PS3 Review – Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time
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Everyone’s favorite intergalactic duo is back in Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time, Insomniac’s latest installment of the fan-favorite Ratchet and Clank franchise. Ratchet and Clank have once again been tasked with saving the universe from the clutches of the evil Dr. Nefarious. Their journey, which unfolds over the course of about 10-12 hours of an eclectic mix of platforming, puzzles, and gun-slinging action, is some of the most fun the franchise offers.
Picking up directly after the events of Tools of Destruction and Quest for Booty, Ratchet and Clank are still separated. In fact, you spend nearly the game’s entirety apart. If you missed the aforementioned games, a cleverly-placed interview with Captain Qwark takes place as the mandatory 500MB game data installs, which will give you enough back story to bring you up to speed. The Zoni have abducted Clank, and have been duped into teaming up with Dr. Nefarious. He then turns on the Zoni once they refuse his entrance into the Orvus Chamber of The Great Clock. The Great Clock is a mystical structure built by a Zoni named Orvus to stabilize the rift time-space continuum.
The game starts off throwing Ratchet right into the action as he sets off to locate his long-lost robot pal Clank. Ratchet departs on his journey along-side Captain Qwark, and as expected, gains an arsenal of unique and comical weapons that only the creative folks at Insomniac could cook up. Along the way Ratchet meets General Azimuth, who like Ratchet, is a furry creature known as a Lombax. Until now it’s been believed that Ratchet was the only Lombax left in the universe. With Ratchet’s finding of General Azimuth, he learns of his origins, and is eventually presented with the choice of bringing back his family, or saving the universe.
Meanwhile, Clank is responsible for being the caretaker of the The Great Clock, the key to temporal stability of the universe. As the title would suggest, The Great Clock and time itself is a central theme in the game. Ratchet is in a race to locate The Great Clock and along with it, Clank. Clank however, has plenty to do on his own as he learns the ins and outs of being the caretaker to The Great Clock. During your time with Clank, you’ll experience the game’s shining achievement in gameplay. Clank has the ability to manipulate time itself. Clank will solve puzzles by stepping on colored tiles which initiate recorded “copies” of himself, which you use to essentially team up with yourself (recorded selves) to press buttons, raise and lower platforms to eventually progress into the next area. This new time-manipulation gameplay is difficult, and requires you to really stop, think, and plan your approach. As difficult and as time-consuming as this can be, it’s very rewarding when you finally make it through some of the tougher puzzles.
You’ll never get bored playing as either Ratchet or Clank, and your time with each character is nicely balanced. Ratchet is certainly the focus, as you’ll spend the majority of your time playing as the Lombax. Another way the game breaks up the pace is through Ratchet’s space ship, which lets you traverse each sector of space. The ship gameplay is actually rather disappointing compared to the rest of the game. Using it to traverse each sector is fine and dandy,but it’s when you start getting into intergalactic battles where it can get frustrating. Your ship has a very limited move set, and it’s difficult to control. Definitely not a deal breaker, but instead is a missed opportunity.
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28 Responses to “PS3 Review – Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time”
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October 26th, 2009 at 8:12 PM
Great Review, although this sentence didn’t make sense,,,
“Although Ratchet is certainly the focus, you’ll spend the majority of your time with the Lombax. “
10/26/2009 at 8:17 PM
Fixed, ’twas a typo.
October 26th, 2009 at 8:42 PM
was there ever any doubt??? I like the addition of the space travel gameplay when traveling between planets. Can’t wait to play the game and save the universe with my favorite Lombax and cool little Robot
October 26th, 2009 at 8:46 PM
What a great series. The demo sure was a blast to play in itself.
October 26th, 2009 at 8:58 PM
you guys should be harder with your reviews. It would make your high numbers more important, like a 5 should never really go out. Since no game can be perfect, you should just work on giving high numbers out to only the best of the best. This game is going to be amazing but not the best of the best
10/26/2009 at 9:39 PM
The game is so good that it a 4 was doing it a disservice. However you are right it’s not perfect.
We give out Editor’s Choice Awards to games that reach near perfection. One such example is our Uncharted 2 review. http://playstationlifestyle.net/2009/10/12/ps3-review-uncharted-2-among-thieves/
As you can see there is a different 5 out of 5 image, we give it a Editor’s Choice Award and a Platinum trophy instead of a Gold.
Hope this clears things up.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:01 PM
Nothing getting this game until Thursday and will not be able to play until Saturday
Dam you school
10/26/2009 at 10:03 PM
Curse thy education!
October 26th, 2009 at 9:15 PM
@ bond
In a 5 point scale especially, a perfect score does not mean a perfect game. It just means it’s a great game. Stepping down to a 4 out of 5 is a pretty big step down, so you can’t expect exactness on a 5 point scale
October 26th, 2009 at 9:50 PM
Great Review, can’t wait to pick this up tonight.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:57 PM
@bond
The main point is you shouldn’t be complaining about what other peoples opinions are. Thats what a review is, somebody’s opinion.
October 26th, 2009 at 10:35 PM
you guys should add a score system based on people who are subscribed into the PSL as well as your score.. 1-5 doesnt cover alot. 1-100 tends to give a better idea.. Fat princess was a 5 with platnuim and that game is very repetive and no one mentioned that in the review. While you have options to play varied, it always ends up being the same even with diffrent characters your still limited to basic attacks.. No one played fat princess after its first 2 weeks or less and everyone i run into says the same.. its repetive. The fact it has 2 songs total makes it feel like your zoning out while playing the same 2 songs in a loop. I fell for the hype when you guys reviewed it and didnt point out any flaws and made it seams like it was an addictive game with tons of replay value..
@JasperLoons
i understand what your saying but still a 5 is a 5. Demons Soul was scored a 4 because of difficulty… regardless of not being accessable to everyone has little to do with the fact they flat out said the game was difficult and should have not reflected the overal score. Its like me reviewing a sports game and dropping the score because i find it hard to play. Theres a diffrence with a game being hard and a game being cheap. I understand its just 1 guys opinion but flaws should be pointed out more or some system involved with reviewing games.
@JohnnyTruant5
there are people who do care about the PSL reviews.. its not a bad thing. It just shows that they care if they suggest rectifing something or giving a suggestion.
10/26/2009 at 10:45 PM
We’re actually working on a site re-design that could possibly feature user blogs, user reviews, etc. Maybe we can do a reader average score as well to help balance things out if others have a dramatically different opinion that we do.
Thanks for the feedback.
October 26th, 2009 at 10:42 PM
scratch the fat princess platnium remark.. its a gold. i never noticed the image.. its still a strange score system
October 26th, 2009 at 10:45 PM
i forgot about the Editor’s Choice Awards that you guys give, lol my bad. keep up the great work guys
10/26/2009 at 10:49 PM
No worries, in fact we appreciate the feedback. We are always open to suggestions or comments.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
The fact is, it was a great game. Better than I expected. It was long, fun, had gorgeous graphics and had tons of gameplay variety. There really wasn’t much wrong with it. I didn’t quite love the game as it’s not really my type of a game, but it’s excellent nonetheless.
October 27th, 2009 at 1:52 AM
Quick question Anthony if you’re still around….
I hate Clank only levels….it’s one of those things that shows up in a game and I roll my eyes and force myself through it. I have decided to skip this game because it seems like a half/half split of gameplay….so finally my question….how much of the Clank gameplay is there?
Is it 50/50? 60/40? Because I am not interested in too much focus on Clank.
Thanks.
oh and as for the scoring comments…..I have no problem with games earning a 5 (or max score). I am tired of websites that take pride in having a “perfect” score which no game can achieve because there is no “perfect” game. So you see games that deserve that score yet they never attain it.
10/27/2009 at 10:39 AM
Hi Robotron,
To answer you question, it’s about 75/25 and I would normally agree with you. But the new time manipulation gameplay makes playing as Clank extremely fun and challenging. I actually looked forward to time with Clank.
October 27th, 2009 at 9:08 AM
@ Anthony.
I love you. It’s great to hear you taking our feedback with an open mind. I/we really appreciate it. Shadowjin beat me to the user score idea, and honestly I’m really diggjng the idea of the new site upgrade. I just think a higher score number would allow a greater degree of variation instead of each game being a 4 or 5.
October 27th, 2009 at 12:14 PM
dude great review, cannot wait to pick up my copy.. which reminds me, are you done with yours?
October 27th, 2009 at 12:16 PM
I get the feeling it’s more of the same R&C, which isn’t a bad thing vibe.
I’ll wait for price drop because I rreally want to play something new, not more
of the old games. which I liked btw.
October 27th, 2009 at 12:40 PM
I love these games. My favorite character is, without hesitation, Quark. I would like to know how much of him (or the handyman/plumber) is in the game.
This and Uncharted 2 are definately about to be aprt of the Best Buy 3 for 2. I really on’t know what else to get though. Anyone what to hep me out?
October 27th, 2009 at 2:20 PM
@shadow
What? It’s a review, its what he thinks about the game. You don’t see someone next to roger ebert telling him he’s wrong every time he reviews a movie, theres someone sharing their own opinion.
And a scoring system out of 100 is far more confusing than out of 5. Out of 5, mediocre games can go 3 or 2 depending on tastes, and great games can go 5 or 4 depending on tastes, and adding the editors choice for games that go the extra step is a bonus. A 5/5(in this case editors choice even) doesn’t mean absoultely 100% perfect game, it means amazing game with few minor problems. When you step it up to 100 scores can go all over the map, on metacritic games go from 90’s to 60, if you’re looking to reviews to see if a game is good, those scores won’t help very much. If you limit the scoring you will get a higher concentration and better idea.
October 27th, 2009 at 2:28 PM
Think about if review scores were out of ten thousand. There would be such a difference in scores they would be useless, a bigger number doesn’t really help here.
October 27th, 2009 at 5:37 PM
Good score and a great review there Sev.
October 27th, 2009 at 6:28 PM
@JohnnyTruant5
I agree, but could you imagine the greatness of a game that was … OVER 9000!!!!!
November 6th, 2009 at 9:03 PM
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