I played a bunch of these games when I was younger and (as is typical for child Whom) never beat any of em, so I wanted to at least finish this one before checking out Rift Apart.

I love the retrofuturism, I love the stretchy animation, I love Clank being a little cutie, I love the simple as can be environmentalism, I love the absolutely nuts electronic soundtrack, and I love the early 00s silliness of it all, right down to Ratchet being an asshole skater bro too self-absorbed to even care about entire worlds being destroyed. I truly hate that little shit but it's fun seeing that "whatever man" attitude being pushed to such a ridiculous extreme and getting the latest and least earned turnaround possible.

The moment-to-moment gameplay is what really comes up short and makes this not come together nearly as well as I would hope. It's all kinda crusty in a way its more polished peers never were. Beyond minor UX woes with the menus that add up, my main problem is that the optimal strategy in nearly every combat scenario is to stay out of range and pick everyone off at a distance. This isn't too much of a problem at first but up-close combat gets less and less viable as you approach the end of the game and there's a point where it's pretty much a forced playstyle. Not only is exploiting enemy sightlines not that engaging of a way to play, but in this kind of giant arsenal game I expect to have a lot of unique ways to approach combat encounters and those are pretty lacking. The last few levels are mostly spent shooting rockets at stationary enemies who would annihilate you if you got too close, and that's a shame because other than the combat you're mostly left with a few scattered distractions, as the platforming is rather barebones.

I do like those distractions though! They are relics of the era that I adore: minigames and other jarringly different modes of gameplay. Like sure, I'll take racing sequences and a one-off optional turret defense minigame in my action platformer. Not that stuff like that doesn't happen anymore, but it seemed to be obligatory back then, and I sure appreciated any reason to stick around and just hang out in a game as a kid with a limited library who only needed the smallest bit to work with to remain engaged for a long-ass time. Playing this now, I only wish there were more.

I can still find quite a bit to enjoy, but I think the OG Ratchet & Clank is mostly of interest to me because it's a nostalgic curiosity released in the exact time many of my first permanent memories were forming. Ratchet & Clank is neat but it's no Jak and Daxter, let's put it that way.

Played with my partner, giving me the best possible chance with this one. Playing games with her is always wonderful and Halo 1 is really special to her, whereas my memories of it basically boil down to some silliness on Blood Gulch.

This lies a bit awkwardly at the midpoint between the Unreals and Half-Lifes of the world and the then-newly solidifying modern shooter conventions, serving as one of the earliest examples of them present in one place. You've got your two equip slots, your obnoxiously self-serious military theming, your narration / guidance from an NPC through ever-present comms, your dedicated vehicle sections, etc. While that is all the case and is most interesting when thinking about Halo's place in history, what makes it truly stand out is its flirtation with the trends of the late 90s / early 00s that aren't so familiar today...namely the hilarious sandboxyness of it all. Everything is a physics object and constantly flying around the screen, with little thought given to how that can break levels (either in ways that benefit or completely fuck over the player), vehicles are so mobile and also floaty that they're constantly flipping over, being boosted into places they're not supposed to, and otherwise being extremely silly.

The best moments in Halo are when you're pushing the limits of that sandbox and being rewarded either with actual progression or with humor. The worst parts are when you're going step-by-step dryly doing whatever the voice in your head tells you to do in that moment. Strange to think that the latter is what stuck and became the default for shooters.

Burying a roguelite deckbuilder into a competitive ccg as its card unlock system is so endlessly brilliant that it just makes me wish it was done everywhere. Can you imagine a Magic-based one? I'd never do anything else. Anyway, this is the best refinement of the traditional tcg into a streamlined online game I've yet seen. It's overflowing with both fresh ideas and subtly different spins on genre staples that make it feel both intimately familiar and endlessly exciting as you take in all the new possibilities.

I've been away from my main pc for a couple months now and so the vast majority of my gaming time has just gone to card games. This and now Marvel Snap have become My Games lately, and I'm having a damn good time. Don't let the League of Legends setting push you away...I'm certainly no fan of that or of anything else Riot has done, but somehow they nailed this one, even down to the monetization being the fairest of any of its competitors. Like, you technically CAN just buy cards, but for the most part you'd be a fool to do so. Just ladder and play path of champions and you'll be building meta decks in no time.