Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus

Ratchet & Clank occupies a strange part of the video game players' minds in this day and age, where each new iteration becomes less and less observed. Despite being as good as it ever was, and that there are a large number of people who harbor a great fondness for the series as one of the PS2's early breakout hits, it seems to have fallen off everyone's radars. An imminent multimedia relaunch of the franchise, which promises a feature-length CGI movie in tandem with a PS4 revamp of the very first game with all the new plot changes the movie brings, has to an extent reawakened the public consciousness of the Lombax mechanic-turned-cosmic hero and his lovably dorky logical foil and sometimes-backpack, though they might be surprised to learn that the most recent game in the series came out as recently as the end of 2013.

Ratchet & Clank: Nexus, or Into the Nexus depending on the territory, was that 2013 game. Intended to be the capstone for the PS3-based Ratchet & Clank Future arc set in the Polaris galaxy, Nexus was to tie up all the loose ends of that arc to free the franchise for its imminent reboot. What Nexus feels instead, however, is a perfunctory and surprisingly slight send-off that doesn't so much work as the explosive finale to a "second season" of otherwise exemplary quality, but as one last mini-outing for the duo and their Polaris galaxy friends before the Great Clock rewound everything back to the beginning.

The most damning aspect of Ratchet & Clank: Nexus is just how throwaway it all seems. It pares down the content to a meager five planets (including the customary Coliseum planet) and removes all the spaceship sections, bonus areas or secondary gameplay modes that became a recurring motif for the series from the second game, Going Commando, and thereafter. The game is light on characterization and plot, choosing to spend very little time on series favorites like Captain Qwark or its new villains: two interdimensional refugees who grew up as isolated orphans longing to return to their "Netherverse", despite the clearly hostile intentions of the leader of that place. That isn't to say that the quality of the writing and the series' charming incidental humor has taken a hit; simply that there's a lot less of it than there normally is. An example of the game's still-sharp sense of comedy can be found on the foreboding planet of Silox: The game initially presents its ethereal foes as "ghosts", establishing that the governing body of the star system the game is set in was evacuated for fear of these unknown, spectral "Nethers". When exploring the abandoned Weeblesnog City on Silox, with its flooding and eerily dilapidated buildings and transport hub, the player overhears the emergency broadcasts of the town's mayor telling his constituents to evacuate. As the player keeps going they'll overhear the mayor insisting that it was the ghosts that robbed the local bank of all its money and that it would be prudent not to investigate it further, and that flesh-eating ghouls have since also occupied the hidden underground tunnel between the mayor's office and the bank vault, which also doesn't exist.

The weapons, which are always the highlight of any Ratchet & Clank game, don't disappoint quite to the same degree. The game has a total of twelve, not including Ratchet's omni-present Omniwrench, and there's enough disparity between each of them to provide the player with all the strategic options they need. As well as the usual pistol, shotgun, grenade and rocket launcher ersatzes, the player can also enjoy the reappearance of the sentry "Option" Mr. Zurkon who, after a few upgrades, is joined by Zurkon Jr. and Mrs. Zurkon to form a family unit of robotic bodyguards with monotone quips concerning homicide. The game also introduces the Singularity Grenade, which at first acts as a means to keep enemies trapped in one spot so they can be defeated with other weapons though eventually becomes a devastating weapon in its own right; and the Winterizer, which turns enemies into harmless snowmen that drop presents when defeated, to tie into the game's holiday release date. Though there's fewer weapons than usual, there's enough of a selection to keep any Ratchet & Clank fan satisified.

Likewise, despite a new weapon upgrade system that uses a separate collectible currency and a new gadget that allows players to traverse across gravity wells by activating purple "departure" and "arrival" terminals, there's not a whole lot that's original with Into the Nexus. A single level that offers an old-school 3D platformer approach with an open-world filled with valuable key items that the recurring smuggler character demands before he deigns to help Ratchet and Clank is the only significant departure here in terms of level design. The game also introduces another new mini-game in which Clank is sent off on his own in a 2D platforming environment: the goal this time is to manipulate gravity with the player's analog stick in the four cardinal directions, a puzzle mechanic that would be seen again in this year's Blackhole. As with previous Clank solo missions, it's a puzzle game departure with a neat premise, but the game only has enough room for six instances of it and they're all fairly easy and don't really progress beyond moving boxes around.

Still, there's something to be said for a compact game experience that doesn't overstay its welcome. Nexus was released with a smaller price tag than its predecessors, and should probably be treated the same as the other smaller adventures in the series such as Quest for Booty and Size Matters (with perhaps a few bonus points for avoiding yet another awkward innuendo title, in this case probably involving the word "nethers"). If you were to see the game in the PSN store or a reduced-price retail copy in the wild and were the type of person to have a hectic responsible adult life with scant free time for gaming, you might appreciate that this game will only ask for about five well-paced hours of your time. Longtime fans of the series will be less thankful, I feel, due to the dearth of additional modes and features and some very sparse plotting and characterization. It feels significantly less of a game than A Crack in Time does, to compare it to its immediate forebear. If a compact, streamlined but still largely competent Ratchet and Clank outing sounds appealing to you, then I can recommend it. To everyone else: this is one you can safely skip.