Monday, April 26, 2004
R&C
It's over. One of the best gaming experiences of my short, worthless life. Ratchet & Clank 2. It's no surprise at all now that several places gave it their "Game of the Year" award last year. It's really that good. It's platforming perfection. Really, it should be a Nintendo game. For all my Sony love, they've never had a game be this accessible, this perfect, or have this much purely fun gameplay. This is Mario for a new generation. Excuse my blasphemy, but Fuck Sunshine. This has firepower, this has comedy, this has character. It's basic gameplay engine and controls make it as fun to just run around in as Mario 64, and it's graphics and art design often remind me of Metroid Prime, of all things (at least with sexy s-video). With this game, I now feel that Sony can compete, and win, in the platforming market. A big step. They've had plenty of great games, but nothing on this level of perfection.
Since this game has all of the basics completely down (control, camera, graphics, sound) they (Insomniac) can focus the majority of their resources on design. Variety is the spice of life, and an important part of any genre as flooded with games as platformers are. Most platformers end up falling into one of two categories: games that get all the basics down, but don't have enough creativity to keep them afloat (Jak 2, in my opinion, even though it was still solid and still fun), or ones that strive for variety and unique design, when they don't even have a handle on the basics (Maximo, Haven). Thankfully, Ratchet & Clank 2 excels in all of these areas. So, yes, regarding that variety I mentioned - there is a boatload of it. The majority (and in this case, it's like 51%) of the levels have you wandering around as Ratchet, kicking ass with your huge arsenal of weapons and gadgets. Other areas have you playing as Clank, controlling a group of bots to do your attacking, bridge-building, and hammering. Other have you flying around in your spaceship involved in Colony-Wars style aerial battles. Others have you controlling giant Clank on spherical worlds you can walk all the way around, smashing buildings and fighting aliens and robots, War of the Monsters-style. Others have you manipulating machinery to open/expand an area of a level. Others have you manning guns, fending off hordes of baddies. Others have you sliding down steel rails, intergalactic-Tony Hawk style. Others have you digging up shit in a desert. Etc, etc, etc. One particularly memorable boss battle has you fighting a guy taller than all of the surrounding buildings. I'm sure that all of these things have been done in various other places at one time or another, but rarely all in the same game, and never so coherently and fully-realized. The main selling point for Haven (now priced $4.99 at most places) was the variety of things you could do, and the mini-games you could play. That wasn't even mentioned in the marketing for R&C2, but it's such a wonderful part of the game.
The part that is always mentioned, the weapons and gadgets, is pretty damn awesome by itself. The weapons range from takes on the shotgun, sniper rifle, and missile launcher to the "turn guys into sheep" gun and placeable turrets. And if you use a weapon a lot, it will earn experience until it upgrades to a more powerful, wackier-named, cooler-looking version of itself. Gravity bomb turns to Mini-Nuke, and so forth. This RPG-style way of levelling up your weapons is a great way to get you to use them all, especially since there are like 30 of them. That's another great thing about the game - the weapons and gadgets differ so much, that picking the right one for the right situation is half the fun. In actuality, you can beat almost any area with any gun, but their effectiveness varies so much from gun to gun and enemy to enemy that you'll never want to stick with the same weapon (plus, you'll never upgrade them all playing that way).
The level design also gets big props from me. You'll never get a gadget that sits idly in your inventory unused for too long. The latter levels in the game require almost every gadget you have, just as the final boss takes pretty much every bullet in every gun you have to bring down. And the sensation of finding a new gadget or weapon is very similar to Metroid - you know that you just made new areas of previous levels accessible, only here, the backtracking is optional (and much quicker). On top of that, the game takes into account some very basic issues typical of platformers and does it's best to constantly keep the player happy - just when you're sick of having to walk around the huge levels, you'll get rocket boots to make the journey quicker. When you tire of having to walk over to bolts (the games currency) to pick them up, the game provides you with a gadget that collects them for you. There are lots of little things like this that are easy to implement and make a big difference to the game; way more developers should follow their lead.
Hmm...what else...man, there is so much in this goddamn game. I mean, I finished it in 18 hours, and still didn't have all the weapons upgraded or even unlocked. There are optional fighting arenas with cool challenges (beat 30 guys in 60 seconds, don't get hit) and their own bosses. In fact, after many big fights or air battles you can replay them if you want on increasingly harder difficulties to earn more bling or upgrades. There's just so much shit to do if you want to. And even at it's basic, most-direct approach there's a good thirty levels. And some of them are pretty damn tough, expect a challenge. In the pause menu, there's an area for "Stuff we couldn't put anywhere else". These guys included every goddamn thing they could fit, for fucks sake.
I guess this game just evokes some sort of primal enjoyment in me, that ultimate 'zone' of gaming that the very best games make you feel. I really can't see anyone, casual gamer or the most hardcore of the core, not enjoying this game. Ridiculously highly recommended, all hyperbole aside. I could rave about it all afternoon, if I was wearing pants.
Since this game has all of the basics completely down (control, camera, graphics, sound) they (Insomniac) can focus the majority of their resources on design. Variety is the spice of life, and an important part of any genre as flooded with games as platformers are. Most platformers end up falling into one of two categories: games that get all the basics down, but don't have enough creativity to keep them afloat (Jak 2, in my opinion, even though it was still solid and still fun), or ones that strive for variety and unique design, when they don't even have a handle on the basics (Maximo, Haven). Thankfully, Ratchet & Clank 2 excels in all of these areas. So, yes, regarding that variety I mentioned - there is a boatload of it. The majority (and in this case, it's like 51%) of the levels have you wandering around as Ratchet, kicking ass with your huge arsenal of weapons and gadgets. Other areas have you playing as Clank, controlling a group of bots to do your attacking, bridge-building, and hammering. Other have you flying around in your spaceship involved in Colony-Wars style aerial battles. Others have you controlling giant Clank on spherical worlds you can walk all the way around, smashing buildings and fighting aliens and robots, War of the Monsters-style. Others have you manipulating machinery to open/expand an area of a level. Others have you manning guns, fending off hordes of baddies. Others have you sliding down steel rails, intergalactic-Tony Hawk style. Others have you digging up shit in a desert. Etc, etc, etc. One particularly memorable boss battle has you fighting a guy taller than all of the surrounding buildings. I'm sure that all of these things have been done in various other places at one time or another, but rarely all in the same game, and never so coherently and fully-realized. The main selling point for Haven (now priced $4.99 at most places) was the variety of things you could do, and the mini-games you could play. That wasn't even mentioned in the marketing for R&C2, but it's such a wonderful part of the game.
The part that is always mentioned, the weapons and gadgets, is pretty damn awesome by itself. The weapons range from takes on the shotgun, sniper rifle, and missile launcher to the "turn guys into sheep" gun and placeable turrets. And if you use a weapon a lot, it will earn experience until it upgrades to a more powerful, wackier-named, cooler-looking version of itself. Gravity bomb turns to Mini-Nuke, and so forth. This RPG-style way of levelling up your weapons is a great way to get you to use them all, especially since there are like 30 of them. That's another great thing about the game - the weapons and gadgets differ so much, that picking the right one for the right situation is half the fun. In actuality, you can beat almost any area with any gun, but their effectiveness varies so much from gun to gun and enemy to enemy that you'll never want to stick with the same weapon (plus, you'll never upgrade them all playing that way).
The level design also gets big props from me. You'll never get a gadget that sits idly in your inventory unused for too long. The latter levels in the game require almost every gadget you have, just as the final boss takes pretty much every bullet in every gun you have to bring down. And the sensation of finding a new gadget or weapon is very similar to Metroid - you know that you just made new areas of previous levels accessible, only here, the backtracking is optional (and much quicker). On top of that, the game takes into account some very basic issues typical of platformers and does it's best to constantly keep the player happy - just when you're sick of having to walk around the huge levels, you'll get rocket boots to make the journey quicker. When you tire of having to walk over to bolts (the games currency) to pick them up, the game provides you with a gadget that collects them for you. There are lots of little things like this that are easy to implement and make a big difference to the game; way more developers should follow their lead.
Hmm...what else...man, there is so much in this goddamn game. I mean, I finished it in 18 hours, and still didn't have all the weapons upgraded or even unlocked. There are optional fighting arenas with cool challenges (beat 30 guys in 60 seconds, don't get hit) and their own bosses. In fact, after many big fights or air battles you can replay them if you want on increasingly harder difficulties to earn more bling or upgrades. There's just so much shit to do if you want to. And even at it's basic, most-direct approach there's a good thirty levels. And some of them are pretty damn tough, expect a challenge. In the pause menu, there's an area for "Stuff we couldn't put anywhere else". These guys included every goddamn thing they could fit, for fucks sake.
I guess this game just evokes some sort of primal enjoyment in me, that ultimate 'zone' of gaming that the very best games make you feel. I really can't see anyone, casual gamer or the most hardcore of the core, not enjoying this game. Ridiculously highly recommended, all hyperbole aside. I could rave about it all afternoon, if I was wearing pants.
// posted by Nick @ 1:38 PM 
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