Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando Retrospective & Development Deep Dive

ratchet and clank going commando is an almost unheard of success a sequel whose development was greenlit five months before the original game even released thanks to overwhelmingly positive feedback a sequel that surgically pinpointed its precursors flaws and addressed each of them one by one and a title that in doing so completely upturned so much of what made the first game so promising without completely falling apart in the process going commando is full stop a perfect sequel to this day it's considered one of the top two or three games in the franchise and one of the best games on the playstation 2 and this game came together in 10 months it only took 10 months for ratchet and clank going commando to set the groundwork from which this series has barely strayed in the 18 years since it's again unheard of but being a perfect sequel doesn't make going commando a perfect game when you're flying this close to the sun working on that tight of a timeline a few feathers are sure to fall off this is an incredible adventure one of my all-time favorite games and it's time to lock and load and break it apart to let those pieces fall where they may and put it all back together again this is ratchet and clank going commando [Music] june 2002 ratchet and clank's four separate rounds of play testing score top marks sony sees the clear potential for this nascent franchise and the developers at insomniac games already have a laundry list of fundamental improvements that they have no way of implementing into this first title seeing as it's already well into its beta stage with the wind at its back and at sony's request insomniac begins pre-production on a ratchet and clank sequel a title for which they would quickly need to staff up over the next year this studio that was working with just a few dozen people quickly balloons to double its size ending up around 80 strong by the time ratchet and clank 2 goes gold growing that rapidly is usually a recipe for disaster especially for an independent studio but when you've hit pay dirt you know to keep digging winds in this industry are rare especially winds that break 2 million worldwide sales more or less overnight so it's full steam ahead and by the time ratchet and clank is preparing for release in november going commando has entered full development over the next 10 months as the game progressed from concept to finished beta the insomniac team prioritized a number of key goals one ramp up the intensity with bigger more immersive worlds crazier weapons and more ways to use those weapons two improve the game's rewarding feedback loop by optimizing where the first game left off giving you more bolts more ways to earn bolts adding role-playing elements such as experience progression and never keeping the player more than a few minutes away from the core gameplay and three what former insomniac designer mike stout once described as rescuing ratchet adjusting our hero by giving him an outlet a purpose almost so that his temper only flared up when protecting his robotic buddy rather than aiming any anger at clank this is a through line buried deep into this game's plot with a number of moments that almost act as do-overs for the studio's own perceived shortcomings with ratchet in the first game this third goal happens to be the first one that players will notice because in going commando ratchet's got a new voice the team chose to move on from original voice actor mikey kelly in pursuit of this soft reset for ratchet and brought in james arnold taylor to help mellow the character out a bit and perhaps provide a bit more range when needed jats held onto the roll ever since even onto the silver screen so that was a good call in hindsight throughout the intro to going commando you'll catch that boredom is starting to creep in for our heroes it's been about a year after all ratchet and clank are still sitting in the very same recliners that they were lounging in at the end of their first adventure and their 15 minutes of fame is finally starting to run dry completionists or those that watched my ratchet 1 retrospective will remember the bonus epilogue a series of magazine covers that gave us a glimpse at what life was like for the galaxy in the wake of drek's defeat well that time is long gone now the most the duo gets at this point are invitations to the grand opening of a local groovy lube and an interview for a made for tv behind the hero documentary the galaxies moved on but ratchet especially is clinging onto that feeling of being a hero even the game's title screen underscores this boredom with ratchet playing video games while clank reads a book that's their life now and ratchet once again longs for something more i guess no one needs a hero right now and ratchet's about to find exactly what he's looking for because this documentary is for some reason being shot live on location and the signal is instantly picked up light years away [Music] i found our man in the distant bogon galaxy a let's call him quirky gentleman catches the interview clip and teleports ratchet and clank onto one of his ships welcome what the introducing himself as abercrombie fizz widget the president of what seems to be the only company in the galaxy megacorp the man enlists ratchet to recapture a stolen top secret experiment it's it's a furby megacorp was just trying to revive the furby fat apparently in exchange for his help ratchet will receive full commando training a perfect off-screen way to polish any pointy edges to his character as he's run through boot camp for a few weeks and fizz widget hooks up a somewhat more hesitant clank with a lucrative gig as megacorp's lead accountant with this setup ratchet is locked and loaded yes i said it again deal with it and he heads to the last reported location of the experiment and its thief immediately this first level is one of the best openings that you could ask for showcasing both everything that the team had learned while developing the first ratcheting clank and all of the improvements that this sequel would bring thanks to the short intro cinematic the fighter jets surrounding the thief's airship and the long elevator ride up into the ship proper the stakes feel higher an actual mission for an actual commando not just some guy running through the galaxy the soundtrack hits you from both sides in full stereo this time unlike the first game's mono output thanks to immensely improved compression techniques and engine optimization and once you start encountering the robot sentries the combat enhancements are leaps beyond the original here not necessarily perfect but a perfect improvement the first couple rooms are narrow hallways to ease you into the game's new strafing mechanic by pressing either shoulder button that elevator ride functions as a way for the help desk to inform newcomers and remind returning players about the quick select menu which thank god now pauses the game when activated so that you're not being attacked while changing weapons the auto aim for weapons has been polished immensely so that it feels that much more reliable often locking onto the most directly threatening enemy just as you would want them to giving you a bit more confidence in your arsenal and as a bonus weapons like the lancer laser pistol tend to prioritize airborne enemies as a little under the hood trick to keep your experience as fun and flowing as possible especially with going commando onward ratchet and clank is overstuffed with these sorts of little tricks that you would never notice but serve to improve your play time and keep you hooked in that flow state but before i get ahead of myself this ship level is packed full of more overt pushes towards immersion 2. those little secrets can wait till later if you knock an enemy close enough to the windows they'll fly out when defeated and be blown away as you walk out onto an exterior platform the blasting of the ship's turbines overpowers the game's soundtrack and deafens down the sounds of combat as if you were actually right there outside when you're fighting on the wings of the ship enemy parts will be sucked away as they're destroyed the game throws everything it has right in your face to make sure that you know just how big a deal going commando is and it'll come as no surprise that this level zero was designed by the one and only mark cerny and to hammer home just how much of a leap forward ratchet 2 was aiming to be this short intro level no more than 10 minutes long even for a first time player contains four cinematics two of these cutscenes of course act as bookends for the level itself with ratchet breaking into and then escaping from the thief's ship and these have just the right amount of seasoning of his new commando training to remind you that ratchet is a lombax that knows what he's doing now not just the same plucky adventurer from the last game that stumbled into superstardom and then there are two cutscenes in the middle of the level that establish what looked to be our two main antagonists in this game the sinister but clumsy thief who flees with the experiment just as ratchet is about to complete his mission and shortly afterwards thugs for less a now fan favorite group of mercenaries that the thief hires right after fleeing there's even a fifth cut scene right as we get back into space where ratchet reports to fizz widget and receives updated intel about the thief's last known whereabouts the toxic swampy planet of oozla with two thugs for less goons in tow the thief had stolen a galactic map from a local megacorp salesman and thrown him into the giant red button on the wall that deactivates the store's security barrier because you know that's that's where you put that much like with ratchet one before it all of what i've described in going commando's intro only takes maybe 10 minutes tops and that first impression provides just an excellent setup for the coming adventure maybe not surpassing the first game's intro in terms of evocation but easily exceeding it both mechanically and as a tutorial it gives us a solid reintroduction to our heroes or at least to ratchet because clank's just kinda gone for a little while and while the thief is certainly no drek we've got at least a couple reasons to already hate our villain especially when we land on usla and find that very same megacorp outpost now completely devastated by the harsh environment thanks to the disabled security barrier yeah apparently that giant red security button was just a one-way switch which you know what now that i think about it that definitely checks out for a bloated monopoly i'm sure you'd have to send like 80 plus emails to corporate just to schedule a zoom meeting about possibly considering a real meeting to change work conditions so yeah okay in terms of tone usually is a bit out there for your normal level one usually you'd expect a relatively safe first area a brighter atmosphere that wouldn't risk turning players off but no not here this is a gloomy rainy hellscape with little pieces of terrain peppered across vast swampy lakes ready to drown you if you're not careful with your jumps with a thunderous score that feels like it's mimicking the stormy skies booming overhead and grotesque mutant swamp creatures adapted to this harsh environment now that's not to say that usually is difficult of course it's a very manageable and balanced first level that ends up being far simpler than that threatening aura might indicate ratchet 1's trademark circular level design wraps you right back around to your ship when you finish each of the two branching paths the terrain does a great job of easing you more into ratchet's movement and the game's platforming it gives you some reps with your weapons and the swamp monster boss fight with its tentacle slam attack is designed to force you to strafe and drive that concept home if you weren't on board already really the only place a new player might struggle is with these loch ness monster styled creatures that will cross water channels when stepped on since the game quickly throws you in front of a lake that has count em seven of them all with their own swerving meandering paths and speaking of this has to be just about the only first level in gaming history with platforms that scream when you step on them again very subversive here let's see the plumber try that at the end of the main pathway through the swamp ratchet finds the megacorp store that he saw the thief ransack earlier now overcrowded with mutants and with megacorp staff nowhere to be found but all's not lost as he obtains going commando's first new gadget the dynamo a tool that presses buttons doesn't it doesn't really do much more than that you just press circle and it hits these switches which will either open a door or activate some temporary platforms cool ratchet also receives a new transmission from fizzwidget where the ceo reveals that the thief was just seen at the maktar resort casino home of megacorp's galactic gladiator arena broadcast a broadcast now being blocked by a thugs for less jamming array no broadcast means a lot of lost money for megacorps so that's where we're gonna head next well before we head there actually we do have a second path to cover and this will act as your reminder that ratchet 2 is a very different game from the first game although they share the same level design dna ratchet 1's multiple pathways were often mechanically distinct you would have one combat section and a separate platforming or puzzle section that rarely had enemies or combat of its own here on uzla at the maktar resort and in most of going commando's levels both pass will share relatively evenly distributed chunks of combat and platforming that first combat path earlier had more enemies in a boss fight sure but it also had the dynamo platforming section sprinkled in between fights likewise this route which i would call the more platforming focused section is home to a good number of fights of its own remember one of this game's chief goals was to never keep you more than a few minutes away from the core gameplay and in going commando onward that core gameplay is combat this is why unlike its predecessor going commando isn't afraid to throw multiple weapons in the vendor at once giving you the choice between two weapons from the very moment you land on oozla funnily enough two weapons that you probably can't afford until you finish one of the paths by keeping you perennially on the edge of combat insomniac could ensure that you're always earning bolts and engaging with the most satisfying of ratchet's countless reward loops and that 47 allows me to introduce the new reward loop in this game your experience system as you defeat enemies they'll dissolve into nanotech the same stuff as those blue health crates except this nanotech will earn you two concurrent types of experience one taking a page from the canceled girl with a stick is xp that will level up and transform your weapons and the other is for ratchet himself when the meter underneath your health bar fills up you'll gain an extra hit point in an explosive screen clearing white flash that wipes out most surrounding enemies this will be your saving grace countless times and you won't forget those moments when you're one hit from death and then you get a new lease on life thanks to a refilled health bar and fewer enemies surrounding you and i'm not just talking about in going commando either this has held strong in almost every subsequent ratchet game to this day you'll be hearing that a lot today one trend that didn't extend past ratchet 2 though is ratchet 1 and 2's penchant for charging you bolts at the end of a level to progress as if we didn't just complete the challenges prior this usually felt like a bit of a [ __ ] so i'm glad it's gone we first run into this at the end of this second path upon meeting the final surviving megacorp employee on the planet if everyone could take their seats we can proceed with today's demonstration uh survived in body at least maybe not in spirit i think the trauma of watching all of his friends get eaten by swamp monsters drove him just to we smidge insane whatever not our problem for a thousand bolts he sells ratchet the tractor beam gadget which lets ratchet drag specially marked objects around with ease and we're gonna need that where we're going because we're going to vegas space vegas yeah in the original outline for going commando maktar resort was straight up named space vegas before insomniac learned that the city of las vegas is actually a trademarked brand which is somehow incredibly fitting given going commando's heavy commentary on capitalism thankfully this would be the closest the series has ever come to violating copyright law i'm a little t-bond short and stout on the way to ratchet's bender at maktar though he's intercepted by thugs for less ships in the whoop ash nebula introducing us to going commando's fully realized space combat remember goal number one make this game bigger and better and dogfighting through space stations barrel rolling to dodge past moving asteroids and avoid enemy fire with full control and rotation along your x y and z axes that's more than bigger and better that's just absurd this maxi game as insomniac called it like a few other modes throughout going commando effectively ended up being an entirely separate albeit smaller game to design and implement meaning that it required a dedicated effort by a few members of the team across several months so once the game's weapons were fully realized partway into development the designers and programmers responsible moved exclusively onto space combat the work of orienting the player and enemy ships in open space of pulling the enemies in front of the player so that you could get a good shot at them and of making a relatively small combat area feel wide and unrestricting was a daunting task that again took months in itself and making all of that fun and rewarding it's an incredible feat especially when you consider that this appears before level 2 not 25 minutes into the game you know what i did 25 minutes into ratchet and clank one he just slide down a sewer pipe [Applause] but because going commando just heaves every innovation at your face right front and center once ratchet lands at makktar resort we've actually got two more of those maxi games that took a gargantuan effort to create back to back right after the space combat if we take the combat heavy left path we'll fight our way through the thugs for less invaders assaulting the casino maybe play the slot machines a couple times along the way and culminate by taking part in the first combat arena in the ratchet and clank franchise the combat arena has become a series staple that's returned in just about every game since including somehow the java phone side scroller ratchet and clank going mobile if you didn't know that game existed by the way it does and i already have a full retrospective on that one that you can check out here after you're done with going commando that is pl please th this is all i have going commando's two arenas are packed with over two dozen wave based combat challenges with different parameters rebuilt enemy ai and a whole bunch of bolts as a reward you only have to complete a couple of them to progress the story but i don't think i've ever met a ratchet and clank player that didn't enjoy the arenas so you're almost definitely going to go through most of these challenges from missions that force you to use a certain weapon the time sensitive sprints through a hundred enemies to fights against these awesome gargantuan bosses oozing with character like chain blade chain blade chain blade and the b2 brawler brawler brawler two endurance missions where you have to win without taking a hit these all push you to play the game in distinct ways to round out your playstyle and to hone your skills this in turn challenges your mastery and makes the main gameplay more rewarding when you're going through levels the reason these arenas took so much effort to put together beyond you know the obvious time it would take to put together the different challenges ensure that the enemy pods actually came out at the right time and all of that fun stuff was mainly because the enemy pathfinding system from ratchet 1 had to be reworked so that enemies would push towards and chase ratchet at all times rather than just when they saw him and actually this system was already being reworked and going commando to begin with in response to criticism leveled at the first game's enemies in ratchet 1 foes only existed in two states which i'll call alerted and idle once you crossed an invisible line or entered combat with them they would enter the alert state and try to fight you but if you stepped back beyond that invisible line or hide for a bit they would immediately walk back to their initial positions and stand their idle remember in most video games the enemy ai is really really stupid the trick is the illusion of intelligence in going commando though a third search state was added in for previously alerted enemies where they would pretend to look for you for a little bit once you got far enough away before going back to their base idol state when you moved even further back now again they're not actually searching for you that just wasn't possible on ps2 hardware it's the illusion that matters here in the arena however even the alerted state just wasn't enough because too many enemies would try to fight you from a distance so a separate fourth arena state was implemented like with the search state enemies aren't actually seeing anything they are just trained to walk in a b-line towards the player sometimes taking a slightly harsh path to avoid colliding with other enemies but usually just rushing you head on that's why you'll often see them running into the spinning fan blades or other hazards because they actually don't know they're there in addition to being a great way to farm bolts for the game's weapons the arenas are a fantastic way to experiment with and more importantly level up the weapons that you have by the time that you even get to maktar's arena at least if you're like me you'll already have leveled up two of your weapons in going commando once a weapon earns enough experience it'll upgrade into a completely different weapon with enhanced effects more ammo a higher fire rate and of course it'll pack a much bigger punch using going commando's starting weapons as an example the lancer pistol will morph when upgraded into the heavy lancer a much faster machine gun with an extra 100 shots likewise the gravity bomb will become the much stronger mininew featuring a mushroom cloud explosion however there is one key part of this level up system that's one of going commando's rare downsides a downside that's ameliorated in subsequent games and that is that an evolved weapon no longer earns experience because in going commando weapons only level up once as the difficulty gradually progresses over the course of the game your earlier weapons will become less and less useful somewhat limiting your later combat options after all when it takes all 300 heavy lancer shots to take down a single enemy yeah that gun's kinda useless now this phenomenon is sometimes referred to as lancer syndrome by fans because of just how bad it can get with that gun in particular but contrary to popular belief among ratchet fans this wasn't any sort of design oversight in going commando this was intentional during going commando's focus test one of the most difficult hurdles for playtesters to climb over was using more than just their favorite weapon players younger and older alike would pick one gun and stick with it even in scenarios where other weapons had a clear combat advantage keep in mind these user tests were often conducted on unfinished builds of the game sometimes in untextured test areas well before the designers had included help desk indicators to guide players many of the help desk pop-ups that probably helped you out once or twice when you were playing were included as a response to these player tests and these tests helped enforce to the insomniac designers that sometimes a little nudge was necessary to teach people to keep switching weapons and leveling all of them up as they go instead of hoarding just their favorite the way to do that in going commando was to ensure that eventually earlier weapons would be made obsolete and once you noticed your old weapons were starting to struggle you would hopefully quickly switch to the shiny new weapon and feel that dopamine hit once again as that new weapons xp meter grew and grew and grew and eventually maxed out lather rinse long ninjas these focus tests actually did a number on the other maktar resort path too an over-designed introduction to the tractor beam that we bought on usla described by this area's designer mike stout as the section that broke him as a game designer into designing for the player rather than for himself this area which only takes a player like me two to three minutes asks you to first move a tractor beam platform out of the way then grab this inspector bot with a tractor beam and drag him to the foot pad to open a door then grab a tractor-beamable bomb down a hallway to blow up a door then find the inspector bot again and shoot him from a slingshot onto an elevated foot pad to open another door then sprint with a bomb across moving platforms to blow up another door and then shoot four bombs with this slingshot at these floating generators to open the gate to an adult it's simple to the game's targeted kid audience because yes these games were rated t but they were always targeted towards children not so much and it doesn't exactly let you feel out each of these gimmicks before sprinting along to the next according to stout the pre-focused tested version of this section didn't even have the foot indicator for the inspector bot or the little guiding lines for players to know how far back to pull the weird tractor slingshot bomb part i actually remember even when i was younger thinking that this section just threw everything it could at you including the kitchen sink which has always been funny to me because this is the only mandatory tractor beam section in all of going commando the only other times that you can use this item are in an optional path and to grab a couple hidden platinum bolts this game's replacement for gold bolts essentially the entire function and gimmick of the tractor beam was blown on just its introduction which is oddly enough a recurring theme with many of the ratchet and clank franchise's lesser gadgets it's the jamming array mission after this tractor beam puzzle that introduces another one of those game defining creations the spherical world where ratchet and clank would move platform and fight enemies along an actual micro globe with our heroes enemies and even bullets following the curvature of the world thanks to 50 000 lines of custom code that modified the base game's gravity playing on these worlds in 2003 was genuinely mind-blowing and set the scale of my imagination into the stratosphere if they could make a completely traversable planet as small as it might be they could do anything replacing the usual select button map for these worlds is a zoomed out shot of the planet paused in real time for you to scroll around and find your objective in this case these shining beacons of light that shot out of the jamming towers once you unpause the game will pull directly back to you before zooming in so that you don't get disoriented about where you have to go it's just pure genius an innovation that beats super mario galaxy's gravity focused gameplay by four full years now don't get all excited or anything that's not to say that ratchet and clank inspired mario galaxy as our favorite insulated bubble boy shigeru miyamoto had no idea what a clank even was when asked years later and you know what knowing knowing what we know about him that checks out although by now he should know that clank's a robot and that's pretty cool and to put those 50 000 lines of code into context the first ps3 ratchet game tools of destruction ran on just over 980 000 lines of code in total so just this game's spherical worlds alone represented 5 of the programming work of a much more advanced game worked on by significantly more people half a decade later despite being on much more limited hardware tools of destruction incidentally came out the same year as mario galaxy also spherical worlds fun fact were originally put together as a concept for the first ratcheting clank game wherein ratchet would be shot out of iridius giant cannon onto a spherical hoverboard course that was quickly deemed far too ambitious for the first game and pocketed for later and the giant cannon now instead shoots out t-posing robots disguised as missiles yeah this marks three heavily taxing gameplay additions to the ratchet franchise just on the way to and through level two with a fourth on the way very soon and i haven't even talked about the small stuff like this area's wonderful atmosphere perfectly capturing that up all night city aesthetic with dozens of blinding spotlights rotating through the sky or the even smaller touches like how the thugs for less enemies are assigned left and right handedness so that they don't all look like just the same enemy model thrown at you a bunch of times in a row or how in the arenas ratchet's just referred to as this guy because while he and clank may have been household names in the solana galaxy for a couple weeks here in bogon he's just as much of a nobody as he already was by now on the solana galaxy and i haven't even brought up the cut scenes that introduce us to our next two levels after destroying the jamming array ratchet receives new intel from fizz widget providing him a chance to infiltrate thugs for less during their favorite pastime hoverbike racing yeah i'm just here for the bake sales oh yeah yeah i also make these cute gloves for all the guys real uh real badass is there and after he wins a gadget in the arena called the electrolyzer we come back to one of insomniac's three big goals with going commando on his way back to the ship ratchet receives a hacked transmission from the thief who has kidnapped clank and electrocuted him as a warning to ratchet back off or you and your friends will pay ratchet's temper instantly flares up as he speeds to megacorp's bustling corporate city of megopolis to save his buddy since one of the chief focuses of this story was to rehab ratchet a bit will pretty much only ever see the lombax angry in this game when clank is in danger a brotherly instinct of sorts he's still got his edgy daredevil attitude as we see when he receives the hoverbike intel is it dangerous no no no well uh actually yes it is good but it's focused far more often in the right place this time because as will be a running theme throughout the entirety of ratchet and clank say with me clank is always right again nobody said it with me you guys have to get better at this come on now if its name didn't make this clear megopolis functions as an attempt to capture that same bustling energy that the first games metropolis had but with a perfectly megacorp twist this cityscape is eerily sanitized both directly thanks to the janitor robots that appear whenever somebody litters or say vandalizes several trash cans and indirectly with its more modern color palette choice in metropolis the buildings looked more worn with slightly dirtier and rusted shades for these mile-high skyscrapers meanwhile with this city megacorp has ensured that the entire city is this sea of buildings with little individuality where nothing stands out from the black white and gray shades ordered in the company's style guide even when you view the planet from space you can see the company's meticulous control and planning in effect i mean look at those big circles carving into the planet those are part of the city plan when you consider the ratchet and clank franchise's penchant for heavy corporate criticism and satire a penchant that's laid on even thicker here in going commando megopolis megopolis's design achieves its goal of making you feel a little bit uneasy in this galaxy by the time you reach megopolis you'll likely already have four weapons with two new ones for you to choose from on top of the lancer and gravity bomb starter weapons we've already got the chopper which is an arm mounted yu-gi-oh dual disc that instead of pulling tons of tail shoots out stars that ricochet and circle back to hit enemies multiple times in a row and we've got the blitz gun a simple but wonderfully satisfying shotgun that's probably a bit more powerful than it should be at medium range although to be fair most of this game's guns are a bit more powerful than they probably should be at many ranges and fittingly our new store entries fit that bill pretty well these are the mini turret glove and the pulse rifle the former allows you to throw down a few turrets that fire at enemies autonomously and the latter is the series first sniper rifle now pretty justifiably you might not think that a weapon like a sniper rifle is incredibly useful in a ratcheting clank game since stopping and aiming isn't exactly conducive to this game's faster pace but since this thing is incredibly powerful like rocket launcher powerful if you use it while strafing and flipping back and forth like you would with any other gun you're in for a great time it's worth noting that neither of these are really weapons designed specifically for this level something that ratchet 1 excelled at but that's not a big deal at all the name of the game here is bigger better and more and giving you more choices and a full choice earlier on makes more sense than drip feeding one or two best guns for each area putting strategy in the hands of the player rather than the designer ends up being pretty freeing for both realistically as usual we've got two paths to choose from here if ratchet first goes left after landing he'll get to use that electrolyzer that he just received to hack open a few doors and take control of indoor construction cranes and even to jolt clank back awake this gadget more than any other embodies going commando's mentality of keeping the player moving forward towards the main gameplay with a hacking mini game that never stretches beyond 30 seconds all you do here is press a button to flip the circuit board's connectors so that the electric currents can pass through all of them successfully with a few exceptions for optional hidden collectibles and all that fun stuff these puzzles are incredibly simple but they don't overstay their welcome whatsoever if anything they're probably so short that they just weren't worth the hours of difficulty tuning and hand adjustments that had to be made behind the scenes each time one of these needed fixing especially since somebody else on the team designed a second hacking tool that we get to use later on and that mostly replaces all the times that we would have used this one anyway i don't really know why we needed two different hacking tools they could have just been one and the game actually does this with another gadget two where we get two that could have just been one but you know what at least in this case we don't have to equip these like a weapon before using them like we did in ratchet one they're just a button prompt this time so you know what that small victories i guess after making his way through this chunk of the city ratchet is uh reunited with clank these guys save the galaxy folks now that both of them are trapped clank ventures off on his own through an air vent to find a way to escape the room which means the unceremonious return to clank gameplay the insomniac designers weren't exactly sure what to do with clank gameplay for the longest time they've admitted that themselves so in this case if you enjoyed the gadget bots from ratchet and clank 1 these store brand great value microbots are identical for a cheaper price you don't have to pay anything that's just a it's just a bad joke and in lieu of a more interesting concept instead here we have three new types of microrobots that each have exactly one use there's the hammer bot which breaks things with its hammer there's the bridge bot which is a bridge and there's the lifter bot which you guessed it lifts things they they can't even attack these three only serve that one respective purpose each and the lifter bot only appears during this tutorial section by the way he never comes back again because the only other time he was going to be used was cut from the game for lack of time yeah the couple times going commando has this regular clank gameplay are still inoffensive don't get me wrong they're not actively bad or horrendous or anything and thankfully these go by a bit more quickly than in the first game since the microbots when defeated will now start running back towards you instead of making you mozy all the way back to their spawn points and reactivate them still these sections are best described as just kind of here once clank breaks ratchet out of this trap room our heroes are reunited in full and clank joins ratchet on his back for the rest of this adventure first things first though they make their way through the other side of the city to clank's apartment along the way littering and destroying the city's cleaning bots because they're secretly a menace to society or something like that this planet's cleaning bot gimmick is actually a personal favorite of mine forcing the player to interact with the environment directly to progress however small that interaction may be a great way to bring you into the world more actively to inject just that little bit of extra flavor i also love the frequent appearances of the thugs for less leader down this path as he flies by in a helicopter and talks smack before culminating in a boss fight against him we even get to see the inside of clank's fancy apartment afterwards which we previously only got to see in a cutscene and this leads to the funniest way you get an item in this series history hey my old swing shot and grind boots yeah they just give them to you no pomp or anything i'm not even sure why you didn't have them to begin with oh also two dudes are just kind of eyeballing us on clank's wall who before we leave this planet though we can actually make use of that swing shot and grime boots combo to reach an illegal arms dealer named slim cogniton in exchange for the platinum bolts you'll find hidden throughout the game slim will add pre-selected attachments to certain weapons such as a shock mod that arcs a bolt of electricity between enemies to deal some slight area of effect damage an acid mod that deals poison damage to one single enemy or actually any enemies you hit and most importantly a lock-on mod with this equipped you can hold down l2 and r2 together to lock on to one specific enemy and see that enemy's remaining health this is an excellent addition one that i'm always bummed only works on the guns chosen to have this mod sometimes as improved as it is the game's auto lock on feature is still just a little bit finicky and that can lead to you taking unnecessary damage and in a game that still doesn't like checkpoints all that much starting an entire level over because of something that didn't feel like your fault always sucks thankfully lock on became a standard mechanic in the next game checkpoints not so much and in case you're wondering why this game has platinum bolts instead of gold bolts no it's not because i wrote them a cease and desist letter but instead because regular bolts from this point onward in the series carry this golden sheen to make them easier to see and more enticing and satisfying to collect to avoid unnecessary confusion and since this is another galaxy from the first game anyway it just kind of made sense to change the secret collectible bolts to something else the next planet barlow shares a lot of this excellent atmosphere work as well only from the opposite side of the coin right after this shining testament to megacorp's galaxy wide success ratchet and clank land on a dusty deserted decrepit gadgetron planet the company that you'll remember as the weapons company from the first game that's nowhere else to be found in this galaxy this was their base of operations here in bogon before megacorp forced them out and started locking down their monopoly i mean that opening camera shot alone with that destroyed gadgetron sign says volumes about this planet and that's before you run into the crazed raiders that have taken over the facility or gadgetron's adorable but deadly failed pet experiment that now tries to kill everything no no the gadgetron one not that one yeah there we go down the main path here on barlow we'll fight our way through those gadgetron hounds of cuddly death yes that's their actual name and the raider tribes so that we can reach the thugs for less hoverbike races that await us at the end these tribesmen are actually pretty smart too for ratchet enemies trying to rush ratchet in a group while using a giant bridge as a choke point running for cover when attacked from above and even trapping him in a small arena to surround and decimate him i mean obviously it doesn't work they're not that smart but it's more strategy than ratchet's run into in most of his adventuring so far and i appreciate that barlow is also home to one of my favorite weapons in going commando the seeker gun which as the name implies fires out a seeker missile that travels straight ahead until it detects a nearby enemy at which point it makes an immediate beeline towards the baddie once we meet up with the hoverbike gang we find that they more than live up to their introduction earlier this crew of gruff and tough dudes on the surface that are revealed to be the wimpiest folks imaginable when remotely challenged get lost before i flatten your robot into a hubcap touch him and it's plasma city oh gosh you didn't have to yell why did he have to yell oh i know ratchet's protective of clank now but man poor biker guy these hoverbike races are the final maxi game introduced in going commando featuring two full race courses one here and one later each featuring a handful of progressively more challenging race stipulations and really they start out pretty challenging to begin with it'll sometimes take me a couple tries if i miss a boost pad or two even after dozens of playthroughs with this game like with the arenas you only need to complete one mission here to progress and every race afterwards across both courses is an optional way to earn extra bolts the coolest thing about these races though is buried below the surface as much like ratchet and clank 1's hoverboard races these tracks are hidden in the main level as a way to speed up the game's loading see part of sony's style guide during the early ps2 days required its own franchises to mask or avoid loading screens wherever possible as a way to showcase the improved power of the ps2 and dvds compared to the original playstation's notorious cd load times this is exactly why games like the jack and daxter series mask their loading times with either elevators or doors that opened really slowly but still allowed you to move around in real time it's why we watch ratchet and clank fly through space on their way to each planet and it's why the hoverboard races in ratchet 1 and going commandos arenas hoverbike races and even the electrolyzer puzzle boards are physically part of the same level every level they appear they're just tucked away somewhere either in the sky or off to the side to be accessed instantly when needed in fact the ps2's memory limitations mean that these hoverbike courses all of the racer models and assets and even the model for ratchet himself are smaller and less detailed than the regular game's assets this is part of why the camera is zoomed out a little bit during these races so that you hopefully won't notice and all of this work again amounted to these races like the other maxi games needing a dedicated effort to design and polish effectively the work of its own video game at points even if it's just a side mode that some players are only gonna see for maybe five minutes racing is going to be compared to a full budget racing project like mario kart or the ps2's kinetica and space combat like it or not was going to be compared to a star fox or something like star wars rogue squadron 3 which came out not a month prior on the gamecube the amount of effort that went into all of these secondary modes is just incredible considering that the main game is already so fleshed out and improved jumping back for a moment right before we meet the hoverbiker we also run into one of the last surviving gadgetron employees on planet barlow this help desk robot who offers to sell you a handful of the very same weapons that you could get in ratchet and clank 1. excuse me i think i just blew another vacuum tube should i have a look my word you young people are so fresh these days if you've got a ratchet and clank save file you can actually get each of these weapons for free if you bought it in the first game it's an awesome little callback and an amazing bonus for returning players you know if gadgetron weapons were really all that useful however since they can't be upgraded their usefulness is already limited anytime you're defeating enemies with a gadgetron gun you're wasting experience that could go towards one of your megacorp guns after all not that you're really going to be able to kill many enemies with these things because the gadgetron guns are also woefully underpowered compared to going commando's updated arsenal even the tesla claw or visibomb two of ratchet 1's most powerful weapons deal piddly damage in this game it makes me question why they would even bring the visibomb back to begin with considering that the fully controllable missile was one of the most difficult things to design levels around i guess it was just a flex i'm not really sure and these are not really worth buying if you don't have a ratchet one save file but for free they're a cool novelty and the help desk lady also has the new rhino 2 available for a whopping 1 million bolts so you know make sure to start saving up and before we move on the secondary path here on barlow is a fun but short swing shot based platforming section with a little bit of combat of course and this leads us to the other surviving gadgetron employee a scientist who's been frozen in ice thanks to his cutting edge gadget the therminator once ratchet breaks this scientist out of the ice with his wrench naturally the scientist thanks you by making you pay for this new item because of course he does and the item allows you to freeze and thaw bodies of water for some specific puzzles both here and later on it's a really cool idea for a gadget especially since insomniac made sure that every body of water interacts with it except of course for the giant oceans of death that are on some planets the therminator is actually required for arguably the best platinum bolt hiding spot in the entire game a water fountain whose stream becomes a grind rail track when frozen it's just a shame that like many of going commando's gadgets we don't really get to see this item used to its full potential since it only gets a couple major reps throughout the entire game and while going commando is going to keep throwing those new gadgets gimmicks and of course weapons at us throughout the rest of this adventure the meat of what ratchet 2 introduces has happened in these first four planets between the space missions the arena spherical worlds and now the races and this is a good thing because there really hasn't been a ton of direct story here for the entire adventure so far ratchet and now clank have been playing ketchup trying to track the thief from planet to planet but always being just a few moments too late every single time this wild goose chase even gets to the point that on the next planet no tack ratchet and clank call it out directly and blame you the player for screwing around with all the side missions the games introduced instead of focusing on the main objective and this is one of the few issues that i have with going commando the story seems to struggle to find itself to justify each new planet or gimmick and it just moves on before we can really absorb any of it and to be fair there are a few reasons for this not the least of which was that the story went through a couple significant alterations multiple times during development and even then was written in the first place by going commando's lead animator oliver wade not a writer outside of the rescue ratchet theme that insomniac was focusing on the plot just kind of meanders from point to point and it plays pretty loose with its act structure hoping that the incredibly funny humor and all of the gags keep you satiated until the game is ready to unravel its secrets and to be fair unless you're analyzing this game critically as i am today that totally works you won't notice the plot's issues mounting because the humor absolutely sticks the landing most of the time i love thugs for less especially as they rapidly become the same endearing but deadly wimps as their hoverbite click suggests first of all whatever slug brain's been eating all the choochie bars in the break room adequate stuff in his face around hey turn those lights off it's bad thing chewy the interactions between the thief and the thug leader are to die for you quirky habit of using either the complete wrong word for the context or just making up a new word entirely is always enough for a little chuckle and going commando loves to break up the action sometimes with some mid-flight entertainment like new editions of behind the hero focusing on the rise and fall of captain quark in the wake of the first game's events what a nut i almost miss that guy sometimes almost even when the overall plot may fall short the jokes almost never miss after another space battle where ratchet and clank rudely break up the thugs for less picnic i'm i'm not kidding they just barely missed the thief on no tack here we can buy the synthenoids a weapon that summons four small floating robots that hover around ratchet and open fire on nearby enemies a perfect set and forget weapon that you can throw out at any time in any situation to complement your current strategy they're really chatty though i wish they would just shut up for like one second sometimes technically this planet follows the trend of having two different paths although the left path is now completely optional originally during development this fight through the city's promenade area would have rewarded you with an upgraded version of clank's hydro pack that would have allowed you to shoot enemies underwater this gadget and the accompanying auto-scrolling underwater segments ended up being cut though and honestly based on the phrase auto scrolling i don't think that's a huge loss now for your trouble once you reach the end you'll only receive a nanotech hit point and more importantly on the way to that ending you get to see a bunch of thugs for less grunts pretending that they're mannequins because this game's humor is just amazing they find ways to inject character into every single well character even more so than the first game a lot of the time arguably no tax main path might be the single longest route in any of the ps2 ratchet games in any level because it's effectively both a combat section and a separate puzzle section smushed together there's even a clear breaking point when the duo receives coordinates to slim cognito's ship shack a separate level where you can buy weapon and health upgrades for your ship as well as different ship cosmetics this is just kind of shoehorned into this planet i'm not gonna lie but you know what more slim cognito is always cool with me so i'll take it the puzzle section after this makes heavy use of the therminator as you freeze and unfreeze the chemical plant's water pools to work your way towards the exit i really like the concept of the therminator but this section is just not that good it might be my least favorite section in the entirety of the game save for one more that we'll get to later this section starts out fine but midway through you're asked to freeze rising and falling pools of water with frankly unreasonable amounts of precision you have to freeze it just low enough that you can fit through these tunnels but high enough that you can still jump up and climb out of the tub on the other side if you freeze just a second too early or a second too late you have to thaw it out and then freeze it again and hope this time you got the timing right it's a bit of an unfair ask because there are just too many variables between the water itself rising and falling and the therminator's two different projectiles one for thawing and one for freezing each with its own different rate of fire timing your shots so that the very last one hits the water at just the right moment yeah that's just not fun and as one final kick in the pants at the very end after going through this section you have to pay money to a group of nerd robots to unlock the next planet hey what what oh nothing just some robot humor i am so glad they got rid of this paying to progress thing in future games because oh my god thankfully this next level the thief's icy base on planet siberius is finally where our story starts to advance a bit and it took long enough because this is right about where act 1 ends it's also one of the most impressive levels not just in the ratchet and clank franchise but in my book across any game on the playstation 2. but first this opening view is a new favorite of mine and i just have to draw attention to it for a moment it took me 19 years to catch that mountain off in the distance because every time i play these games i just start moving immediately and i miss the hook but that mountain with its ominous ring of clouds appears at least to me to be a little nod to the legend of zelda's death mountain a game that's often cited as an immense inspiration on the early ratchet games i don't know as a zelda guy and a ratchet guy i just find that really cool once ratchet fights through the thief's upgraded defense bots he and clank bore the thief's convoy of massive trucks and what ensues is a high octane fight spanning across several of these trucks as the trucks are actually moving in real time think the groundbreaking train section in uncharted 2 except six years earlier and you can tell this was a taxing effort because many projectiles and particle effects react oddly to the constant forward momentum most of the time they do keep up but it's just enough that if you're paying close attention you'll catch it apparently this section was such a pain to design for that internally team members joke in the future that no matter how outlandish a level idea might be it could never be as ridiculous as the idea of fighting on an actually moving train as i've said a few times already and as i'm gonna say again a few more times to come it's just incredible how far above and beyond this game goes bigger and better is one thing but this game was just an absolute moonshot it's just unfathomable and we're not even done yet with this level we've still got our big showdown a boss fight with the thief as ratchet and clank finally stop that thief from strapping the furby experiment onto a rocket and blowing it up well well okay the boss fight is kinda yeah that's why i love the seeker gun with the experiment finally recaptured ratchet and clank are instructed to meet up with phys widget on planet tabora things go pretty smoothly from there [Music] how about a little flying music [Music] he did that on purpose this planet unlocks two new weapons for you to purchase in the vendor and these are actually two fan favorites first we have the lava gun which spews out a continuous stream of lava it even trickles out a little bit after you stop firing which makes it the most relatable weapon in the entire series when upgraded though the lava gun no longer acts as a fan favorite and instead becomes one of the most controversial weapons in the entire franchise as the original function of the weapon completely changes the evolved meteor gun no longer acts as a great area of effect weapon like the lava gun originally did instead shooting out fiery chunks of magma projectiles once the lava gun is upgraded there's really no other weapon that can take its place either unless you count the puny tesla claw this became a very important learning lesson for insomniac as player feedback after release taught them to never modify the core function of a weapon when it's upgraded leveling up should only enhance a weapon's effects or add secondary effects it's to the point that some players will only use the lava gun to this day to deal damage but never kill enemies because experience in going commando is only doled out for the weapon that deals the final blow this way they can avoid evolving the weapon entirely they hate the meteor gun that much the other new weapon acts as a sort of replacement for the mini nuke as by this point in the game that gun's starting to become obsolete and that is the bouncer every shot of this gun fires a bouncing homing bomb that explodes into smaller bouncing homing bombs and between the satisfying thwomp sound as the shots leave the chamber the homing mini-bombs and the massive explosive damage it causes it's just the best the bouncing homing mini-bombs became such a popular and satisfying weapon effect that many future weapons throughout this series would adopt them when leveled up including other rocket launchers and other sorts of bomb weapons incredibly though the bouncer was a late addition to this game as another weapon was cut due to being problematic a polished up version of that cut weapon the black hole firing rift inducer would later appear in ratchet and clank up your arsenal the following year three other weapons were actually cut from this game earlier on as well one of which never made it past the pitch and two that are still in the game's files the former is the rainbow afrolyzer a weapon that would spawn a rainbow afro on every nearby enemy and force them to dance uncontrollably to disco music i know that one sounds pretty familiar at the time this was deemed far too time consuming though and it was shelved for another day that same sort of save it for later mentality is also true for the prototyped laser mines which you can still find and use if you access it in the game's files these would allow you to string together an electrically charged line between two or more placed mines but given how enemies operated in this game it wasn't all that useful in going commando so it was brought back and included seven years later on more advanced hardware in ratchet and clank future a crack in time as the tesla mines where it's still not useful the final cut weapon that we have access to was a weird pair of boots that would draw a trail of fire behind ratchet again not super useful and unlike many early ratchet ideas this one hasn't come back yet after you work your way through a volcanic cavern that i swear repurposed some of its design from an optional cavern in the first game speak of the devil there with reused ideas you'll run into the thief once again and the thief's clumsiness once again shows through you have three seconds one two whoa he's she this changes nothing i'm gonna go ahead and reveal her name now the thief is actually a lombax named angela cross and since she's pretty much gone for the next couple hours of gameplay after this i'll go ahead and also reveal that she's a former megacorp employee she quit and blew the whistle when she found out the fizz widget against her recommendations was preparing to clone and sell this furby as a pet despite the furby having a known tendency to eat people going commando decides to take its sweet time revealing any of that to you though all she says for now is this vague warning to watch this conveniently placed tv in the desert which plays an infomercial for megacorp's testing facility that answers exactly zero of ratchet and clank's questions about why the furby is so dangerous it also doesn't answer why angela was willing to feed her former co-workers to useless swamp monsters she's she's not a great person those guys probably earned minimum wage they didn't deserve that after this bunch of non-answers and with their ship destroyed ratchet and clank are forced to comb through a massive desert and find 10 of these mystical desert crystals without them this mystic hippie won't fix the ship there are actually 100 of these crystals in total across this massive sandbox area and the hippie will happily pay you some good money for the other 90. it's actually kind of poetic that act 2 begins with a bunch of aimless meandering through the desert because the plot feels exactly like that for actually all of act 2 and pretty much the entire rest of the game really take our next level for example that megacorp testing facility that angela showed us you would think that we'd have contact with her at some point here but no i wasn't kidding she's actually gone for the next four full levels on the main progression path ratchet and clank pushed through a sort of stealth section deep inside megacorp's facilities they find the research logs showing the experiment's violent tendencies and they arrange a meeting with phys widget at a disposal facility to destroy the experiment except he gives them the wrong password and they have to dog fight their way to safety after that fizzwidget absentmindedly boasts about his new commercial that he just filmed for megacorp's arms factory and he he hangs up he just hangs up on us so ratchet and clank go there hoping to find him they of course don't find him instead receiving a very lucky transmission from angela on another random wall-mounted tv which i guess is her specialty since that's pretty much the only time we ever hear for her for most of this game now angela tells the duo that megacorp has already begun mass production of this experiment i.e cloning a rabid man-eating monster and has started airing commercials to sell it to the public as the proto pet so ratchet and clank rushed to meet fizwidget in silver city where the latter is giving away free proto pets to the public only to be arrested by thugs for less because megacorp outbid angela's thug retainer and hired the thugs to watch over their increasingly let's let's call him i think the scientific term is uh cuckoo president again this is the main story path it's just incredibly haphazardly strung together by this point and you can start to tell that insomniac was beginning to rush part of my theory as to why the narrative starts to sort of stretch at the seams involves frequent rewrites to two of our main characters fizz widget who we'll get to later and more importantly here angela cross herself if you're wondering why we're so quickly expected to just trust a character that remember needlessly murdered her former co-workers it's because this was the final pass of several attempts to adjust her character and make her a bit more likeable apparently every previous version of angela just never felt right and even this one to me still doesn't feel great when time came to begin writing the next ratcheting clank game angela was quietly dropped out of this fear that they would run into similar issues with her character yet again parts of the ratchet fan base did not take that well and the character has been a source of frankly really dumb controversy ever since including internet forum debates that persisted for years about whether she was even a lombax or not complaints about why she didn't have a tail when it was always pretty clear to me that her lack of a tail is why she's so clumsy and a whole other slew of things it's to the point that in 2018's ratchet and clank art book the studio straight up apologizes to the fan base about angela thankfully this chunk of the game meandering as it might be narratively is probably the strongest string of levels to play in the entire game that stealth path at the testing facility is a really neat twist on players expectations of what ratchet gameplay would be at this point in the game similar to the section in ratchet 1 that does the same sort of thing except here you actually have health and stronger weapons so if you do want to go in guns blazing you're less likely to die this section however does end with probably the most excessive sequence of padding in any ratchet game that i can think of because this monitor is broken ratchet uses a new glider gadget that he found earlier to follow this repair bot through a beautiful conceptually awesome section only for the robot to just kind of leave and let you fix the monitor yourself and then when you teleport back the tv bribes you before it'll play the cutscene now let's get the goods on that experiment what the if you wish to progress in the game it costs as little as one dollar a month over at patreon.com the golden bolt i think i see the problem that's it this galaxy blows the glider item is only used three times in the entirety of going commando once here once when you obtain it and one more time near the end of the game on the bright side it doesn't overstay its welcome this way but on the not so bright side it actually still kind of does the last glider section in particular can be pretty tough on your first couple playthroughs in fact insomniac apparently received some very angry hate mail from an infuriated parent about that very section visually the glider areas are just incredibly cool changes of pace and scenery from the main gameplay but since so much as a scrape will kill you you don't really get to appreciate them as much while you're playing as you'll be too busy focusing on controlling your momentum not pulling up too quickly because you'll lose all momentum and die but also not swinging down too quickly and building too much speed up and then also dying plus if you're a completionist this section contains a health upgrade vial in the meanest spot possible i remember this being one of the first things that i had to google for any video game ever because the game expects you to swing up with precision so perfect that you'll think it's just not possible perfectly hug these corners and walls as you do a 180 and inch yourself up with just the right swing so that you can grab the health upgrade and then probably immediately die afterwards i remember back in 2003 this wasn't even the recommended way to do this online i figured that out myself instead some players suggested that you do the entire glider section and then somehow spin around and do the whole thing in reverse just to get that one little health upgrade no thanks the second path here on this planet was for at least a few years used within the studio as the shining example of how to design a fun ratchet and clank level as it's got a great combination of challenging and satisfying enemy placements while still making ample use of gadgets like the swingshot and dynamo and even sneaking in a platinum bolt that requires unique use of one of the weapons that weapon is the spiderbot glove which you actually can't buy until the next planet afterwards the spiderbot is a spiritual successor to the visibomb throwing out a little remote controlled spider that can damage enemies by exploding and can also press switches tucked away in corners behind walls or in vents which ratchet couldn't otherwise reach outside of using it for collectibles it's not all that useful for most playstyles but variety is always appreciated the only weapon we unlock for purchase here on this planet is a standard rocket launcher but it's here roughly halfway into this game that we find the first armor vendor in going commando as well allowing us to reduce ratchet's incoming damage with new choices of armor it's at this point in going commando that money starts to get a little bit tight as you'll have several increasingly expensive weapons to choose from and the spider bot which is worth like 50 cents in a used napkin and also now some incredibly expensive armor upgrades if you went right to the weapons vendor and grabbed either a rocket launcher or another weapon you were behind on before you saw this fancy new armor vendor well you're out of luck for the time being thankfully the other three times in this game that we find armor vendors you'll discover that you can buy a later suit of armor without having to buy the prior ones first so i usually skip the first upgrade or two because why would i blow 25 000 bolts on 33 damage reduction when i can just wait and cut my damage in half or even more at the end of this combat path we return to the spherical world gameplay introduced earlier but this time as giant clank because in case you forgot clank can turn into a giant robot it's pretty cool of the three times we see spherical worlds in going commando two of them are these giant clank boss fights first we fight the thugs for less leader here in the process destroying a city so hard that the man of steel himself would be proud and later we can fight an optional flying saucer boss to obtain the mapper highlighting secret areas on the world map as i said in the ratcheting clank 1 retrospective i've never been one for the giant clank gameplay beyond the initial wow this is awesome i had back when i was i don't know eight giant clank gameplay on a spherical world though no no it's still kind of just here like it's incredibly cool that it exists but i would rather have seen some more consequential use of the globe gimmick in proper ratchet gameplay since we only really fight a handful of enemies during that first introduction to these spherical worlds we would have to wait another year to see these spherical worlds reach their logical conclusion in a full traditional ratchet level after beating the thug leader again we get to refill our rapidly depleting wallets a little bit as interestingly the game throws all of its maxi games at us in rapid succession yet again at this point in the game down the main story route we've got space combat challenges at the disposal facility and here on the planet joba we have both the completely optional second set of hoverbike races and a whole second arena where we obtain two new gadgets the gravity boots which allow us to scale magnetic pathways on walls and ceilings and the infiltrator that second gadget that allows us to open doors which i mentioned earlier and on the way to that arena we also obtained the levitator from that shady rhino salesman from the first game except now he's really tall for some reason this gadget allows you to gain a ton of altitude and cross vast distances provided that your very limited fuel doesn't run out at least outside of the levitator needing fuel this thing only has a marginally different core function from the glider with both of them acting as situational flight based tools that require perfection thanks to one-hit deaths since both the levitator and the glider are only used a handful of times each there is little reason why we needed multiple half-baked gadgets other than for variety seek oddly enough both even act as prototypes for greatly improved gadgets that are introduced much later on in this franchise i don't even think i would mind having both if they didn't make you pay for the levitator at least the glider was free but i hope this thing's worth like 20 000 bolts to you actually i hope you even had 20 000 bolts because there's a decent chance that you might not if you bought either the spiderbot or this planet's other new weapon the fantastic plasma coil or again if you bought any of the other weapons that you might be behind on there's a good chance that you've skipped a few guns by this point since there are more planets that introduce two weapons in this game than there are that only introduce one this is part of why the game tosses a bunch of side challenges at you in rapid succession here because insomniac clearly wasn't sure yet how to balance things like weapon costs how many bolts you earn per level experience earned from defeating enemies how quickly a weapon should be made obsolete and all of that boring stuff that we as players never think about unless it's negatively affecting us hell at this point in the series every type of enemy was still being programmed on a level-by-level basis rather than at a more global level even recurring ones like the thugs for less grunts that function identically from mission to mission really that's true for everything in this game from enemies to teleporters all of what you see was put together individually even if that meant copying and pasting the code again and again and again just about the only things that weren't done this way are oddly enough the explosions because every explosion in going commando is a permutation of one single explosion effect with the parameters able to be easily modified and repurposed quickly since levels would often be assigned to specific programmers designers and artists and made from scratch in five-week batches there wasn't enough of a focus at the very outset on doing a little bit of work ahead of time to save everybody a lot of time later on one hand this leads to those little moments like the thugs posing as mannequins or playing rock paper scissors before they're alerted that little extra bit of love that goes in when a developer truly makes something their own but on the other so much work was being done to fine tune this game at a micro level that it was perhaps a little bit too late once everybody stepped back and realized oh yeah we've got two gadgets that open doors and we've got two flying gadgets and we really aren't using any of these gadgets much at all and wait why are there two wrench upgrades when we're trying to get people to stop using the wrench it can almost feel like there were too many cooks in the kitchen at times even if that led to some of those more charming individual moments that might not sneak into a more optimized development structure for example the megacorp armory features a robot fizz widget guiding tourists through the company's history showcasing some of its early rocket prototypes not only can ratchet relentlessly kill these tourists again and again and again hundreds of times over to the point that the help desk tells you it's alerting the authorities players can also damage and destroy each of these rockets which have different effects a few of them crumple and just kind of explode while one of them will lift off for just a second before crashing back down and the final one is a successful and complete liftoff going all the way into space until it crashes back down later in the level and kills one of the more difficult enemies that last one i never noticed until this most recent set of playthroughs it's amazing how many new things you can catch each time you play these games nobody wrote one of these into the game's script or anything this was just a designer having a fun time at work although now that i mentioned the script i should point out that in the hd collection version of going commando the fizz widget tour guide actually glitches out and doesn't say anything where he would have said flavor dialogue during each stop on this tour that's one of a good number of smaller bugs exclusive to this hd collection the most noteworthy being ratchet's helmet during cutscenes being a bit larger than it should be and seemingly floating above his head i'll talk in more detail about why the hd collection runs into so many smaller issues when we get to ratchet and clank 3 as that game tends to get the brunt of it the worst that we get here is the helmet bug and an otherwise completely playable game at least on ps3 the vita versions have their own fair share of larger issues including strafing being locked to what feels like one specific spot on the top right side of the handheld's back touchpad which in my experience means that you're just not going to strafe in that version which also means probably don't play that version honestly at the end of the main path at the armory is angela returning by way of a conveniently placed tv like i mentioned earlier and this scene also features what i'm certain has to be the most subtle final fantasy reference i have ever seen ratchet suddenly gets super serious talking about the dangers of the proto pet completely out of nowhere and james arnold taylor delivers a line right out of his performance in final fantasy 10 this could be our last chance this may be our last chance there is no chance in hell that was unintentional this planet also features an even more optional tertiary path where we meet a captain quark super fan to whom we can later trade a captain quark statue in exchange for an increased pickup range for bolts after that we'll never see this guy again definitely i promise never the silver city level right before ratchet and clank get arrested is one of my favorite levels in the entire ratchet and clank franchise just a constant barrage of combat encounters against thugs for less which probably should have been a sign now that i think about it for ratchet and clank to turn back around it's got the best levitator section in the entire game as you fly through moving traffic there's an awesome grind rail through a construction site fights where you're running down the side of a building fighting enemies while using the gravity boots enemies that use their gravity boots to rush you across a spiral magnet track this dude breaking the gravity boots and ascending to space and a secret teleporter that only works at exactly 3 am the level just doesn't let up from start to finish and the subsequent jailbreak level holds that pace as ratchet and clanks split up and make their way out of the prison ship the very same ship that ratchet broke into at the start of going commando this is the sort of eureka moment for clank gameplay for me at least up until this point in the series the gameplay isn't any different from the previous instances of clank gameplay but alternating between clank sections and the solo ratchet sections that follow gives just the right feeling of forward momentum that clank's levels usually tend to halt instead the pace halting here is performed by some levitator sections above rising and falling lava where we can meet the plumber who's apparently the only plumber in the universe why is he so far out of his own galaxy and we run into angela's convenient tv placement yet again hey who's that meow wait a minute with angela captured the duo chases the thugs for less fleet and powers their way through the gang's base of operations usually this thugs for less planet is considered the biggest difficulty spike in the game and rightfully so but man i just love going through it fighting hordes and hordes of thugs for less goons tanks and choppers watching pieces of their armor flying off as i damage them watching the goons use the flaming carcasses of the tanks that i just destroyed as cover and getting ambushed again and again it's exactly the kick the game needed right as it was starting to slog again not that long prior it's a good thing too that this is one of the few planets with an armor vendor in case you want to upgrade and it's placed right before the hardest part of the level too of course if you've purchased the shield charger weapon you may not need that armor as this bubble shield will allow you to take a good number of extra hits before it breaks and then before you would take more damage for players that do struggle though this will probably be the first time in going commando that the game's under the hood difficulty tuning system starts working see across the entire ratchet and clank franchise there's a pretty secret system in place that will give you a break if you die a few consecutive times perhaps it'll spawn one or two fewer enemies or it'll give them a bit less health and a few more bolts or your weapons will start packing a bit more of a punch or gain experience a little faster sometimes an extra health crate will spawn next to a nearby stack of crates likewise if you're just blowing through the levels and not having any trouble at all the game will try to rubber band itself to keep you just challenged enough that you're progressing but still being forced to use all the different weapons and experience all of the game's feedback loops in simultaneous synergy it's subtle enough that i don't believe anybody noticed it for almost a decade until former insomniacs mike stout and tony garcia revealed this existed in 2011 during their developer let's plays of ratchets 2 and 3. there are many other examples of this sort of nudging for the benefit of the player both in going commando and beyond ammo crates to name one of these don't decide which ammunition is contained within until the moment you break them at which point the game gives you some combination of either ammo for the weapon for which you're lowest on ammo and or the weapon you've been using most recently for the regular crates all of the crates and enemies in every level tend to add up to give you a specific total of bolts per level and if you miss a stack of crates the game will automatically add those bolts to later stacks to make sure that you're never too far behind where the game wants you to be and the game determines in real time what will be the most satisfying quantity of bolts to pick up for that value it's far more satisfying if the game throws 100 pennies at you instead of four quarters after all it's amazing how many little tricks are built into these games to keep you perfectly hooked all the way through and you'd never think about any of them until you first hear about them once you know they exist though the games shine even brighter in that new light the final encounter against the thug leader at the end of this level though could have used a bit more light on it dude's got another even bigger giant mech somehow and we're in for a city-wide fight against this seemingly unstoppable behemoth in terms of scale this fight is an incredible game of cat and mouse as you flee through the streets and onto rooftops avoiding the mech's laser attacks dodging as he throws entire spaceships at you the works the way the game wants you to play this fight though sucks there are a couple dozen turrets mounted across these rooftops which control simultaneously too loosely and too stiffly somehow and once you enter a turret the thug leader will fire homing missiles at you half the time you're in these turrets you can't even hit the giant mech directly because you're focusing on shooting the homing attacks out of the air and the turrets do such a tiny amount of damage and he breaks them so quickly and forces you to move back around the city that this turns into the world's sleepiest war of attrition i much much much prefer my method which i call using the bouncer with the fully upgraded heavy bouncer you can take down more than half of the mech's health just by shooting at its cankles it's a lot more fun and it's more reason why the bouncer is just the best after ratchet checks on clank who's been on his back the whole time and almost forgets to save angelo the person he was supposed to be saving she decides she doesn't like being corporeal and quickly sends us to the next planet where she contacts us from yet another convenient tv it's actually impressive how much literal screen time she gets compared to how little we see her in person this next planet smold begins the weakest act of the game as going commando starts to slump to the finish thanks to crunch impart due to the game's earlier overloading of innovations as megacorp's main distribution facility some parts of this level are really neat in scope like the vast gaps between ships forcing you to use the levitator to fly off into the distance but in general this level just kind of sucks thanks to the time constraints the dynamo puzzles aren't really fun the levitator section also isn't exactly what i would call fun since it's just throttling with the x button and moving forward the mutant enemies can get pretty tanky with how much damage they absorb and the drab color palette is thematically appropriate but it doesn't make it any less bleh to see what did i just say there did i say bleh an hour and [ __ ] 20 minutes into this video and i just ran out of words to say apparently or whatever and then at the end the game makes you pay 40 000 goddamn bolts to watch a cutscene please stop my family needs to eat did he just this [ __ ] just ate my money what are you some kind of goddamn vending machine at the grocery store [ __ ] you the next planet the icy tundra on grelbin is one of the most infamous in the franchise thanks to the yeti enemies that'll quickly swarm and overrun the player this is the second of the game's wide open crystal collecting worlds although at first only a small lower level is accessible not the entire thing the yetis were intended to act as a smaller swarming enemy similar to the bugs that appear in the desert but because this level was so horrendously behind schedule and the original developers didn't have the time to finish it control was given at the last minute to programmer tony garcia who only had three days to code the entire thing so across three straight days and presumably on just about zero sleep he threw away all of the work that was done already rather than piece together whatever the previous programmer was trying to do and as an aside as somebody with programming experience i've done exactly that before myself interpreting somebody else's code is about as bad as learning a new language sometimes and he coded in just those three days everything you see in this level from scratch and naturally this led to some balancing issues with the yetis namely so many of them pop out at once that it slows down the game their attacks come out incredibly quickly and have little cooldown before they can attack again they have way too much health and i believe they're one of the few enemies in the game that caused touch damage the level got so many complaints not just from fans but from current and future insomniac developers that garcia was eventually given an award for how bad it is and seemingly to this day insomniac still gives out the snow beast award after most projects the dubious honor going to whoever was responsible for the worst thing that shipped as a part of each game that sounds far meaner than i think it's meant to be tony garcia himself considers that a badge of honor what these previous two planets share is that each of them along with the next planet damosel contained one of the three pieces needed to construct our final gadget in the game the hypnomatic damasel is another awesome city planet a fight against both the proto-pets that are reproducing and mass because they reproduce asexually by vomiting yep yep these furbies are just reverse kirby too and the robot exterminators that are programmed to kill anything fuzzy including well ratchet there's really not another level in the franchise that has as much clear utility as this one that feels like an actual place that could exist you start the level by fighting your way down a regular city street with apartments on both sides of you with citizens fleeing around you before battling through a park through a bank through grocery stores with aisles filled with proto-pet boxes oh yeah by the way they were shipping these living creatures in sealed cereal boxes the grind rail track that leads to the final hypnomatic part pushes you across a series of levitating train tracks and the trains themselves are being derailed because of the proto-pet's attacks i love everything about this planet's atmosphere even if i do wish the proto-pets would stop puking for one goddamn second so i could kill them all oh also more jack and daxter once you have the hypnomatic put together by the way you have to pay to put it together because of course you [ __ ] do after getting all three parts you use it a grand total of three times once as the tutorial right here once when you revisit grebin to access the secondary path and once on the final planet in place of the clank section that was cut for time this means that all the work you did across the entirety of this game's third act was effectively just padding again you're starting to get a picture of why the story is one of my issues with this game the hypnomatic isn't even all that cool of a gadget it just lets you take control of one specific type of robot and then you fight past more of this same type of robot to hit a switch somewhere and your health bar as these things is also a timer if you hit zero before switching to another robot or completing your objective the bot dies and you start over thrilling in my opinion it's not worth the work that went in both for the developers and for us as players especially when two of the three planets required to get this thing are kind of slogs but once ratchet and clank can clear out the robots and the proto-pets in front of angela's home we're in the home stretch she gives clank her old megacorp id card to get into megacorps headquarters and off we go if this feels a bit anticlimactic so far it's because it is good observation while this final planet uses just about every gadget and mechanic introduced in the game besides the levitator and the glider and clank and acts as a really strong climax mechanically there's really not much urgency narratively originally there was going to be a space battle involving ratchet taking out the planet's defenses before landing but there just wasn't enough time left this late into the project so they were rushing to the finish line after the duo blasts their way to megacorp's front door angela shows up and uses the id card that she gave them anyway when the whole point was that she could get in without it but they couldn't uh oh okay before they get inside though clank's secret admirer infobot who we've seen a couple times throughout the game by now stops them and reveals the big twist [Laughter] steve mccork it's captain quirk that's been behind the proto-pet menace this entire time for the entirety of going commando quark has been disguised as fizz widget that's why he gets all those big words wrong because he's trying to impersonate somebody who's smart he's been sending ratchet and clank on tangents and giving them the wrong password as a way of trying to get them out of the picture he manufactured the proto pet crisis to frame ratchet as payback for ruining his career in the first game and he's planning on using this opportunity to springboard back into the limelight but since he's a bumbling idiot he messes it up quirk takes the device that angela had brought in that would reverse the hostility of both the original proto-pet the proto-proto-pet if you will and every other proto-pet in the galaxy except he puts the batteries in backwards so instead it turns the furby into a giant angrier furby ladies and gentlemen our final boss if this all feels like a very random 11th hour twist it's because it was insomniac realized part way into development that they were really missing quark and the humor he brought to the table so they wrote him into the game and added the behind the hero documentary clips as a way of keeping him in the player's mind until the big reveal it's actually a pretty solid effort but it doesn't exactly stick the landing when we're fighting a giant chicken mcnugget as the final boss especially since this boss in response to the first game's final boss being so brutally difficult is a pushover of a chicken nugget it's such a bad final boss that i genuinely don't recall seeing that many of its attacks during dozens and dozens of playthroughs of this game in the past because it's that easy to kill that most of its attacks don't even have time to come out before i beat him like i didn't even know until my most recent run that the tractor beam bomb returned in this fight one of the few times a gadget is used in a combat scenario in the entire franchise in pursuit of avoiding one extreme they accidentally collided with the other once ratchet and clank defeat the proto pet they flipped the battery and reverse the effect turning every proto pet docile instantly and saving the galaxy in one fell swoop angela finds the real fizz widget tied up in a supply closet quark is taken away and in a beautiful spin on the first game's ending we've got a damaged robot to fix this time it's not clank but his new girlfriend this is the clearest do-over moment for ratchet in the entire game where instead of joking and walking away from a friend in need like in the first game he promises clank that they're going to fix her there is really no better way to show you the differences between ratchet one's ratchet and ratchet 2 onwards ratchet than by showing those two scenes back to back aside from a couple post-credits scenes that's the end of ratchet and clank going commando as weak as the story may be at times and as much as it slumps to the finish there's no question that going commando is an incredible achievement of a game and that the few shortcomings it has are an icarus situation where they flew too fast and too high and got a little burned by it but when you've only got 10 months to make a game and you choose to go this ambitious i can overlook most every issue going commando set the standard by which every subsequent ratchet game would follow it's easily one of the best games on the playstation 2 and it's easily one of my favorite games of all time only enhanced now that i've taken another critical look at the game and its development and there's still even more to discuss because these games just keep on giving even after one playthrough like with ratchet one before it going commando has a challenge mode a new game plus mode where enemies are more difficult bolts are more plentiful and more secrets are available in going commando onward challenge mode would include a bolt multiplier which would provide you even more bolts if you could defeat groups of enemies without taking a hit this was a way of daring players to become more and more adept at the game rewarding you with up to a 20 times both multiplier and let me tell you once you've defeated the optional swamp monster boss and obtained the box breaker there's nothing like performing a slam attack and seeing all of the breakable objects around you exploding watching the entire game slow down because of the amount of bolts on screen at once and earning tens of thousands of bolts from one move it's just beautiful and with all of those extra bolts you can buy more things in challenge mode including the final armor the 90 damage reducing carbon ox armor as well as the challenge mode exclusive weapons and new mega upgrades for all of the weapons you already had besides the sheepinator the rhino 2 and the zodiac mark ii which is a screen clearing instant kill weapon named after the strongest weapon in insomniac's first game disruptor every other weapon has a purchasable mega version that increases damage output max ammo and other variables this includes the gadgetron weapons too although only the megacorp weapons can earn further experience and level up one more time to a final ultra variant this gives you another incentive to keep playing challenge mode for another full playthrough or two to keep seeking out the rest of the platinum bolts to try out the game's skins to check off the game's skill points and to see every secret in the extras menu there's also one challenge mode exclusive weapon in the form of the clank zapper a weapon that's pretty clearly a last minute addition based on how useless it can be and the fact that it doesn't have a mega upgrade either all it does is give clank laser eyes that randomly shock an enemy every now and then you can't even see the ammo count either since it's a passive weapon so you never really know when you've run out and you can't really rely on it whatsoever there's also one main game weapon that i haven't mentioned up until this point because i always forget it exists the hoverbomb gun it fires either a regular bomb that just kind of hovers forward or if you hold circle you can control the bomb's movement at the cost of you not being able to move yourself that secondary effect is about as pointless as it sounds but the gun does do a good amount of damage and it's essentially a precursor to the motion control weapons that would appear in the ps3 ratchet games going commando's challenge mode also features a first person mode that was clearly tossed in late as a fun bonus you can tell it was a late edition because in first person mode you can infinitely jump if you just jump and throw your wrench at a wall over and over and over again in mid-air many a speedrun strategy has been discovered because of that glitch and if you do everything that is if you buy and fully upgrade every weapon and find every platinum bolt you'll unlock one of gaming's coolest completion bonuses ever the insomniac museum this was a passion project by designer mike stout a way of showcasing cut content and cool development secrets of both of the first two ratchet games all in its own dedicated playable level based on the insomniac office there are few games that value replayability and completion and show their appreciation to those players that eat up every piece of info as well as these early ratchet games do and stuff like this or the full monster encyclopedia are why you've been hearing mike stout's name quite a bit throughout this video and it's because stout seems to greatly value the stories behind a game's development his developer let's plays of ratchet and clank 2 and 3 have been sources of entertainment and previously unknown information both for me and thousands of others for a decade now i still remember finding his channel back in early 2012 and feeling like i'd discovered this gold mine he's the one pretty much solely responsible for the insomniac museum which would become an on and off tradition in the series going forward and he's been kind enough to take the time to chat with fans in the past and answer questions much of the research work that's gone into both this retrospective as well as the next two started with the leads that he provided either directly or indirectly so i owe mike my thanks for that going commando actually sold slightly worse than the first ratchet game but was still an instant and overwhelming success both critically and commercially and it was more than clear to sony that they had a huge money maker with this duo but where does ratchet and clan go after two best-selling games in two years what new state can be raised after you've made a perfect sequel well remember as i said at the start of this retrospective a perfect sequel does not make a perfect game so the only way to go from here is up [Music] you

Channel: The Golden Bolt

Views: 279,623

Keywords: ratchet and clank, ratchet and clank 2, ratchet and clank 2 retrospective, ratchet and clank going commando, ratchet and clank going commando retrospective, ratchet & clank, ratchet & clank going commando, ratchet & clank going commando retrospective, ratchet & clank 2, ratchet & clank 2 retrospective, going commando, going commando retrospective, ratchet and clank going commando review, ratchet and clank 2 review, ratchet and clank rift apart, ratchet and clank ost

Id: AVQwM8Fr3YI

Length: 96min 5sec (5765 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/HardTranceScythe]

One of the few videos surrounding GC i found decent. Points out the flaws & upsides just fine.

[u/Toilet_Goat]

Golden Bolt's content is always top notch. There's also a fantastic recent retrospective on the first game on the channel

[u/tuskedAlbinoRabbit]

Looks interesting, thanks for posting! I love these long-form game analyses. TGBS had a good series on R&C, covers every main game but the original (which appears in a constant throughline as the best in the series)

[u/Cyber-Hornet]

Ah yes, my favorite chapter.