Ratchet and Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal

[Dracos]

Yeah, I'm reviewing this before I review #2.

Why?  Because my R&C 2 disk is scratched.


Bleh.

Anyways, Ratchet and Clank 3 is the latest in the Ratchet and Clank series by Insomniac.  It's a pretty awesome and polished piece of work all around, bearing most of the positives of the previous game alongside some serious rebalancing but then there are also some changes some folks will likely be sad to see.

First off, it isn't an exploration game.  Those who've been playing from the beginning will recognize what I mean.  I mean, sure there's a little of it.  A tiny bit.  But you'll pretty much never see a "Hey, why don't you explore our cool maps just because?" suggestion.

It's all missions and combat.  The game feels like one big running combat scenario, from battle to battle.  The heart of the game is simply just different.

That said, if it has to be from battle to battle, they did it with grace, power, and lots of ridiculously high powered weapons.

Everything can level up this time, pretty much.  And the bolts are balanced pretty nicely in the player's favor.  If the player does all of the sidequests in a single run, they can pretty much be assured of being able to afford absolutely everything they can find to buy without any significant trouble.  And in the second run, it seems to be holding pretty true to that as well given I'm about a third of the way through on that and have purchased nearly every megaweapon avaliable to buy.  A full eight level spread is avaliable for each weapon with two hundred levels of life to build up complete with classic flashy level gain sequence.

The game is pretty heavily balanced in your favor.  While not every weapon is like this, several of them are just brokenly good or glitched.  The Rift Ripper gun has, for me, won ten rounds in the arena with a single shot.  Which is a glitch as it's not supposed to stay active that long at all. The morph ray is just totally insane here.  I think I beat the entire 100 battle arena challenge with just it.  It makes the whole place a death platform for enemies combining quick transformations, aerial support, and turrets all in one unlimited weapon.

That isn't to say it isn't fun or can't be hard at points, but really, the game wants you to win and I'm barely slowing down even on challenge mode.

The menu coloring I found ugly.  Personal quirk there.  Same efficient design and all, but just an ugly yellow color.

What about the story you ask?  We'll it's bond parody.  An okay one but nothing special.  Standard futzy lines that they've had problems with since R&C 1, but then you don't play R&C for the witticisms.  Not to say they don't have their amusing parts (the voice acting is many notches above the writing and some of the best stuff I've seen in games, thinking about it), but it just isn't what ye pick up the games for.

Basically, if you want to blow shit up, this game blows shit up like few things can.  Tons of stuff to destroy and there's an odd joy in watching ten thousand bolts fly at you after a ground smash.

It also has a multiplayer, but I've not touched it.

And...I must be going.  Buy the game.  It's worth the time. =)

Dracos

[Celisasu]

Does it have the annoying space ship levels that #2 had?  I really liked Going Commando but every time one of the space ship levels came up I just groaned.

[Dracos]

It has it's varient of them.  And the last boss last section is fought in a flying ship.

Clarification:

It has two driving types.  One being in a jeep with laser cannons and the other being in a flying hover ship with missiles.

Dracos

[Celisasu]

Ah.  I hope the varient is more fun than R&C 2's were.  I really hated them.


And on a side note I got Baiten Kaitos on the way home from work today. Hopefully I'll have an opinionated bastard review sooner or later.

[Dracos]

=D Good to hear.

Dracos

[Dracos]

A few other notes.

The game does have some minor bugs in it that I noticed.

And Skretch the monkey is annoying as can be.

Dracos

[Celisasu]

Minor bugs such as?  *Wants to know before I get the game*  


Luckily that won't be for a few weeks(buying Baiten Kaitos and pre-ordering Growlanser plus getting a few books ensured that...not to mention I want to get Metroid Prime Echoes first), but inquiring minds want to know.

[Dracos]

I had the game stall for a second once on an FMV, lock up once in an arena fight, and on two levels I encountered glitches with their scripting code.  In one they assume you'll never walk the level twice in a row, so if you do, you get to watch everything blow up again only with no enemies appearing that should be 'smashing' out of walls and such.  On another if you go back after the halfway point, the enemies don't respawn properly, even after dying.  Not much of a problem really.

Nothing that stopped me from completing the game twice anyway.

Dracos