him out of shock and terror. Get used to this because almost every boss will present a new obstacle for you to work around. Personally, I think boss phases are a great way to keep the player on edge and offer a challenge that fits organically with the boss battles of the series.
The world design of Lothric also reminds me of the world from Bloodborne. The level progression is mostly a linear path of several levels with a little deviation from the main path. It’s underwhelming compared to the world of the first Dark Souls and even Bloodborne, but each level is still designed superbly.

I’ve already gone into fine detail about what Dark Souls III emulates from the first game. I’m not impressed by Dark Souls III’s tendency to use the first game as a crutch regarding its lore and settings. With all this in mind, I think some individual aspects of Dark Souls III are comparatively better than in the first game. The world isn’t as impressively designed as in the first game The closest Dark Souls III comes to capturing the grand juxtaposition between areas are the areas between Irythyll of the Boreal Valley. It feels great unearthing oneself from the catacombs to uncover the frigid wonderland that is Irythyll of the Boreal Valley, like resurfacing from the water to breathe fresh air. The Irythyll Dungeon acts like the Painted World of Ariamis in that it shows the seedy underbelly of the seemingly magnificent Irythyll, except the underlings are far more unsettling, and it feels far more claustrophobic. This is as close as the world of Dark Souls III gets to provide the same impact as the first game through level progression. However, the individual levels are consistently better in Dark Souls III. There are some levels in the first game that I still dread visiting, like Tomb of the Giants, New Londo Ruins, and the Catacombs. Still, I forgive them individually because they are essential in crafting the entirety of the world of Lordran. Because Dark Souls III takes a different approach to world design, the areas don’t exactly fit a cohesive whole, but they don’t have to. Each area feels different from the last one, and I don’t have any gripes about them. Areas that drew ire from me initially have grown on me, and I now appreciate them like the poison pool, Blighttown-esque Farron Keep to the aforementioned Irythyll Dungeon. The stand-out area in this game is definitely Irythyll of the Boreal Valley. It’s the gigantic, mid-game capital in the same vein as Anor Londo, so the grand scale of it automatically elevates the area above everywhere else.

The bosses in Dark Souls III are also consistently better than the ones in the first Dark Souls. Most of them aren’t as memorable as, say, Ornstein and Smough or Quelaag, but none of the bosses in Dark Souls III piss me off like the Four Kings or the Bed of Chaos. Many bosses in this game boil down to the mechanics of a humanoid sword wielder. They come in a wide variety in design, but there are so many sword-wielding bosses that parry enthusiasts will speed through this game. It’s a little tiring. The bosses in the first game were far more memorable, but some of the gimmicks didn’t work. When the bosses in Dark Souls III have gimmicks that make them unique, the gimmicks make their fights much more interesting instead of grating. One of my favorite bosses in the game is the two princes. Once you defeat Lorian, Prince Lothric resurrects him and jumps on his back with his own health bar while Lorian’s health is halved. You have to cripple Lorian some more to get to Lothric, but you only have to defeat Lothric to win the fight. It’s not a gank boss, but this fight between two bosses is much better executed than several other gank bosses across the series. The gimmick with the Ancient Wyvern is fantastic. Many people feel cheated by a boss that dies in one hit, but plunging my sword into his brain and watching his health bar drop like the 1929 stock market crash is hilarious. The one boss in this game that stands out above the rest is the Nameless King, who is arguably the perfect Dark Souls boss. He’s a strapping, formidable foe who rides a dragon and has the power of wind and lightning on his side. He even seems more god-like than Gwyn. The first phase of his fight with the Dragon is easy, but his second phase is easily the hardest fight in the game. Even though he is learnable if you play it safe, his fight is still tough as nails. Taking him down feels like taking down Zeus.

Once you retrieve the four lord souls, the final battle in Dark Souls III takes place in the “Kiln of the First Flame.” This place merely shares the same name as the final area of the first game as it is structured differently. It could be the same place, but that would unearth my confusion about Lothric in the place of Lordran again. The final boss is the Soul of Cinder, another humanoid boss with a multi-faceted moveset with two different phases with their own hulking health bars. Getting to this fight doesn’t have the same weight as getting to Gwyn, but the Soul of Cinder is an estus drainer that will have you holding on by a thread at the end of it. Is the Soul of Cinder supposed to be your character from the first game? Who knows, but I wish my character from Dark Souls 1 could combo and whip magic out of his ass like the Soul of Cinder. Once the fight is over, you either sacrifice yourself to prolong the suffering or extinguish the land and have darkness sweep it away. However, there is another ending option that is a little more ambiguous. You can “usurp” the fire, which has more complex implications. It’s arguably the best ending because it’s different, and it forces you to get more involved with the lore of this game but unlocking it is incredibly particular and circuitous. I don’t recommend attempting to get this ending on your first playthrough.

Whether you decide to kindle the first flame or douse it, the light that was the Dark Souls series was stamped out by FromSoft. Considering how much they borrowed from the first game, it was indicative of how quickly FromSoft ran out of ideas for the franchise. Fortunately, the swan song of Dark Souls managed to implement everything great from the previous games, fixing every loose screw. Does its lack of unique identity ultimately put it in the shadow of Dark Souls 1? Unfortunately, yes. I hate to give Dark Souls II any credit, but at least it was different from the first game. Games like Bloodborne and other soulslike games seem to be stronger successors to the legacy of Dark Souls, but this doesn’t mean that Dark Souls III is useless. If Dark Souls 1 is the sun, Dark Souls is a lightbulb. It doesn’t have the same scope as the sun, but it serves its purpose with essentially the same function and even has its own unique utility. And if you're wondering what Dark Souls II is in this analogy, it's like a shitty model of the sun made by a seventh grader for their science class.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

It's funny to me that Ratchet & Clank was the one PS2 mascot franchise that survived. In the preceding console generation, every Playstation exclusive platformer franchise went to the wayside after only a few games on their debut console. Insomniac and Naughty Dog lost their respective rights to both Crash and Spyro after their prime on the PS1. Both franchises lived on, but only in the vein of mediocrity. As for their original developers, they moved on to new horizons with the Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter franchises. Sucker Punch followed with the Sly Cooper franchise making a trio of quality platformer trilogies on the PS2 and, by proxy, immortalizing their place in the nostalgic wonderment of my childhood. Alas, what happened to Crash and Spyro a generation before fell onto Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper as their companies lost the rights to both franchises.

The only difference was that the flow of total inferiority from third-party developers stopped at only one game for both franchises instead of a constant slew of disappointment, indefinitely shelving Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper into the memories of the early 21st century. Ratchet & Clank, on the other hand, lived on. Insomniac held on to the duo like a child holds on to their favorite toy and gave them life in a new generation on the PS3. Ratchet & Clank was treated to spinoffs, mobile games, and a new mainline trilogy that arguably rivals the original three games on the PS2. How did they manage to do this? Was it just luck that Insomniac never let Ratchet & Clank abscond from their watchful eye? Perhaps, but I don't believe in luck. These aforementioned PS2 trilogies are like my children, and I refuse to pick one over the other (because I honestly can't decide which one I like the most). However, if I had to attribute a superior factor to the Ratchet & Clank franchise, it would be consistency. Ratchet & Clank had a winning formula of platforming and shooting with a humorous, cartoony presentation. This formula was tweaked over time instead of revamped like the other two PS2 franchises. This is even apparent from Ratchet & Clank's first outing in 2002.

It's hard for me to discuss the first Ratchet & Clank without comparing it to Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal. I played the trilogy backward as a kid and was spoiled by the advancements brought about by the sequels. The first Ratchet & Clank was still solid, but it was rather underwhelming comparatively. I'll try my best to highlight the strengths of this game on its own merits as if it's 2002 and I'm just playing this game for the first time.

Comparing the first game to its sequels is much easier with the Ratchet & Clank games than the other PS2 trilogies because Insomniac never strayed too far from the foundation they laid out. Ratchet & Clank is a platformer that emphasizes using a myriad of futuristic weapons and gadgets to traverse each level. If there's anything that the Ratchet & Clank franchise is known for, it's the level of creativity Insomniac implements in crafting unique weapons and gadgets. These were even the game's selling points in the commercials that aired in the early 2000s. The weapons can range from a blaster that shoots individual rounds at a quick pace to explosive items that are used at a shorter range to dispatch a larger array of enemies. There are also melee weapons that can be substituted for Ratchet's trusty wrench. There are also more creative weapons, like one that shoots electricity and one that dispatches a little army of tiny robots that attack enemies. If you're familiar with this series, you know as well as I do that the best weapon in the game is the ray that turns enemies into farm animals. I will not debate this with anyone.

The design philosophy for each level is rooted in the standard variety of platformer games but under a different scope. Space is the place in the realm of Ratchet & Clank, and space is limitless. The titular duo travel to a smattering of different planets across the universe, and the infinite space allows them to visit many places differing in ecological climates. There are fire worlds, ice worlds, grass worlds, urban worlds, etc. In the language of the platformer, these are the standard levels that give a variety to the game. The unique way that Ratchet & Clank gets away with this without seeming derivative is in the natural vastness of space. No one questions the fire, ice, grass, water, etc. template at play here because the foreground of space travel suspends any disbelief. Each level consists of one or more straight paths to some endpoint or loop around the beginning. Even planets with multiple routes end with either a dead end or a loop around with a flying car or another vehicle taking you back to your ship. It's hard to get lost at a Ratchet & Clank level. Some objectives will take you further into the story, some of them will give you the coordinates to a new planet, and some of them will earn you a new weapon or gadget.

The game is also incredibly charming. It has the art style and presentation of a Saturday morning cartoon. The game is really funny and the characters, major or minor, amount to the overall comedic and light-hearted tone of the game. The science fiction elements presented in Ratchet & Clank take inspiration from Star Trek, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Futurama. It's a zany, science-fiction universe where every possible futuristic trope seems to have come to fruition. Everything in this universe has progressed so far past the 21st century that the stretch of time between our world and the game's world is unfathomable. The crux of the humor in Ratchet & Clank is a satire of society, corporations, and commodities. It's sort of like Futurama for kids, and it mirrors the foibles of present-day society through a futuristic lens. Ironically, in a time where flying cars, teleportation, and intergalactic travel exists, no one has found a cure for depression, bad breath, or erectile dysfunction (or so to speak), and the mother of invention is still active in the form of first world capitalism.

Of course, this brief analysis summarizes the entire Ratchet & Clank series, not just one game. The formula for the franchise has not stagnated, and it seems to have gotten better and more refined over time. It had to start somewhere, however, and the first Ratchet & Clank served as the building blocks to expand on. Nowadays, the first game feels like a beta test for what is to come. The foundation was there, but it's a tad rough around the edges. This does not mean that the first game cannot stand on its merits.

The first Ratchet & Clank also serves as an origin story for the duo. Ratchet is a humble ship mechanic living in a small area on a remote planet. Clank is a very small robot, a dud that malfunctioned from a conveyor belt. They meet each other by circumstance when Clank crash lands on Ratchet's planet looking for Captain Qwark, a celebrity superhero who Clank thinks is the only person capable of stopping Chairman Drek, the game's main antagonist. Ratchet and Clank start looking for Qwark and then find a way to stop Chairman Drek. Ratchet and Clank work off each other well in this game because their first adventure is a growing period. Their contrasting personalities work off each other quite well in the first game. Ratchet is an everyman protagonist with the flaws you'd expect from a guy who accidentally had to be a hero at the spur of the moment. He's capable, but he's distracted. He's more focused on using this opportunity for fame or to meet famous people. When he does finally meet a certain famous person, this ends up biting him in the ass and makes him bitter. His character comes to its closure when he realizes that this mission isn't about him, and he finally gets to live out his full potential. His voice and demeanor in this game also remind me of Jeff Spicoli. Clank, on the other hand, is more pragmatic and is a great foil to Ratchet. Since I was more used to the less character-driven sequels, I thought it was upsetting that Ratchet and Clank bickered with each other for more than half of the game. I've grown to like the dynamic here because this is the only game (out of the original trilogy) in which the duo grows as characters.

So what are Ratchet & Clank fighting for? To stop the enterprise of one Chairman Drek, an intergalactic imperialist of short stature, an iron-pressed suit, and a black ponytail. If Napoleon Bonaparte and American Psycho have taught anyone anything, it's that short imperialists and yuppies are both terrifying. Drek's home planet has been polluted to the point where it has become absolutely uninhabitable by anything or anyone (except for ugly hostile creatures like red-eyed toads and long-necked beasts with eight legs. You visit his home planet at least three times in the game). He decides to make a new planet from parts of already existing planets, sucking up their resources whether they like it or not. The ecological premise here turns into a biting take on capitalism when it is revealed that Drek polluted his own planet for financial gain and intends to eventually do the same for his new planet. Drek isn't my favorite Ratchet & Clank antagonist, but he is arguably the most effective when establishing an evil, foreboding villain. He's pure scum, and the scariest aspect of his character is how his business tactics resemble some powerful men in real life. On the other side of the coin, Captain Qwark is a villain you can forgive. His character becomes likable as he tries to redeem himself, but in the first game, he's just a pathetic tool. He's secretly working for Drek on the promise that Drek has endorsements for him that will resurrect his career. He sets Ratchet & Clank into a trap and becomes the focal point for a good portion of the game, directed by Ratchet's selfish anger towards him. Quark's presence in this game is middling, but I think that's the point. He's a satire of the dark side of celebrity life, a buoy trying to stay afloat, so he doesn't have to start sucking extraterrestrial cock for food.

The first Ratchet & Clank is a platformer first and a shooter second. The elements that are readily apparent in this game scream second-generation 3D platformer. It has all the common tropes like double jumping, gliding, wall jumping, etc. All of these tropes are executed quite well, and the phenomenal framerate really helps. However, the same cannot be said for the shooting. The more close ranged weapons like the Bomb Glove, and the Pyrocinator do just fine with multiple enemies. I have to give a special shout-out to the Walloper for being my favorite weapon in the game and being a fine substitute for the wrench. Long-ranged weapons like the Blaster and the Devastator are essential in combat but not utilized to the best of their abilities because of the game's shortcomings. There is a green circle that indicates that your shot with these weapons is likely to hit, but nothing is guaranteed. In spots with multiple enemies that you can't approach directly, I ended up taking them out from a distance which never feels like the intended method, but it turns out to be the most practical one. The RYNO might be the most powerful weapon in the game, but good luck trying to target enemies with it. I love the Morph-O Ray, but I never use it because I can't target an enemy with it without potentially harming myself in the process. Speaking of harming myself, the health in this game is a series of single hits. You have four blocks of health that deplete after getting hit by anything. Whether it's an explosive or a shot from a blaster, it all takes away one block of health. It works in a game like Crash Bandicoot because Crash isn't supposed to get hit more than maybe twice. It's different here because the range of obstacles is more diverse. It's an exemplary system, but it's very indicative of the developers emphasizing platforming rather than shooting.

Besides jumping and shooting, the game provides many other opportunities to switch up the gameplay. On several levels, there are physics puzzles involving draining water to reach a higher point or swimming through a series of tunnels. I wouldn't mind these so much if the swimming controls weren't so inflexible. This problem is done away with once you acquire the H2 Mask. There are also security puzzles in most of the levels that require you to match up beams with the colored slots. One could argue that these puzzles require you to completely stop breaking the game's pacing, but I quite like them. It feels like I'm breaking into an inaccessible place when I succeed at solving them. The turret sections can be difficult only because a lot is happening simultaneously, and the PS2 controls are inverted. There are space battle sections that just come and go and seem trivial. As a result, not even the space battle against Qwark proves to be a challenge. The stealth sections where you disguise yourself as a clunky robot minion are quite tense, and it's hilarious that you can sneak past these hulking tin cans without them even questioning your shorter stature. The racing sections are garbage. This was when X-games and extreme sports were popular, so I guess Insomniac figured that this radical trend would persist into the future in hoverboard fashion. However, it's not radical to control the hoverboard sluggishly and become as fragile as a piece of glass. I'm definitely glad they did away with these in the sequels.

My favorite sections that deviate from platforming as Ratchet are each section you can play as Clank. How could the Clank sections not be everyone's favorite? He goes from being Ratchet's backpack to outcharming him in every cutscene, so getting to play as him becomes a point of curiosity. Clank can't dole out a lot of damage, but he can command tiny robot minions to attack enemies and open doors for him. It's platforming with minor changes, but getting to play as Clank is still fun. Unlike another certain small platformer sidekick on the PS2, Clank proves to be useful as he can traverse sections that Ratchet can not, like the space station and the polluted planet Orxon. This game probably has the longest Clank sections in the trilogy, so that is definitely an advantage in my book. Coincidentally, my least favorite area in the game is the only one where you can't use Clank, so that adorable little toaster is more than just Ratchet's sidekick. He's my favorite part about these games. Giant Clank is also a blast.

The Ratchet & Clank franchise has remained one of the lasting franchises in the now unfashionable 3D platformer genre. As much as I'd like to attribute this to Insomniac being a little more assertive in keeping their IPs than other developers, I've played too much of Ratchet & Clank to chalk it all up to luck and persistence. It's one of the most consistent franchises I've played. The first game of the series may be a little elementary in comparison to its sequels, but all of the elements that make Ratchet & Clank a beloved franchise are all here. Fortunately, it gets much better from here.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com