Ratchet and Clank Tools of Destruction Review

as someone who played to the first for Rancher games on PlayStation 2 when they came out in the mid-2000s I was obviously excited to get then being teased next-gen Ratchet and Clank title for the upcoming PlayStation 3 for the first time ratchet would be on a substantially more powerful system than the one the first game came out on now in 2007 when Ratchet and Clank tools of destruction came out I didn't have any houses to remortgage so it was obviously [ __ ] out of luck when it came to owning a PlayStation 3 become the end of 2008 I did own one and got to boot up the next gen ratchet experience ooh boy do I have a lot to say about this one ever since that first moment something has felt significantly not right about this game and look I'm gonna preface this critique with words that always go unheard but I'll say them again anyway this isn't a bad game it's pretty fun and so is the whole future series but there was no denying that at the time something felt off about this game and it's taken like a decade for me to fully nail down just want didn't work about tours of destruction on a lot of levels and this isn't just about gameplay changes or the lore I'm going to have to embarrassingly talk about little details in the basic presentation just didn't seem to match up with what made the previous titles so unique the vast majority of the cutscenes in this title fuel Santa put to conventional cinematic there's a lot of missing bytes to this one it's missing the sterile dry in difference so the majority of in-universe interactions presented in the older games and which in turn formed a great amount of the series texture style and ambience this one says use rock to break glass to get wrench to break glass to get loud I loved logic puzzles see if you pick the best with solid music swells recaps are all sorts of interesting attention-grabbing angles and moments of pathos and emotion are punctuated with long shots and an appropriate accompanying score [Music] we have to fix her it all feels kind of fake a little phony but why a lot of games present their cinematics like this and isn't some black mark against them so why in this series does this presentation style feel so wrong now Ratchet & Clank is set in a universe of consumerism and excess most people or things our heroes run into were there to get money out of them I think I see the problem what now even the computers are charging us so advertising plays an important role throughout the universe in the older games there were loads of advertisements promos and commercials you'd get to see bigging up a product or location to visit all of that stuff was designed to look like overly produced gordy exciting material al has been the exclusive repair shop reminds super electro gadgets since I was knee-high to a sand Mouse but when we come back to reality to our characters interacting with others in the games world we thought you could help us your logic is commendable however I haven't seen captain quark since we shot that commercial that's not how things are presented at all there is very rarely any music the characters are just they're having a conversation it's just I thought you were one of them but I'd give for even an ounce of their pharaoh ignorance a burden often accompanies self-awareness sir suddenly everything discussed as a huge layer of rice cynicism to it you know what this means yeah captain quark has really sold out all you usually hear in the background is the sound of the environment the camera would cut about for the odd gag but a lot of the times the wider shots are showing where the characters were seemed more interested in giving you a taste of what being in that environment was like naked and untouched by further non-diegetic elements nice digs yeah little remnant from my previous life you were reincarnated there was something pretty sobering about seeing some glamorous video piece advertising a level only for you to go there and meet the people and discover how unlike that the real world is jump to tools of destruction and most of your interactions with other characters within the levels are nothing like this most of the cutscenes are presented and edited as exciting enticing Tunney cinematic moments there are a few scenes in here without any added score or stuff like that but they're completely outnumbered by scenes trying way too hard to emulate the tropes and style of modern animated sci-fi films this series has kind of conditioned its players to see highly produced manipulative content as untrustworthy so when this game and pretty much the entire series from this point on started moving in a more cinematic highly produced whimsical direction for its story subconsciously it felt pretty phony the older games had non-commercial cutscenes with score and presentation somewhat similar to this mostly the pre-rendered ones that rarely featured Ratchet and Clank in them outside of like the opening and ending scenes and even these feel kind of detached from the segments that involve exploring the worlds you go to anyway but they were far outweighed by the numerous grounded scenes that featured no extra garnish on top it's notable how many pivotal scenes were like this some of the best most heart-tugging moments in the original were done without score without intense cinematography you are being extracted from all the excess of all the commercials of the game and placed in a harsh real environment the characters having the big confrontation with the villain at the end of each game is played with nothing but some people just talking to each other it's not all dun-dun-dun what's gonna happen this is bad there's a clear distinction between the material used to aggrandize the people you go up against and actually talking to them in reality we have no extra bells and whistles in the background to make the scene more grandiose when the dialogue was great you didn't need much else to keep people engaged if the series goes all in on Vic's cinematic moments and can't reach the emotional heights of a computer displaying some text in silence and I don't think it's worth the shift or effort I think this is why some fans without even totally knowing why had a bit of an adverse reaction to a lot of these newer games trying to move towards a kind of Pixar DreamWorks whimsy film presentation in the cutscenes the games themselves were trying to be the new big amazing commercial experience that these games made fun of and it's also probably why when they actually did decide to make a movie it just didn't feel in tune with the presentation and style of the series some of these scenes don't even feel like they justify a bunch of exciting stings throughout them that was crazy how he hid the thing's leg like one time and the villain fell over a bit damn god I'm good some Indiana Jones level stuff going down that's not to say the cutscenes of characters having conversations and the ps2 titles had any kind of reduced production value characters still animated great and were very expressive and convincing they're presented differently to say the commercials but every scene in the older games clearly takes place at the same level of quality the same cannot be said for some of the exposition dumps in this title that take place over stilted dialogue lists that have you select a topic of conversation this and this clearly aren't taking place on like the same plane of reality you have to kind of suspend your disbelief more for ratchet just silently looking at someone in an idle animation other sides of the presentation are still kept mercifully consistent with past games though like for example we're still running at 60 frames per second so this game unlike a lot of ps3 titles still feels great to go back to even though the visuals have aged it still plays silky smooth Wow what do you know you go back to the original uncharted on ps3 released around the same time and it's like oof it runs like garbage there's blur all over the screen but Tod still holds up the opening tutorial area is a very clear let's show off the new hardware moment it takes the metropolis location from prior games it makes a big old linear set piece out of it with super ps3 graphics it's probably one of the best opening mini levels in the franchise sure it's a lot of shallow spectacle but as you're flying around from platform to platform it really feels like you're covering a lot of ground and at the same time seeing this city rendered in such detail was really impressive at the time the story this go-around is complicated ratchet is attacked by a new villain who wants to wipe out ratchets race the lombaxes and as it turns out ratchet is the last of his race which you may have missed in the last few games cuz nobody ever mentioned it and in fact he might have thought that he wasn't the last of his species when you saw another one of them so your alarm backs who's never seen another Lombax woohoo not only that but Clank is also being aided throughout the game by a bunch of mysterious alien ghosts who imply that he has some kind of higher purpose even though it seemed awfully a lot like he was a malfunctioning robot version of these big guys and he just happened to come out or small looking by accidents you see I could maybe accept one of these things being the case but it just totally doesn't make any sense that the two like most important people in the universe would just happen to meet on the same planets by coincidence you know Clank in the first game just asked to the first guy he came across for help and that was that the lombaxes of course aren't just a missing race no no no they're like the super most bestest heroic smart enlightened aliens of all the aliens obviously and the villain is the last of a bunch of evil aliens that the Lombax is wiped out who are all ugly and gross so I guess the moral of the story isn't anymore that a small fry mechanic in the middle of nowhere can overcome his selfish desires to emerge a hero but instead it's hey if you so happen to be the last of the most important special species you might be a hero one day you are the chosen one congratulations we have entered the grounds owned and there no escape the problem isn't just that this type of plot is kind of hackneyed and been-there-done-that it's just that it doesn't feel authentic being grafted onto Ratchet 5 main games in like you have to erase other characters and pretend they didn't exist to make it work suddenly it turns out this character has a longing to meet a race of people we didn't know before needed finding and when you do this kind of thing as interesting as exploring ratchet and clanks origin may sound to some people if it isn't authentic if it feels like you had to come up with a whole other kind of character for him to be to do it and it isn't really that compelling to see a couple hours into this game you go to the Lombax homeworld and for five games in you think this would be a pivotal exciting moment but it isn't because we didn't really have much reason to assume veld in the first planet in the original wasn't the Lombax world you tell us at the start of this game the lombaxes are lost and you present us with where they came from although here we are finally and it's like okay I've literally had this information for like two hours and it's weird because it's not like this game is some super soft reboot where we're supposed to assume maybe the ps2 games aren't totally the same Canon you start the game with loads of gadgets acquired in past entries some of the jokes are derived from the facts that Ratchet and Clank have done so much they've seen it all before laser grids I know they never learn and there are also like constant references to previous characters in number 5 ace please report to the mess hall for catchy tune but not that one in this computer talks about alternate dimensions while showing footage of the older games though so are they implying that they're from an alternate dimension but then if you interact with the computer again it will talk about events and characters from past games like they totally happen I don't know I got to stop talking about ratchet law before nobody speaks to me again of course none of that actual history ties into the dynamics presented here in the main story instead it's all this weird new stuff the Canon used to justify all the new stuff though is so selective to the point where the new character revelations basically all feel Hollow there are so many generic story tropes in this game fraction and Clank was sci-fi but it wasn't really about cosmic entities or mysterious lost powerful MacGuffins ancient evils to be awoken or and fantastical elements like that it was about extremely flawed and malicious individuals usually at the head of big business or involved in such plotting some kind of evil plan within the very modern corporate like structure of the universe and all of that tied into all those commercials knocking consumerism some scenes in that style still trickled down here but now they feel out of place there's no grander narrative of establishing them more giving them context the title has completely abandoned the touristy like interactions with one of people on each world and moved more towards a cast of regulars who follow you throughout the adventure meeting one person for a few minutes deriving what it must be like to be on the planet full-time via your interactions with them it's crazy how much personality this can give to a world a lot of the levels here just fade out of my memory cuz you interact with nobody instead we get characters like the smuggler who appears over and over in multiple places he's just a really super generic I'm out here in the rough doing much free didn't thing I'm a character of dubious morals maybe I have a funny animal he's got like this cowboy getup which informs us all of zero and what this galaxy is like or what kind of people live here you don't get to meet any just regular inhabitants of this galaxy [ __ ] for all I know they could all be dressed in old-school Western gear and speaking of anachronisms in this sci-fi epic we also have the robot space pirates remember when that was like her Joe can ratchet three like that so stupid nobody would believe it however no previous adventure could have prepared quark for his encounter with the dread pirate black star and is cruel oh please tell me this isn't typo that's robotic pirate ghosts but here they are actually part of the story I mean I've worked on some real junk but this one takes the cake pirate ghost robot I want anything we're idiots I'll give them the fact that at least the Pirates here on also ghosts yet the joke just never really landed for me no there's be a yep powder smell one we're smelling for noise 600 moles fresh trousers it's Upshur disjointed out of nowhere type of criminal character from such a different place in time to start lampooning here and every time they show up it plays this droning banal pirate battle music I'm not a fan of the pirates or there's sixaxis dancing minigame sheesh another bad trend that started with tools is the linearity you pretty much only ever have one location to pick from when deciding to further the story and when you get there there's usually only one big path to take with maybe one other one off to the side for an optional item now and again it's a much more frantic straightforward series of events there's no going out there trying to figure out which part of the flowchart of objectives will lead you to the next big story beat it's just go here and go here then go here and go here one after the other and that probably has a little bit to do with how they've decided to go for this epic saga narrative that has to be done in a pretty straightforward fashion it's a shame that the way all of this is presented is so underwhelming like this because the core of the gameplay is you know pretty cool it's good enough has some fun elements they introduced a bunch of really powerful game-changing devices that do stuff like keep the enemy dancing yeah that's where this came from or have you pilot a drone or throw healthful each bombs at the enemy but unlike the sequels to this title it actually balances things out quite well by making the ammo for these types of weapons more expensive and rare so they require some actual thoughts before you can just go in and buy a crapload especially early on the game also makes up for having weapons that can stun a whole room by actually providing a bit of challenge tools isn't a pushover and actually feels like you're forced to get the most out of your arsenal but I just don't know I feel like at this stage in the series we should be seeing something more than what we get here I've always thought there should be more synergy between different armaments rather than them feeling like isolated weapons to switch back between stunning with one thing in shooting with the other shouldn't be the extent of it there should be more stuff in here that involves more strategic and fun manipulation of enemy placements or behaviours I don't know one type of bomb could launch an enemy into the air so I can then line up a shot with the rocket and then fire a foe into a trap laid behind him being able to switch to the dual blades at a moment's notice for added chaos you know that would be good to the complexity of the combat has always been stifled by the few seconds that can take to pick up another weapon outside of the last couple used and it's a shame because the weapons added in tours show great potential in really maximizing the chaos and strategy of ratchet combat but when there's so many weapons I you know I do struggle to come up with a good solution to that issue of switching back and forth there are some odd changes here the more stilted strafing jumps eliminated in deadlocked creep back in here to cause a bit of a [ __ ] show sometimes and you can't shoot on the grind rails anymore even now which reduces how complex and interesting they could have potentially been it's cuz they wanted to do a bunch of cinematic angles if you're gonna bring back the rigid side jumps at least let me do that pachow thing you could do with the thruster pack in the original it was all but overall it's a pretty solid time and I give it less [ __ ] than I do say the ratchet reboot because that game was screwing up another title by the same name that did everything better tools messes around with some concepts screws along with the map in terms of the half-baked story additions and peculiar gimmicky segments this has probably some of the most tedious on Rails flight combat gameplay I've ever seen unlike say the original Star Fox games where you have to aim in front of you to keep that kind of getting get out exciting combat going you can move your aim reticule independence of the ship so you just end up parking it on some foe and just wiggling the stick around to evade for ages it is pretty boring come on like the older action games had ship levels that controlled properly huh how did you guys forget when replaying this game for footage to be honest I was surprised how much I did enjoy it I guess thing is a relative playing this is more smooth and enjoyable than having Ratchet 2016 chug along which if we're talking stagnation basically didn't change all that much gameplay wise since this game that came out like nine years earlier and if I choose to instead of just cynically seeing this new direction as an attempt to make the series more commercially viable with cookie cutter chosen one story beats and instead I look at it from the angle that hey did maybe they were trying to expand on ratchets and make him a more complex character again and things didn't totally work out then yeah I can commend the attempt at something different for the series in that regards it's just a lot of the more cynical elements that do make it over from the previous titles Fila odds with the more sincere dramatic story this game as going for doing parodies of commercial was here no longer ties into any greater narrative about villains that work within those types of corporate system but instead into a story trying way too hard to be sincere enchanting it's awkward I'm trying to be nice though boom boom it's fun to shoot the blasters that's always gonna be fine unlike past games this is the first one to end on a cliffhanger leading into further titles this was their attempt to start a new epic story arc and the next major game I think did deliver a little more on this new stab at a graham saga then tours of destruction did [Music] we may want to dig right the party

Channel: TheGamingBritShow

Views: 465,046

Keywords: ratchet and clank, ratchet, tools of destruction, ratchet 5, ps3, ps2, future saga, future series, playstation 3, analysis, review, critique, quark, lombax, lore, angela, insomniac, reboot, story, thegamingbrit, thegamingbritshow, tgbs, gamingbrit, tgb, cronk, zephyr, tachyon, zoni, talwyn

Id: ii4a_xn-XYs

Length: 19min 47sec (1187 seconds)

Published: Sun May 13 2018