I'm currently writing a retrospective on the first three Ratchet & Clank games for Retro PlayStation Magazine (RPM) and upon doing some deeper research into this franchise, I came upon an interesting factoid. While I believe Gran Turismo to be PlayStation's longest-running, active franchise, Ratchet & Clank seems to actually hold the honor of being PlayStation's most prolific series - with a staggering sixteen titles under its belt, and Ratchet is PlayStation's longest-running mascot character. Not every game is known for meeting a high-quality bar, as can be expected with that many entries, but each game in the franchise seems to be at least decent, and most of them are actually highly regarded and lauded games in PlayStation's library. I recently played and beat the original Ratchet & Clank and have some thoughts, most of them quite good.
Ratchet & Clank, at its absolute core, is a 3D platformer game. It is part of the PlayStation 2's beloved "Big 3" of mascot platformer series, along with Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper. Each of these series innovated on the genre in major ways, but Ratchet & Clank perhaps went the furthest. Where many 3D platformers feature very basic combat, Ratchet went all in. In fact, the weapons and gadgetry of the series are probably the most iconic feature of the franchise.
Ratchet & Clank puts a heavy focus on combat over platforming. Ratchet has a wide array of oddball, fun, and dangerous weaponry at his disposal. In this game alone, you can use weapons like the Suck Cannon, which functions as a vacuum and can inhale small enemies and bombs, then fire them back out at other enemies. There's a melee weapon called the Walloper, that equips Ratchet with a comically large boxing glove. One of my favorites is called the Visibomb Gun, which fires a drone missile that you remotely control from a first-person perspective and cause immense damage if you can land a direct hit on your target. There are also more familiar types of guns as well, like the Blaster, which is an automatic gun with a ton of ammo and a lock-on function, or the Devastator, which is a heat-seeking missile launcher. Ratchet also possesses his main weapon, his iconic OmniWrench. You can perform short, three-hit combos and air attacks with the wrench, as well as toss it like a boomerang. Even twenty-two years later, and without many of the improvements that the later games make on the combat and gunplay, the original Ratchet & Clank still feels pretty great.
While the game primarily focuses on combat, the platforming is no slouch. Maneuvering around each stage largely hinges upon Ratchet's robotic sidekick, Clank, and the various enhancements to movement that he offers Ratchet. Early on, Clank receives an upgrade that turns his limbs into propellers, giving Ratchet the ability to glide for long stretches of time. Later, those propellers receive another upgrade into being actual jet thrusters that offer Ratchet higher and farther jumps. Clank, in that way, reminds me of Kazooie from Banjo-Kazooie, serving as your backpack-bound buddy that helps you overcome difficult obstacles and get to out-of-reach places. Ratchet actually also receives a few upgrades to his kit as the game progresses. At one point, Ratchet receives a helmet that allows him to breathe in space, underwater and on a specific planet that is foul with toxic gas. That helmet, almost like a new item from a Metroidvania-type game, allows you to revisit so many places and find new important gadgets and access mission targets that you couldn't. Ratchet also gets an upgrade in the form of the Magneboots, which are magnetized boots (as the name suggests), and they allow him to stick to metal surfaces and navigate previously unreachable pathways. Some of the walkways that you traverse via Magneboots are absolutely dizzying and spectacular, as they often span over unnavigable space, like across a city skyline, or over a poisonous swamp, and the paths will go fully vertical at times, as well as upside down, adding an interesting aspect to the typical types of platforming that you see.
Another neat inclusion in Ratchet & Clank is the usage of gadgets to mix up some of the combat and platforming sequences. There are several distinct and unique gadgets that Ratchet obtains. One is the Swingshot, which fires a grappling hook and lets Ratchet swing to where he needs. Another is the Trespasser, a device used to hack doorways, in an occasionally frustrating little minigame. There is also the Hydrodisplacer, a pump of sorts that hooks into a specially designated machine and sucks or pumps water out of or into an area to open it up for Ratchet to navigate and reach his destination. The gadgets proved to be a fun addition to the game for me, and I never got tired of utilizing the Swingshot to zip across huge ravines or city rooftops. The game also features a few sequences of Ratchet grinding on a railway that zooms around cities and other beautiful spaces. The mechanics of the rail grinding never got old, and felt very satisfying and fun each time they cropped up. It reminded me of Sonic Adventure 2, and I mean that as a huge compliment.
A small thing that I also appreciate in Ratchet & Clank is the infrequent, but welcome use of entirely new game mechanics that are complete departures from how the game has been played up to that point. For instance, there are a few missions that involve full-blown space dogfighting, ship combat in vast arenas against loads of enemy ships and occasionally large-scale capital ships that require precise coordination to take out the defenses of the large ship while dodging all the incoming barrages from the small enemy crafts. Seriously, these missions feel like something straight out of Star Wars. There are also missions that involve Clank temporarily powering up into a giant mech, complete with Ratchet riding on his back, in a cute inversion of the norm. Giant Clank is used to smash through impossibly stacked enemy defenses, as well as structures that block your path. There's also a pretty fun hoverboard race on one of the planets, complete with Tony Hawk style tricks.
The course of the plot takes you across several different intriguing,
and occasionally beautiful sci-fi planets. The settings are diverse and
feature different puzzles, enemy types and challenges for Ratchet and
Clank to overcome. Some missions see you infiltrating a noxious bog, or a
cold, metal factory replete with enemy robots, while others place you
in a tropical resort or a beautiful metropolis. There are even a few
settings that take place in space stations, complete with sequences that
take you out into the cold vacuum of space itself, which are some of my
favorite missions. I was impressed with how varied and pretty the
stages were all these years later. They leaned into the science-fiction
setting and made the universe feel well realized and like a unique world
that we've not seen anything quite like before.
The last thing that I wanted to touch on about Ratchet & Clank is the story. The plot of this first game isn't anything particularly deep, but it's fun nonetheless. Ratchet and Clank are at odds for much of the story, with two different goals, but both with the belief that they are stronger together than they are separately. They argue and bicker, as Ratchet has personal vendettas against the antagonists of the game and a large ego, while Clank sees the bigger picture and the stakes of what's happening, and wants Ratchet to come to his senses and use his abilities to help those in need. The exact stakes, without giving too much away, are that a ruthless corporate scumbag, Chairman Drek, is destroying planets in order to drain the resources and create a new planet for his people. There's a famed superhero in the galaxy, named Captain Qwark, who Ratchet and Clank want to recruit to their cause, and that mission frames the first portion of their journey, en route to facing Drek. Naturally, the plot has twists and turns, with one key plot twist actually being pretty compelling and somewhat unexpected. As a small note, the final fight with Chairman Drek is genuinely very difficult if you don't get some of the "optional" upgrades throughout the game. I highly advise buying both health upgrades at the very least, as obtaining both of these upgrades doubles Ratchet's health from 4 to 8 hitpoints. The fight with Drek is one of the few things in the game that I feel has aged quite poorly. It is a roughly ten or fifteen minute, multi-phase battle across multiple arenas that get progressively more difficult and the worst part is that there are zero checkpoints at any point in the fight. And to rub salt in the wound, all of the hundreds of rounds of ammunition that you will use across each phase of the fight do not refill upon death. I spent so many bolts (the game's currency) after every attempt at Drek, just refilling every gun that I used. This fight proved so difficult when I was a child that I never could beat it, and now playing the game again at age 30, I still struggled quite a bit. But, I did finally complete it after many attempts, and ultimately leaving to gather upgrades and more money. So when I ticked his enormous health bar down all the way to zero, I screeched like a banshee out of pure excitement. Most people say that you can use the RYNO, an extremely powerful weapon, to take down Chairman Drek much more easily, but the RYNO is an optional weapon, and extremely expensive to purchase, so I went at it with the weapons I already had.
.png)
Ratchet & Clank has held up over the last couple of decades. As far as I'm concerned, its reputation is still intact. There's always the worry that when you revisit a game after so many years and innovation in controls and design choices, that the game ends up being an unplayable, dated mess, but I'm pleased to say that that was definitely not my experience with this game. I'm excited to play the sequels: Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal, because I know they built upon the foundations of the this original game, and really helped cement the Ratchet & Clank series into the PlayStation behemoth that it ended up becoming. This game is not currently available on any modern platforms, but there was a beautiful remake from 2016, that coincided with the Ratchet & Clank movie that came out that same year. The remake is stunning and reworked some of the plot, but ultimately is a wonderful modernized send-up of this classic.
Post a Comment