Ratchet & Clank Collection

Ratchet and Clank is a good port. After hearing that Mass Media, the same developers who ported Jak and Daxter to Vita, were handling the original Ratchet and Clank trilogy I was worried. Gratefully the main concern I had about the frame rate was unnecessary as all of the games run at a solid 30FPS with it rarely dipping at all. The cutscenes and audio quality however don't fare as well as the cutscenes are compressed down from the PS2 version and have not been touched at all, however this is not much of a problem as most other cutscenes occur in actual gameplay using the game engine and the majority of the low quality cutscenes are designed to be like early 2000 TV snippets complete with scan lines (but in space) and video recordings. Looking at them in this way helps alleviate some of the problems you may have when you are watching them but it will still degrade your experience regardless. The worst aspect if this port has to be the audio, the actual quality is pretty great (other than in the aforementioned cutscenes where it suffers from being compressed quite badly) but some sounds frequently just stop playing (particularly the background music) and in one case forced me to play an entire stage on mute due to an irritating scratching sound that was being made. I could not figure out why it was being made and could not think of how it could of been intentional.

Considering the lesser amount of physical button inputs the Vita has the games controls are passable and are fitted to the Vita well, however the controls have a rather problematic but unavoidable issue with strafing, an element that every average player will probably use. To activate the strafe movement mode you have to use press and hold the rear touchpad and due to its occasional unresponsiveness has varying negative effects on each part of the trilogy. The first game has a lack of any real indicator of whether or not you are actually strafing and you may find yourself going in the wrong direction however the ability to strafe is unlocked late into the game, preventing what could of otherwise been a disaster. The second game has strafing unlocked right at the start and is taken advantage of in the combat, fortunately it is much easier to activate but I used it so much that I held Vita in a semi restrictive way throughout the majority of the game. The third game thankfully has an optional auto strafe mode that removes all the problems I had with strafing even if it did make me switch back and forth between standard and auto strafe to do the more platforming intensive sections.

Graphically I would compare it to a PS2 game on Vita rather than a HD remaster ported to Vita with the visual slightly benefitting from the smaller screen. The art style stands the test of time well and the only gripe I have is I wish the edges of the character models were a bit smoother.

Overall the Vita version is pretty good bar a few problems and is certainly not the definitive way of playing the trilogy but still manages to stand on its own well. The digital version of the trilogy supports cross buy and each game can be downloaded individually or in one app.