Hello beautiful people of planet Earth! My last post was a review for the PS2 version of Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, the second-latest game in the series. After completing and reviewing that game, I got started back on the original Ratchet & Clank. Unfortunately, once I got to the super-difficult final boss, I quit, and I don’t think I’ll start back anytime soon. Regardless, I have ended up with its sequel, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando. How?
Well, my sister has had a birthday, and it is family tradition to give the birthday boy/girl a crap-load of money. My sister, who has, for whatever reason, gotten into Ratchet & Clank, has bought Going Commando, Up Your Arsenal, and Deadlocked off eBay (the former of which is not coming until July because the person who put it on eBay is currently on vacation). So, this is how I’ve ended up with it. Although it’s my sister’s present, I play it about ten times more than her, so it’s basically my game.
To start things off, the graphics are great. They are a noticeable improvement over the original game’s graphics. There is a higher polygon count, as well as higher resolution. This, among more colors and better textures, allow Going Commando’s graphics to receive the word Great. Though they’re not very great by today’s PS2 standards, they were very good for the time and deserve some credit. The music fits the areas of the game well, despite the fact that it’s forgettable. Thus, the music of the game receives the word Pretty Good.
Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando has a much better, funnier story than the original. During an interview for a TV show about heroes, Ratchet and Clank are beamed into the Bogon Galaxy to solve the crisis of a stolen Megacorp product. The president of Megacorp, Mr. Fizzwidget, hires Ratchet to catch the thief, while Clank is given a special apartment just for him. Ratchet meets the thief, only for the experiment (a Furby-like creature known as the Protopet) to be stolen yet again. The thief enlists the help of a group called Thugs-4-Less to eliminate Ratchet & Clank, although they are thwarted and Ratchet ends up catching the thief and rescuing the Protopet. There’s much more to it, but…why must I spoil it? I will slip in one last little detail, though: Captain Qwark returns in the game, but I will not spoil his role. The story receives the word Awesome! It’s funny, and just gets better and better.
I’ve always noted Ratchet & Clank for its dark, yet silly, humor style, akin to Invader ZIM. For instance, in Ratchet Deadlocked, the announcers made funny, yet foreboding comments about people constantly dying in Dreadzone, and they also kept saying things like, “Ratchet is going to die,” but the nonchalant way they said it was funny (helped by the fact that they were actually rooting against Ratchet, and often accused him of things like taking steroids). I like this kind of humor style a lot, and thus, the game’s humor receives the word Great.
The gameplay for the game mixes elements of third person shooters like Hitman and platformers like Crash Bandicoot. Basically, you have a whole arsenal of weapons, including Ratchet’s trademark Omniwrench, to choose from, and you use them to help you run and jump your way through the areas and break crates full of bolts, the currency of Ratchet & Clank (yes, I know that sounds like Crash Bandicoot). Going Commando was the first game in the series to introduce the weapon upgrade system, although it was improved upon in later games. The Swingshot and Grindboots return, as well as other gadgets, such as the Dynamo and Tractor Beam, which power technology and move certain objects, respectively. Your Nanotech also upgrades frequently, which makes the game a LOT easier. The gameplay receives the word Great.
One huge complaint about the game is that they didn’t improve on the checkpoint system in the first one AT ALL. At the beginning of the game, when you’re probably already used to dying a bunch of times and restarting at the very beginning of the level, you think, “Oh, good, they’ve fixed the checkpoints,” because it’s very easy at the beginning of the game. But towards the end, when things get 20 times harder and you begin to realize that they didn’t really fix them that much. Still, the difficulty has been toned down quite a bit. Here’s a way to prove it: I had hardly any trouble with the last boss at all.
At this point, there is the matter of fun factor. The fun factor is very high. Despite the game’s difficulty level, the learning curve isn’t very long at all if you’ve played the first, making the beginning of the game very easy and fun. It’s still fun towards the end, however, albeit rip-your-hair-out difficult. At least it’s not like in Size Matters where the enemies at the end of the game kill you in one-to-two hits… The fun factor receives the word Awesome!
The replay value for the game is very high. Once the game is completed, you can replay it on Challenge Mode, a harder mode in which you can buy upgrades to your weapons. There are also space battle challenges, a battle arena, hoverbike races, and, as you can expect from Insomniac Games, Skill Points. The replay value gets the word Great.
And in the end, this sequel makes it. It’s more fun than the original, and has added several elements that are mainstays in the series today. Now, to answer the epic question that reviews were created to answer: should you buy this game? Of course!
Final Word: Awesome! It’s better than its predecessor in many areas, but the checkpoints should have been worked on a bit more…
Well, my sister has had a birthday, and it is family tradition to give the birthday boy/girl a crap-load of money. My sister, who has, for whatever reason, gotten into Ratchet & Clank, has bought Going Commando, Up Your Arsenal, and Deadlocked off eBay (the former of which is not coming until July because the person who put it on eBay is currently on vacation). So, this is how I’ve ended up with it. Although it’s my sister’s present, I play it about ten times more than her, so it’s basically my game.
To start things off, the graphics are great. They are a noticeable improvement over the original game’s graphics. There is a higher polygon count, as well as higher resolution. This, among more colors and better textures, allow Going Commando’s graphics to receive the word Great. Though they’re not very great by today’s PS2 standards, they were very good for the time and deserve some credit. The music fits the areas of the game well, despite the fact that it’s forgettable. Thus, the music of the game receives the word Pretty Good.
Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando has a much better, funnier story than the original. During an interview for a TV show about heroes, Ratchet and Clank are beamed into the Bogon Galaxy to solve the crisis of a stolen Megacorp product. The president of Megacorp, Mr. Fizzwidget, hires Ratchet to catch the thief, while Clank is given a special apartment just for him. Ratchet meets the thief, only for the experiment (a Furby-like creature known as the Protopet) to be stolen yet again. The thief enlists the help of a group called Thugs-4-Less to eliminate Ratchet & Clank, although they are thwarted and Ratchet ends up catching the thief and rescuing the Protopet. There’s much more to it, but…why must I spoil it? I will slip in one last little detail, though: Captain Qwark returns in the game, but I will not spoil his role. The story receives the word Awesome! It’s funny, and just gets better and better.
I’ve always noted Ratchet & Clank for its dark, yet silly, humor style, akin to Invader ZIM. For instance, in Ratchet Deadlocked, the announcers made funny, yet foreboding comments about people constantly dying in Dreadzone, and they also kept saying things like, “Ratchet is going to die,” but the nonchalant way they said it was funny (helped by the fact that they were actually rooting against Ratchet, and often accused him of things like taking steroids). I like this kind of humor style a lot, and thus, the game’s humor receives the word Great.
The gameplay for the game mixes elements of third person shooters like Hitman and platformers like Crash Bandicoot. Basically, you have a whole arsenal of weapons, including Ratchet’s trademark Omniwrench, to choose from, and you use them to help you run and jump your way through the areas and break crates full of bolts, the currency of Ratchet & Clank (yes, I know that sounds like Crash Bandicoot). Going Commando was the first game in the series to introduce the weapon upgrade system, although it was improved upon in later games. The Swingshot and Grindboots return, as well as other gadgets, such as the Dynamo and Tractor Beam, which power technology and move certain objects, respectively. Your Nanotech also upgrades frequently, which makes the game a LOT easier. The gameplay receives the word Great.
One huge complaint about the game is that they didn’t improve on the checkpoint system in the first one AT ALL. At the beginning of the game, when you’re probably already used to dying a bunch of times and restarting at the very beginning of the level, you think, “Oh, good, they’ve fixed the checkpoints,” because it’s very easy at the beginning of the game. But towards the end, when things get 20 times harder and you begin to realize that they didn’t really fix them that much. Still, the difficulty has been toned down quite a bit. Here’s a way to prove it: I had hardly any trouble with the last boss at all.
At this point, there is the matter of fun factor. The fun factor is very high. Despite the game’s difficulty level, the learning curve isn’t very long at all if you’ve played the first, making the beginning of the game very easy and fun. It’s still fun towards the end, however, albeit rip-your-hair-out difficult. At least it’s not like in Size Matters where the enemies at the end of the game kill you in one-to-two hits… The fun factor receives the word Awesome!
The replay value for the game is very high. Once the game is completed, you can replay it on Challenge Mode, a harder mode in which you can buy upgrades to your weapons. There are also space battle challenges, a battle arena, hoverbike races, and, as you can expect from Insomniac Games, Skill Points. The replay value gets the word Great.
And in the end, this sequel makes it. It’s more fun than the original, and has added several elements that are mainstays in the series today. Now, to answer the epic question that reviews were created to answer: should you buy this game? Of course!
Final Word: Awesome! It’s better than its predecessor in many areas, but the checkpoints should have been worked on a bit more…
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