As part of my ongoing playthrough, review and retrospective of the original Ratchet & Clank trilogy, I have now completed the first game and its sequel - Going Commando. I had played the original game before, though I had never finished it before this recent session. This sequel, on the other hand, I realized during my playthrough, that I had only ever seen the very first planet, so this was almost entirely uncharted territory for me. Let's just say, I was blown away by the small and major enhancements sprinkled throughout this game
Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando came out just one year after the original game, which seems unbelievable in 2024, where our AAA game series releases are often close to a decade apart from each other. The game obviously, and wisely, reused a lot of the visual assets from the first title, but built new planets and settings that were gorgeous and diverse, and occasionally looked shockingly crisp. This sequel established series mainstays like weapon upgrades and a new hitpoint system, and built upon some of the standout features of the original title, to truly hone the series more into the iconic PlayStation brand that it is today.
If you're a Ratchet & Clank fan, your central question is probably centered on the gameplay. What sets Going Commando apart from the first game? Is it more of the same? To a certain degree, it plays exactly like the original title, which is obviously a good thing, if you like how that game played. But, Going Commando made some key improvements that added so much enjoyment to my experience with the game. There's essentially an entirely new armory's worth of weapons to dole out wild and deadly damage on your foes. You can access a handful of the original game's weapons, provided you have save data from that game on your console, but truthfully, I didn't utilize a single weapon from that selection, as the new ones were so fun and satisfying to use. Like with the first game, Ratchet has a few guns of a more conventional nature, like a machine gun of sorts, a missile launcher, a beefy and powerful shotgun, as well as a very lethal sniper rifle, but the zanier weapons are the ones that really caught my attention. There's a glove that tosses out stationary turrets that auto-fire on your enemies and provide you with constant damage. This weapon, the Miniturret Glove, proved to be one of the most critically important in my entire roster. The Bouncer was another phenomenal new weapon. It fired a large bomb that would detonate and launch several smaller bombs that would absolutely destroy bosses or large crowds of enemies. Ratchet can also obtain an energy shield tool that uses ammo like weapons do, but it's a purely defensive item. This was a priceless enhancement to my combat strategy once I got it, as it would block 100% of damage up to a certain threshold. There were also multiple iterations of new OmniWrenches to deal more melee damage, as well as a few body armor upgrades that greatly increases Ratchet's survivability.
On the combat discussion, I think the biggest innovation that Going Commando introduced was an RPG-esque leveling system for Ratchet's weapons and his health. As you participate in combat, Ratchet is passively gaining experience toward an overall level that grants him quarter pieces of a new total hitpoint. This is an awesome improvement to the approach of the original game, where you only had a few hitpoints (with a maximum of eight with purchasable upgrades). By the time I finished this game, I had two bars of health, which allowed me to play so much more aggressively, and not worry about death being around every corner. By the same token, Ratchet's weapons (and the energy shield) all have an experience bar that fills with regular use and eventually evolve, not unlike a Pokemon, into being a much more powerful version of the initial weapon. For instance, my beloved Miniturret Glove, upgraded into the Megaturret Glove, which fired heatseeking missiles at my targets, and saved my behind more times than I can count. There was one weapon, the Gravity Bomb, that lobs a destructive, area-of-effect style explosive. Upon its upgrade, it now fires a mini-nuke that produces a comically large mushroom cloud and wipes out hordes of baddies. This leveling system proved to be a major hook keeping me invested in the gameplay and became quite addicting. Luckily for me, I chose good weapons to invest the time in, and they proved invaluable in the later, significantly more difficult stages of the game.
I feel like Going Commando continued the series' gradual eschewal of traditional platforming sequences. I can only think of a few segments that truly felt like I was playing a platformer. The Ratchet & Clank series seems to lean more on gadgetry creating micro-puzzles and environmental hazards that take the place of platforming, which isn't inherently a bad thing. Going Commando had some very fun sections that involved Ratchet's myriad gadgets, some of them brand new to this game, and some more familiar to the first game. Replacing the Hydrodisplacer from the original game, there's now the Thermanator, a gun of sorts, that fires ice into a body of water, freezing it and allowing you to treat the ice as a solid surface to jump off of, or it can also fire bursts of heat that can melt ice and let you swim through an underwater tunnel, or otherwise newly opened pathway. There's also an interesting tool called the Dynamo that creates 3D holographic platforms that Ratchet can utilize to climb to otherwise out-of-reach places. Some of the more frustrating segments of this game were tied to hacking puzzles that turn on equipment or open a doorway. The hacking gadgets in the original Ratchet & Clank game were some of my least favorite parts of that game, and that sentiment carries over to Going Commando. They're simply not fun, and some of them have so much going on on the screen that it's actually somewhat disorienting to look at, and I frequently had to utilize my memory to get through it, as the puzzle itself was too visually overwhelming. There were some brief segments that involved a hang glider tool as well, where you would soar through tight tunnels and lava-filled ravines and this was surprisingly well done. The physics of the glider felt decently tight for a twenty-one year old game; especially where these segments were certainly added as more or less of an afterthought, no doubt just to add some variety and action set-pieces to the game.
Similar to the original game, this sequel also has short segments that introduce entirely new ways to play the game, which always served as fun and fresh little distractions. The "Giant Clank" element from the first game returns, but they turned it into a much more involved sequence now. Instead of button mashing short sections of levels where you just punch one-hit kill enemies and destroy buildings, now the Giant Clank segments have Clank fly away to a satellite or moon off the surface of whatever planet you were just on, and you engage in an almost kaiju-like battle against other giant enemies. They're always quick, little areas but it feels like a slightly more developed idea for a gameplay mechanic, and the small planetoids that you fight across as Giant Clank call to mind something like Super Mario Galaxy, which is pretty cool from a visual standpoint. Also the dogfighting space battles return in a bigger and better way. They are mechanically pretty similar to the first game, but the battlefields feel much more engaging and dynamic with dozens of enemies flying around you, as well as larger ships or crafts that require your careful coordination to shoot down, on top of handling the smaller enemies trying to keep you from your target. A really fun addition to Going Commando was a giant battle arena that involved you fighting waves of enemies and bosses, in exchange for substantial bolt payouts. The arena was a fun, easy way to try out a new gun, get some weapon experience and make some easy money at the same time.
The planets and settings of Going Commando were quite excellent, in my opinion. This game takes place in a different galaxy from the first entry, and each of the planets felt unique and vibrant, compared to some of the uninspired planets from the first game. There were some impressive skyboxes that made some of the stages feel vast. I was particularly impressed with Smolg, a planet that felt like something straight out of Treasure Planet or BioShock Infinite. You traverse flying platforms and warehouses that seem to be tens of thousands of feet above the surface of whatever this world actually looks like. There are enormous automated cargo trains flying around the map, giving this level a real sense of scale. Smolg also has a handful of sections that involve Ratchet flying across huge spaces of open sky to reach a far off platform, and these were genuinely thrilling and felt dangerous. I could feel myself catch my breath when I'd touch down on the next platform, and then tense up all over again when I would lift off to soar to the next landing spot. I also think that this game's seeming focus on alien fauna and enemies helped set it apart from the first game's frequent use of robotic baddies that all seemed to blend and blur together after a while. When certain planets had indigenous life, it made them stand out all the more, and feel like a real planet that exists within this galaxy, rather than just a small location made specifically for the game.
The story was fun and felt sufficiently different, as well as lighthearted, compared to the original game's more personal stakes, with Ratchet's home planet being in danger and the rocky tension between the two title characters as they work out the exact nature of their relationship. Going Commando picks up some time after the events of the first game, and Ratchet and Clank have become celebrities who are bored of their now comparatively uneventful lives. They are suddenly teleported aboard the eccentric Abercrombie Fizzwidget's spaceship. He is the CEO of a massive corporation, suitably named MegaCorp, which develops electronics and consumer goods. Fizzwidget has requested that Ratchet and Clank retrieve a biological experiment that was stolen by a thief. I won't spoil the twists and turns of the story, but it naturally escalates into a tale of considerable intrigue and action, and the vibrant sci-fi visuals of this new galaxy, with the various alien species, robots, wild weaponry and planets that you encounter make the overall experience of Going Commando a complete home run. Honestly, this game has a certain "Saturday morning cartoon" feel to it, that makes me sad that we never saw an animated Ratchet & Clank TV show. The settings and characters feels akin to a show like Ben 10.
I highly recommend Going Commando. I had a wonderful time with this game and kept telling myself the whole way through it that I couldn't believe that the game is as old as it is, and that it came out only one year after the first game. It felt very sophisticated and like Insomniac were more ambitious with this title, and wanting to really hone in on what exactly the Ratchet & Clank series could be. While I wouldn't see myself revisiting the first game, I could potentially see myself returning to Going Commando to play around on the planets, do the side activities that I missed and continue leveling up these awesome weapons. Just like the original game, Going Commando and its sequel, Up Your Arsenal, are not currently available on modern platforms, so you would have to get the games on PlayStation 2, or in the Ratchet & Clank Collection on PlayStation 3 or Vita.
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