Review: Ratchet & Clank: Crack in Time (PS3)

The Ratchet & Clank series has, for me, been a real highlight of my recent gaming years. The characters have character, the story feels like a Pixar movie, hell the last game even looked like a Pixar movie at times. They’re rough around the edges, sure, and there have been some low-points, but I’m a huge fan of the series. It was therefore a day of great sadness when I heard that this was likely to be the last game of the series.

But all great things have to come to an end, and as long as that ending involves a fitting tribute, an ending up on high, then all is well in the world. And all is definitely well in the world.

Origin(al)

The story of Crack in Time concentrates on Ratchet & Clank’s origins and on the duo discovering their destinies. It begins where Quest for Booty finished and the ever-thoughtful Insomniac has even developed a lovely cutscene that does a nice job of hiding the game’s installation, which covers those of you that didn’t purchase the downloadable content. Insomniac – forever thinking of the little touches.

The tale isn’t particularly original, nor is the gameplay, but familiarity has served the series well up until now and it’s not going to change. It still oozes personality, charm and a huge choice of weaponry, and I love it for it.

Of all the new weaponry, my favourite was probably the Sonic Erupter; a small creature that screams out its mating call which culminates in everything on the screen dying via a shockwave. Death by a mating call, genius. I don’t want to go into details of any of the other new additions, as half of the fun is experimenting and finding out things for yourself (and the different strategies the game allows) but all of the new weapons have their place and serve their purpose. For me, Crack in Time has the most balanced selection of weaponry of any Ratchet & Clank game.

It’s hard to think of any game, on any system, that encourages the player to experiment with different weapons and try different things as much as this does. Whether you want to use the most effective weapon for the job at hand, or whether you want to use the one that will have the most comical effect, the game doesn’t punish you. It’s almost as though the developers are sitting there next to you throughout the whole game, urging you to try something else and see what happens.

Super Ratchet & Clank Galaxy

The moons that you can now land on to partake in a little non-essential side mission fun are a brilliant addition, and very reminiscent of a certain moustachioed plumber. Despite them not being essential I completed every single one. I don’t do that with very many games in all honesty. I often find side-missions bloat a game out unnecessarily or aren’t as enjoyable as the main quest. That wasn’t the case here.

As usual Ratchet takes centre stage for much of the journey, but without doubt, the star of the show for me this time around was Clank. He hasn’t always faired so well, often being burdened with the least interesting sections of previous games in the series. This time however the lovable robot has stumbled across the ability to control time, which results in some superb puzzles.

Again I don’t want to go into too much detail, as doing so would remove some of the fun, but suffice to say that Clank has the ability to record himself doing actions, and has to time these recordings so that everything happens at the required time in order for the puzzle to be solved. None of the puzzles are particularly taxing, but neither are they insultingly easy, and they’re incredibly fun.

The script is, once again, full of witty one-liners and it can be fun just hanging around listening into NPC’s conversations. As I’ve said previously, it really is very similar to a Pixar movie. This is really a game that could be turned into a brilliant family-friendly movie. Perhaps that’s what the future could hold for the duo.

The downsides

Finding fault with Ratchet & Clank: Crack in Time is like saying that Shakira has weird toes; it’s picking fault for the sake of it. You could say that it hasn’t evolved all that much. In fact some reviewers have done just that, and used that as a reason to mark it down considerably because of it. I’d like someone to point out where Modern Warfare 2 has made huge advancements in the FPS genre over previous releases (for me it went backwards; yes I did go there), or where Forza 3 did. Ratchet & Clank fans didn’t want this to be remarkably different; they wanted something recognisable that sent the series off with a bang. And it does just that.

Next up we have the camera, which is a bit of a pain on the moon sections at times. And, granted, the space combat is dire, painfully dire, but they thankfully don’t last long. And, err, well, that’s it really.

Yes it’s very much like everything that’s gone before it. And yes you can, in theory, complete it in under 11 hours, although I’d argue that’s a perfect length for a title like this and one which is extended to around 20 hours if you want to experience everything. But it’s great. It oozes charm. It’s fun. It’s brilliantly paced. It’s a great way to end the series. I couldn’t have asked for more, other than just one more game. Please, Insomniac, just one more?