I like the weapon designs, art direction, and even some of the writing.
I like travelling in my spaceship to new planets and the simple fantasy of being a tech-savvy creature with many bizarre weapons.
It occupies an ecological niche narrow enough it is just about relevant in design terms now as it was in the early 2000s
It did spherical worlds before Mario did
I played the first and really enjoyed it, but I was obsessed with 3D platformers at the time. I’ve been meaning to try another at some point.
ratchet and clank rules, you do everything for JUST LONG ENOUGH before it’s like ‘okay time for a new toy’
Perfectly serviceable fun little cartoon games. They don’t get enough credit for just being Good.
yeah, there should be a game law where all games have to be AT LEAST as good as ratchet and clank. in a just world this game would be baseline
yeah I really love how each R&C game has a minigame where you start out thinking “I could play a whole game of this” and then it ends right when you get to the point of thinking “Naw actually I’m good.”
The PS2 Ratchet and Clank games are wonderful! I got into them with Deadlocked, which is from what I understand the dark horse of the series, but I did quite like the whole arena combat puzzle setup of it. Then I went back and played the first three and they were also great!
it’s a 60fps saturday morning cartoon it rules
R&C1 is a game where I know side hopping would ruin the entire thing but I’d like it in anyway.
I think there was someone at Insomniac who was convinced, with a religious fervor, that Spyro’s moveset required the side roll, and was furious that it was removed in Spyro 2. The justification they felt when R&C got side hopping would blind their enemies with its brilliance.
I’ve said it before, but I might as well say it in The Ratchet And Clank thread: I really appreciate that R&C1’s plot is about its protagonists not liking each other, and then developing a friendship, and they’ve never reset that relationship. Their friendship is rock solid across like 8 sequels, and their conflict usually involves obligations that only separate them physically.
for a second i thought this was the real thread and the other one was the parody
AND ONE OF THESE MINIGAMES IS THE ONLY GOOD SEWER LEVEL IN ANY VIDEOGAME.
NOT OK.
NOT NOT-BAD.
GOOD.
iirc the team was exhausted and on the verge of schism by that point after releasing 4 games in 4 years so it’s a more stripped-back product but i admire its boldness in totally rethinking the tone and atmosphere
reposting my favourite screenshot (from R&C3)
jak 2 had a cool sewer level though. you revisited it after you gained the ability to jetboard across the water and then drained it to uncover the pathway for an even later mission
i miss this whole era of third person platformy-shooty-collect-the-bits games like ratchet and clank, armed and dangerous, etc
remember the shark gun
I require more MDKlikes
Drives me crazy how they never revisit this even in the reboot/film tie in which is the origin story again. Ratchet and Clank just politely become friends just because. I think somewhere along the way the team figured the series was exclusively for children and wrongly assumed children can’t handle character conflict
Maybe that’ll happen if they ever get to make Ratchet Vs Clank.
Surprised the series never made an evil doppelganger of the two. I guess they play with this idea more generally in Rift Apart but unhinged sociopath Ratchet and Clank would be kinda a nice way to get them to reflect on their complete absence of conflict/arc.
In R&C3 Clank gets replaced by Evil Clank for about 25 minutes around the same point that you fight the Robot Christina Aguilera boss. When Clank shows up to knock out the evil version Ratchet’s response is “Ah I kind of figured it was an evil doppelganger situation, that was all really out of character for you.”