Ratchet & Clank are dead
I’ve been playing Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time. The series is as dead as its creator.
Executive Summary For You Executive Types
- The platforming parts are decent for a change, although not particularly challenging or thought-provoking.
- The weapons are as usual quirky and cool. However, the arena is fairly blah, and you’ll pretty much just want to use the Negotiator. Just like the last game.
- The plot is simply stupid, and the script is worse.
- The voice acting will make you cry.
- It’s pretty, and has lots of “cinematic” stuff, if that’s your idea of a good time.
- The gameplay is above average, but won’t win any awards.
More specific nit-picking
In previous games, the characters gave this game its soul. Ratchet was an ordinary guy with a wrench, and Clank was a manufacturing defect who believed he had something to contribute beyond just being recycled. Together they saved two galaxies, and then the first one again.
Gradually, fame has changed them. Ratchet gradually turned into a soulless “cool guy that you can identify with.” Clank, we discover, was created by mysterious persons and has a mysterious destiny, and apparently this has drained his ability to be witty or interesting. By transforming them into characters that market research shows we can identify with, they’ve turned them into characters we can no longer identify with.
And usually the other characters are allowed to be entertaining; not so in this installment! Ratchet’s companion on the quest to find his father (yes I told you the plot sucked) is horribly overacted and cheesy. The plumber makes his mandatory appearance, but he’s all wrong. Clank’s unavoidable geeky little kid companion is… the mandatory little kid companion who makes humorously nerdy comments, that are of course not humorous unless you think nerds are stupid, or are under the age of 5 (in which case you probably won’t get the jokes anyway).
It’s partly salvaged by Quark’s buffoonery and the antics of the evil characters. Thank goodness for evil, and too bad we don’t get to spend more time with them. But nerd jokes abound… apparently being intelligent or goofy-looking is the highest form of comedy. Certainly it’s the best, nay, the only humor you’ll find in this installment of the game.
Where is Path Of Death? Where are the sewer crystals? (Sewer Crystals?!?) Why do we always seem to arrive just a little bit too late? Why do I keep seeing different combinations of the same 6 enemies?
(PS – “Grummelnet”? Come on, guys. Did you even play your own game? Don’t you remember how great it was to be back in a galaxy that has Gadgetron again? You’ve lost it.)
