Ratchet and Clank Trilogy – review

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When Insomniac’s Ratchet and Clank launched in 2002, it was pretty much Sony’s only voice in the 3D platformed market and what a voice it was. A classic of video games. Ratchet and Clank was such a critical and financial success that it spawned one of the biggest franchises in video game history, a franchise whose roots you are now able to revisit thanks to Idol Minds remastering the original trilogy, consisting of Ratchet and Clank, Ratchet and Clank 2: Locked and Loaded (or Going Commando, based on the region) and Ratchet and Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal for the PS Vita.

The thing about remastered versions of classics is that there is always going to be an element of rose tinted glasses that in some way lessen the experience. In this sense, Ratchet and Clank is no different: the voice acting isn’t great by modern standards and a lot of the puzzles involve infuriatingly hard platforming that would be considered poor today. What is irksome about these problems is that they are actively made worse by the platform of the PS Vita and the development team did nothing to curb this. A lot of this is because of the Vita’s design flaws, the analogue sticks make the already tricky platforming frustrating at best while, in the later games, the lack of L2 and R2 buttons mean that you have to choose between crouching and strafing and since both of those are pretty essential to the game, the crouching is mandatory for various platforming sections whereas the strafing makes the rough combat from the first Ratchet and Clank fun and a lot less clunky. If you elect to get rid of crouching, the crouching option gets relegated to the rear control panel where only a mysterious set of movements will allow you to actually crouch, making it damn near useless for most of the platforming sections in which it is mandatory. What this means is that, if you opt to be able to strafe, you will be faced with a lot of unnecessary and annoying deaths.

Another frustrating thing about this port is that only the in-game sections are actually remastered, the cut scenes, audio and animations are taken straight from the original games and, if I am mistaken and they were, they were terribly done. While this would’ve involved a lot of time and money to be invested into the project by the studio, the alternative of phoning it in makes making one game properly seem like a much more attractive alternative.

Saying that, it still is very nice to revisit the old memories that Ratchet and Clank evoke, even if they are tempered somewhat by irksome platforming and combat that so dearly needed a strafe function. However, the humour is still there and it’s still as funny as ever, Clank’s dry wit has aged particularly well as does the general humour of the dialog.

In conclusion, it’s Ratchet and Clank, the original three. The Vita’s lack of great thumbsticks or its rear touchpad issues does nothing to change this, the same amazing games are still all there in all their glory, just looking a bit better with some control issues. Factoring in the fact that you can probably get the Playstation 3 edition of this trilogy for significantly cheaper since it’s two years old and has some used copies around, I would recommend picking that version up instead, unless you really want Ratchet and Clank on the move.

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