I have to confess to not actually playing the other Ratchet and Clank games before this one. I will try to convey the story with as much clarity as I can 
You are “Ratcher”, not an actual ratchet but you do carry one to fight your enemies and also to turn some screws…..madness. You are in essence a human sized walking cat thing. Long eared, yellow, a bit strippy and fuzzy. To help you and your quest is your faithful companion robot called “Clank”, now Clank does nearly everything non-combat related, simple puzzles and the like.
Anyways the story, You “Mr Ratchet” have no idea where the rest of your cat thingy race are, called “Lombaxes”. So you are partly on a quest to find what happened to them, oh and also to save the universe from Mr evil emperor (who looks like a carebear gone evil….werebear style).
The main quest leads you to about a dozen different worlds of the different types, sandy, foresty, industrial, ruins etc etc. It is well executed and the worlds do feels very different and look very nice too. As do the rest of the graphics. There wasn’t any pop-ins from what I remember. There was some geometry issues where I got stuck randomly in some rubble or on a side of a vehicle. Though most of it happened by chance and sometimes can be missed easily.
The combat I suppose is the most important part of the gameplay, there is a wide variety of weapons to use and level up. Some easier to level up then others and some that you may never use since it takes ages to level them up and they are too weak to begin with. My favourite item has to be the morpher, as it turns everything enemy around it into a ….. penguin! Each penguin looks different and sometimes there are different effect round individual ones, like a mini rain cloud. There are some pretty neat weapons, the tornado launcher (controlled by the six-axis) takes some getting used too, but its pretty good at clearing out small rooms. Other then that, there’s the generic “main gun”, rocket launchers, spray weapons and the like.
The disco-tron desevres some mention, it is similar to the morpher, but it makes everything dance. Well not Ratchet, but he will bob his head in time with the music. It is quite funny to see a bunch of enemies break out into dance, and each type of enemy has its own dance animation. Even penguins will dance!
Platforming, it can be a little weak sometimes, it is not a proper plat-former. It does have some sections that resemble platforming, but most of the time its hopping between rails to avoid missiles or death rays.
The boss fights are quite fun, there nothing too serious here. My favouritte one is a giant skull in space, mainly due to the fact it’s a giant skull in space shooting lasers out of its eye sockets. There is no real difficulty curve in this game. Especially if you level up the right weapons, some boss fights are so easy you can actually stand still and they will be defeated.
I didn’t really remember any mentionable music, but it seemed to tie in with the action well. There wasn’t enough umphy music, needs more orchestral music. Other then that I can’t really complain, nor can I praise it.
Another side to the game is the collectors side, collect hidden times to get a “big gun” or golden screws to buy different outfits. Tho I highly suspect any of them are more worth while then the mustache outfit. It adds a whole new level of enjoyment when the game tried to be serious in the cutscenes and Ratchet is sporting a mustache and giant pink glasses.
What I was disappointed in this game was the level of reaction the six-axis got, it was quite poor. It take some serious emphasized movement to get it to react, or it could be just me and my pickyness to actuall expect it to work in the way I wanted it too.
If you were torn between this game and say heavenly sword, it is not really that amazing game, but it will keep you entertained for a few hours. It has great humour, just it lacks those few shines and polishes to make it amazing. It has some replay value, so maybe it has something over other games like heavenly sword.
Obviously I haven’t covered everything in this game, mainly so if you do get to play it most of it is unexpected. Have fun people!
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