Home Games Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

R & C: Future

Platformer
Releases: 10.23.07
Insomniac Games
SCEA
ESRB: Everyone

Ratchet & Clank Future

Where’s my 3 ¾ hexagonal wrench?

by Sarah Schutz

Having been a Ratchet & Clank groupie since the series’ inception, I’ve been salivating over the prospect of seeing this mismatched duo in high definition for quite some time. The mechanic savvy Lombax and his mechanical friend did not disappoint. The game is gorgeous. As I finished the game and sat in contentment as I pondered embarking on challenge mode, I began longing for a time when games had more silliness and other-worldliness and less focus on the first-person personality-lacking shooters. This game made me smile through and through.

In Tools of Destruction Ratchet and his metallic friend embark on a journey to understand what the Emperor of the Cragmites has done with Lombax race and the inventions they’ve left behind. In the course of the journey in true coming-of-age fashion, Ratchet fights to discover where he’s come from in order to understand where he’s going. All melodrama aside, in this latest installment of the 3D platformer, we are given more opportunities to experiment with myriad ways of killing charming, yet devilish alien foes. The game maintains its potentially patented bolt-gathering satisfaction allowing you to purchase new gadgets to customize your gameplay. The latest gadgets fighting a unique thrill allowing you to kill your enemies with swarms of bees or forcing them to dance under a disco ball while you shoot them in the head. With intermediary space fights, mini games and pirate hologram dance sequences, the game rarely becomes boring. And it’s easy enough that forced replay never becomes an issue. For some critics the variety reeked of an identity crisis. For me, the variety has always been a part of game. The Lombax gadgetry and all of its uses and the many paths taken on a true Ratchet & Clank journey are part of the game’s identity.

The ease of play may be a pitfall for some. Its fairly quick and easy to play through and the boss battles, while entirely entertaining, provide no real challenge. The game again incorporates arena battles, forcing you to fight with certain weapons or under certain time limits in order to gain more bolts, providing a little extra challenge and opportunity to perfect your use of all available weapons. The smooth and satisfying gameplay incite you to want to check off all possible missions and play through challenge mode.

Ratchet & Clank own a special place in my heart and to see them in all their high def glory with a story that would soften the core of even the most hardcore gamer, I beg you, yes beg you, to pick up this game and play it again and again. We’ve gotten so hardcore we’ve forgotten how delicious the perfected platformer can be.

Ratchet & Clank in true next gen form

Perhaps a tad easy, but that’s reaching.

Sonic...can never be beatin'

Although I do dig ratchet...the amazing Sonic can never be beaten!!

#1 - Travel Gadgets - 02/06/2008 - 12:39

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