Ratchet and Clank is the comfort food of video games. Pop in any game in the series and you'll be treated to a well-executed mixture of platforming, humor, and Pixar-esque visuals. Sure, differences exist from title to title, but basically you're getting the same game no matter which one you play.
I'm okay with that. There aren't many colorful platformers being made these days, and I just so happen to be a fan of both funny things and Pixar movies.
That said, I want enough innovation between Ratchet and Clank games to feel like I'm eating a different meal every time, even if it's from the same restaurant.
The challenge for developer Insomniac, then, is to tweak things just enough to make them feel fresh, while adhering to the core mechanics that fans of the series have come to expect. Here are three ways they've tried to make the old seem new again in Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time, due out October 27 on PS3.
Showing you -- not telling you -- what your weapons do
The Ratchet and Clank series is known for its wacky weapons -- one area where it's never been short on innovation. But what stands out to me in A Crack in Time isn't something like a gun that turns enemies into chickens or a disco grenade that makes bad guys get groovy.
No, what impresses me is how the game teaches you the way each weapon works -- via a series of cartoons that hark back to the Hanna-Barbera era of animation. The cartoons are slick, hilarious, and do a better job of explaining the weapons than any dry block of text.
Turning moving platforms into platforms deforming and reforming in time
What? A platformer with no moving platforms? Heresy!
Don't worry, there are still plenty of moving platforms in the game to cause you headaches. But other platforms don't move so much as shift in time.
See, the Zoni -- little critters that have popped up throughout the PS3 iterations of the series -- have some unique time manipulation abilities. What that means is that you'll often encounter areas encased in time bubbles. Some of them contain objects completely arrested in motion, while the objects in other bubbles loop like a skipping record.
At one point, you come across a series of pillars caught in one of these time bubbles. The pillars break apart and reform, break apart and reform, in a pattern that conveniently allows you to hop from one to the other to get where you need to go.
So, yes, these are basically moving platforms. But because they're tied to the story -- because they're platforms with a purpose -- they feel less like something thrown in to ramp up the difficulty and more like a natural component of the world you need to traverse.
Getting you from point A to point B
A Crack in Time introduces a new way to get you from point A to point B: your space ship. Instead of just dropping in a cut scene between planets, the game puts you in the pilot seat of the Aphelion and lets you blast away.
I'm glad Insomniac is trying something new here, but as the game currently stands, I have a couple of concerns with the space segments.
The first is technical and can hopefully be fixed before the game ships. Namely, the camera placement is awful. Space travel exists on a single plane, and perhaps because of that the game won't allow you to reposition the camera. What that means is that most of the time you can't see the enemies you're supposed to be shooting. It's both restrictive and frustrating.
The second issue is potentially more damning: I found the space segment I played incredibly boring. Shooting enemies -- when I could see them, that is -- was a matter of simply locking missiles on targets and firing. I never felt in any danger, and I never felt challenged. I just wanted to move on to the next platforming segment.
So has Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time provided enough of a new sheen to get me interested in the final product? Definitely.
Yes, the core elements are the same. Expect a steady stream of jokes, eye-popping visuals, and lots and lots of platforms. But Insomniac has come up with some intriguing riffs on the formula -- even if they're not all successful. The result is something that I want to keep playing.
