Size does matter, but not when it comes to games.
Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters Review
The Ratchet and Clank series has been around for 8 years now. Insomniac really haven’t done much to change the (for the most part) winning formula that is the Ratchet and Clanks experience. Every game has always managed to create a very fun and challenging experience filled with great characters, outrageous weapons and original gadgets. The pinnacle of the series for me was RAC2, this expanded on the weapons, added the awesome space combat sections and had much larger worlds to explore. The upgrading was spot on in that game, it struck the perfect balance of giving you a wide variety of things to upgrade without giving you enough items to alter your natural play-style.
I have played every Ratchet and Clank apart from the 2 recent future instalments. That’s something that really puzzles me actually, stating Ratchet and Clank is set in the future is like saying Medal of Honour is set in WW2. Anyway, Tools of Destruction is the last game I played, I enjoyed it but it really lost that perfect balance of giving me weapons that I wanted to upgrade. Instead I was just run down with so many weapons and gadgets I wasn’t sure which ones to use. That aspect is why Size Matters is simply a better Ratchet and Clank game than any I played past the second one. Oh yeah, and there is an awesome little Lemmings mini-game homage. They need to make that into a full game, they really do.
The core structure of Size Matters is the same as usual, you begin the game with a standard pea-shooter and your trusty wrench. From there the usual chain of events unfolds, you are double crossed somehow and then Ratchet vows revenge and you uncover the mystery and defeat some evil dude. The only returning character (besides the obvious) is captain Qwark, he is entertaining in his usual way and still remains one of the most underrated game characters of all time.
The biggest draw with every Ratchet and Clank game is the outrageous arsenal you’ll get throughout your journey. This is something that, again is done better in Size Matters than any recent instalment. Every weapon has a use and above all every one of them is just fun to use. This speaks for the quality of the weapons as much as it does the visuals in the game. The backgrounds aren’t as sharp as their PS2 counter-parts (cut is some slack, it is on the PSP) but everything else looks incredible. No, not because it is on a handheld, it just looks incredible.
The only real downside to the game is the length, due to this being a handheld there isn’t any of the exploring that made the second game so great. There are only 8 planets and one of them is just one race mission. This is disappointing, but again, you can’t expect a full 20 + level experience on a handheld system.
The best thing about Size Matters is that it feels like they stripped away all the stuff that diluted previous instalments. The weapons are awesome, the gadgets are awesome, the levels are stunning and above all it is just a ton of fun to play. The game knows it’s running on the PSP, it doesn’t try to over-do anything, it realises what the PSP can do and it does it perfectly. Recommending this to fans of Ratchet and Clank is a given, however if you only got into the series with the future trilogy this might not be your thing. Size Matters feels like a giant nod to the first 2 games of the PS2 instalments, almost as if it was made by fans of those games. Either way this game deserves a look, the sheer amount of fun that can be had is amazing, and the fact that all this has been crammed into a handheld game makes it all the more enjoyable.
