Ratchet & Clank

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Ratchet & Clank" (2016) is just a pure joy to play. Everything works in this game amazingly great. Graphics are gorgeous, game play mechanics are terrific and the whole world is just a joy to explore. I liked the simple story, invitingly told.

I'm started to play this game for a second time on challenge mode and i know i'm gone do everything in here - "Ratchet & Clank" is just a pure joy that is hard to let go.

I randomly played Ratchet and Clank games throughout the PS2 era. My brother was more into them during the PS2 era than I was, but I popped them in on occasion. It wasn't until I heard the high praise for A Crack In Time that I came back to the series. I remember enjoying the hell out of that game. Clank's puzzle section were really cool and well done.

After Crack, I didn't play any more R&C until this one. It was free with PS+, so I downloaded it during the quarantine as a time killer after I finished a few games prior.

It's nothing deep story-wise or gameplay wise. It's just a videogame-ass-videogame. It's fun and the platforming feels good.

My major gripe is that none of the weapons in this one feel especially good or powerful. Many times I felt like I should be demolishing waves of enemies, but many felt like they took 3 shots too many. Also you can't upgrade weapons without leveling them too. A lot of them felt like the max ammo counter was really low for the first levels of it so I was constantly running out of ammo.

There were really only 3 or 4 of the 12 weapons I really liked. Once I ran out of ammo for those I used the one I least liked and just didn't have fun with them. I understand it's a remake of the original, so maybe the guns brought from it weren't the best since it was the first, but I just felt like a majority of them felt really weak.

Clank's puzzle sections are extremely easy and weak too. There's like 3 and all you do is swap between 3 kinds of little droids you use to traverse an area. It's more tedious than anything. Really weak compared to A Crack In Time's ones that incorporated time travel and whatnot. They also each have a running towards camera moments way too many times that aren't fun.

Besides that this is a pretty easy and fun game to play. It looks great, though some moments when there are a ton of enemies and bolts flying everywhere that the frame-rate becomes abysmal. Also the underwater level gets real framey when you're underwater.

It's simply just an easy fun game to breeze through. Despite my dislike of most of the weapons, I still found enough fun in it. It's easy to recommend if you have PS+ and haven't touched it yet. It's a sort of pallet cleanser between games that you don't have to invest a lot of time into.

I have been a fan since the series started and don't even dislike the 2 missteps (Secret Agent Clank and Full Frontal Assault) but will admit that the series needed this reboot. This remake is nearly unrecognizable from the 2002 original in terms of characterization / story, level design and especially gameplay. Returning players can thus look forward to a mostly new experience, while new fans can still go back to the HD Collection and still get something new, if inferior, out of it. That's how to do reboot ladies and gentlemen but the formula is now more than established at this point, so don't expect another must-have as with Ratchet 2 or 3 back in the day and just another great yet short 3rd person shooter with a decent amount of replayability. It may also be the best looking game on the PS4 but the reused Cgi sequences from the companion film managed to mess with the narrative. Can we now please reboot Crash/Jak and Daxter. Ratchet never left us after all. 8,5/10

I went into this with high expectations. My first PlayStation was a PS5 and this was my first ratchet and clank. I played this game in 2023 and honestly I thought it was just alright. The story is lackluster, the movement is clunky, the exploration pretty linear, and the boss fights pretty rinse and repeat. I also found the save points to be pretty bad. I found myself spawning 5-8 minutes back on the regular.

The guns are cool and funny, but that is the extent of how interesting the combat is. Movement feels bad which surprises me for an insomniac game.

Maybe it was just me but it also seemed like the animations in the cutscenes dropped in quality massively by the end of the game.

On the positive though: cool guns, pretty graphics over all, the worlds are cool, art style is awesome, and the game is really well polished.

Buy it on a sale.

This game has all the hallmarks of the series and all the creative and technical talent as well. It's a joy to play, the settings are creative, there's a constant sense of humour and the weapons are really fun to use and upgrade. However, the story is lacking some charm and the characters are not so memorable (a flaw carried over from the 2016 film). There is some variety in the form of Clank sequences, hovership battles and hoverboard races but I still found this game a bit more repetitive and tedious than the other installments (Deadlocked aside).