Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

Oh my God, it is about freakin' time! Insomniac and SCEA had to collaborate for the second time in two years to provide the PS3-faithful with one of the two or three must-have PlayStation 3 titles of 2007. Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction is the pinnacle of the series and the entire console library, melding some of the best aspects of other Ratchet games for one completely incredible experience. I would not be surprised to see Ratchet and Clank receive several media nods for Game of the Year awards, including on Game Freaks 365.

Insomniac has always delivered on the weaponry in their video games, particularly in Ratchet and Clank. Their first PS3 title, Resistance: Fall of Man, had some of the most clever and interesting, fun-to-use weapons in any shooter to date. Ratchet and Clank does not fail to follow up to that benchmark in any way, really. Before I get to the weapons and all of the details about them, I will briefly discuss the story, which does not take the backseat as much as it does a motorcycle's sidecar ride.

Ratchet is the universe's only remaining Lombax. His extinct species was one known for its crafty and handy mechanics and clever inventions. The terribly shrill-voiced Emperor Tachyon, leader of the frog-like Cragmites, does not like Ratchet or any of his late ancestors. He and his Cragmites bombard Ratchet's home planet and then proceed to follow Ratchet all around the Polaris galaxy, with intentions to prevent Clank and him from their search for the "Lombax Secret."

The crew wants to find an answer to Clank's strange but handy hallucinations, as well. You see, when Clank drifts off on his lone wolf sidekick missions, he sees a mystical group of creatures called the Zoni. These little guys can be commanded by Clank and will help him get through all of the puzzles and challenges of his playable sequences.

Ratchet and Clank's relationship and interactions with each other as well as other characters are what set the game apart from other platform and action games. Typical of any Ratchet and Clank game, there are humorous moments scattered all over. They can be pretty quick and somewhat silly, but I will admit to a sudden and surprising burst of laughter when I watched one of the early scenes in Ratchet's ship. It is not really the story that keeps you playing the game, but at no point is it boring, intrusive, tacky, or otherwise lacking in any positive qualities. It is just that the gameplay is so much fun at times that it is hard to care what else is going on, so long as Ratchet is breaking things.

Ratchet and Clank does not feature a multiplayer mode, so its single-player quest is the quintessential element. This actually should be the very last thing any gamer should worry about, because everything about it is sweet in a delicious-pumpkin-pie-on-Thanksgiving kind of way. The level variety is unheard of. There are more than two dozen planets to explore and pillage throughout the Polaris galaxy; also there are more than plenty of locations to complete missions and power up the crazy weapons that I will tell you about momentarily.

You will teleport from platform to platform in one of the space stations located in the thick of the Nundac Asteroid Ring, ride a gyrocycle through tunnel-like pipes bursting with dangerous fire vents on the molten planet Rykan V, and use Robo-Wing pads to fly through the traffic-filled skies of Stratus City and Planet Kortog. If I continued to use the pumpkin pie idea, the weapon upgrading is like the whipped cream—some people, but not all people, will obsess about and enjoy this system more than anything else on the pie. The level structures are done in a way that allows players to get by without having to buy all of the optional weapons at the many gadget vendors, but you'll have to pick up a lot of tools that will be vital to getting through the platform sequences. Examples of these tools are a Swingshot (grappling hook) and Gelanator (goopy gun that creates bouncy platforms). Other nifty items like the disco-inducing Groovitron ball will help in getting through bigger groups or groups of weaker enemies surrounding a bigger and stronger one. Backtracking, an age-old (but still common) platform-action problem, is reduced to a very small amount. The desire to explore each level remains, and ultimately that is the cherry on top of a theoretical pumpkin pie that I would really love to eat right now.

The weapons are mostly functional rehashes of previous weapons in the Ratchet and Clank series with different effects or superficial qualities. By no means does this make them boring to use, especially with the upgrade system I am still just about to discuss. Your standard pistol weapon, the Combuster, is pretty handy throughout the first third or half of the game. Eventually you will ditch the pea shooter for the Shard Reaper, a shotgun-like weapon that spreads deadly spikes at the enemies in front of you, or maybe the Lightning Ravager, a whip-like weapon that zaps its victims with a deadly charge of electricity. You will use the Predator Launcher, which sends deadly rockets flying at multiple locked-on targets.

As I have obsessively mentioned, even cooler than the weapons themselves is the ability to upgrade them all by collecting a valuable material called Raritanium. I'm not really sure how this material is involved with improving your weapons and their capabilities, but it is not a detail I really cared about missing. For any gun or weapon that you possess, you can use Raritanium to work through a grid-like system of upgrade slots. Each slot, after purchased and unlocked, will in turn unlock any of the surrounding slots. Each upgrade slot increases the abilities more and more, so a lot of the material will be used up. You will purchase slots that increase the strength of the weapons, ammo capacity, firing rate, and several other factors—some are weapon-specific, like the number of Predator Launcher missiles that can be simultaneously locked onto enemies. Also, every weapon has a final upgrade that basically brings out the full power of the weapon. The Combuster, as a quick and easy example, has an upgrade that makes its pistol rounds burn and explode on contact with a target. The Lightning Ravager, as another example, can emit a deadly shockwave that spreads through and destroys entire flocks of enemies.

A lot of the bolts that Ratchet has had to collect all along will once again have to be gathered to spend on weapons and ammo, but I had a lot less trouble with managing my bolts in Tools of Destruction than I ever did before. I am glad that developers are starting to take notice of the complaints that platform-action games do not need to involve so much damn collecting of items and orbs and other forms of in-game currency. In this instance the collecting of Raritanium and bolts is never really a problem because Ratchet magnetically draws most of these valuables toward himself as you walk along. Collecting the very elusive gold bolts is so difficult and requires so much exploration that gathering a few will allow you to unlock special features. Clearly Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction is a platform-action game that manages to survive the typical "play it, beat it, shelf it" process for a lot longer than almost all of its peers.

Ratchet could not really control any more smoothly, either, except for a few instances, which I will get to. Almost 90% of the experience plays like a dream. Ratchet and Clank both feel incredibly easy to maneuver and play with. Combat doesn't involve a ton of strategy or preparation but at the very least you can fire away all of the crazy weapons and enjoy them like the developer intended. Jumping sequences are made easy with well-responding controls. Really, the only control issue comes from the rare and quick moments where you are forced to use the SIXAXIS tilt features to fly and free-fall. It's too bad there are finally a big handful of AAA-titles on the PlayStation 3 that still have never made using the SIXAXIS interesting.

As for the game's difficulty as a whole, it isn't incredibly challenging. In fact, if I had to fill in a difficulty category on my Scores down below, I'd probably give Ratchet and Clank a generous 2 or 3 out of 10. Fortunately it is satisfyingly long. In more detail, challenging situations are thrown at you as you progress but the surplus of health and ammo power-ups and the endless armory of powerful, upgraded weapons are all hand-tugging assistants that are sometimes a little more than helpful. Some of the huge swarms of enemies later on in the game are disappointingly easy. If the weapon you are using isn't effective against an enemy, there is generally another weapon or two that will take care of the problem.

Laying waste to enemies without much of a struggle is fun for a while, but what happened to games getting more challenging as they progress? Really, the only big challenge is finding all of the gold bolts. I didn't even start buying a lot of the optional weapons until halfway through the game. Although I enjoyed them from that point forward, I felt like the typical Combuster/Shard Reaper combination worked well enough all the time. The same situation happened in Resistance; some of its coolest weapons didn't arrive until later in the game when you were already accustomed to using some of the simpler ones.

Still, Ratchet and Clank gives you plenty of opportunity to use all of its weapons as you try to finish up all of the missions, side-quests, and the gold bolt collection. Oh, and there are little level-specific challenges (and some collective ones) that are quite like Xbox 360 Achievements, these are incredibly difficult to earn because they are not described in any way. Really, the only way to earn them on your own is to explore absolutely every single inch of the planets, perform every move and use every weapon, destroy a lot of enemies with a lot of your weapons, and more. If you haven't concluded by my implications, earning these little benchmarks is never really fun or rewarding, they're just another potential anal-retentive quality for perfectionist gamers.

Ratchet and Clank is also a game that PS3 owners can tout as one of the best-looking games to date, at least in an artistic and creative sense. The whimsical surroundings and frequent, entire shifts in the artistic, environmental direction will keep every playable area, indoors or out, a beautiful and interesting place to be. It does not have the photo-realism of Call of Duty 4 or a lot of other PlayStation 3 titles, but expecting those visuals from this type of game would be like expecting the same thing, vice versa.

I rate accordingly; the brimming detail, silky-smooth animation, and cornucopia of color are all elements that are set off by a single, annoying flaw. My question to all of the next-generation developers, or more appropriately the graphics teams behind next-generation games, is this: Why bother spending a Great Pyramid of cash for pretty graphics and creative design when things like plants and rocks in the environment don't interact at all with the on-screen character? Games like Crysis and Far Cry 2—both PC exclusives at the moment—are looking to fix this, but I really hope that high-profile games on the PlayStation 3 will get the same treatment.

This is a game that the PlayStation 3 owner can not miss out on. I do not care what you are interested in playing this year, if you own a PlayStation 3 there should be a lot of incentive placed on getting around to going through this game. It's the most action-packed, smooth, colorful, explosive, creative experience I've had on the PlayStation 3 to date. If the Xbox 360 fanboy can run around waving BioShock, Halo 3, and Mass Effect claiming that they are the best games they have ever played, PlayStation 3 owners can show the same love for Insomniac's dynamic duo. The only competition for Game of the Year in the PlayStation 3 library would stem from the big late-year exclusives, Uncharted and Folklore, or the multiplatform Call of Duty 4; but Ratchet and Clank, Insomniac, and SCEA will most likely be on my short list for anything that would crown it king of the PlayStation 3 library.