Time Warp Review!! (Original) Ratchet and Clank!!

With the new movie just around the corner and a new game that retells their story, let’s take a look back at the original Ratchet and Clank. This is Devildriver1313 telling you to enter the worm hole for another Time Warp Review!

The Insomniac Games action title tells the story of a young Lombax named Ratchet who dreams of one day becoming a Space Ranger like his hero, the famous Captain Qwark, and his robot partner Clank who enlists Ratchet’s help to stop the evil Chairman Drek of the Blarg race who plans to create a new planet for his species by destroying other planets in the process. Ratchet uses a variety of weapons in his fight against the Blarg. Weapons such as the “OmniWrench 8000”, a standard melee weapon with a variety of uses such as interacting with puzzles in the environment, and the Bomb Glove, a short-range grenade thrower. As missions are completed across the game’s various planets, more weapons and gadgets become available, including the Blaster, an automatic pistol; the Pyrocitor, a flamethrower; and the Suck Cannon, a vacuum gun, which sucks up smaller enemies and converts them into projectiles. Weapons are either found, or can be bought with bolts, the game’s form of currency, adding to the game’s role playing aspect.

Ratchet and Clank has been compared in similarity to the Naughty Dog action platformer Jak and Daxter. Well, there’s a good reason behind that. While developing Ratchet and Clank, Insomniac Games was asked by Naughty Dog if they would be interested in sharing the game technology used in Naughty Dog’s Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, asking that Insomniac in turn share with them any improvements that were made. Insomniac agreed, resulting in most of the Ratchet & Clank engine technology being developed in-house by Insomniac, but some very important renderers were those developed by Naughty Dog. This helped in giving Insomniac Games a leg up and allowed them to draw the enormous vistas in the game. This is way Ratchet and Clank is so visually stunning. Each area of the game is incredibly detailed coupled with a smooth frame rate. The game made it to Sony’s “Greatest Hits” category for the Playstation 2 with over 2 million units sold to date.

Ratchet and Clank was praised by critics for its excellent graphics, varied gameplay and tight controls. The graphics were considered high quality for PS2 games of the time. The use of weapons in the game over simple melee made it stand out amongst other platformer titles. To this day, Ratchet and Clank still remains quite simply one of the best platform games on the PS2.