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    Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time

    Game » consists of 8 releases. Released Oct 27, 2009

    Time splits as A Crack In Time marks the end of the "Future" trilogy in the Ratchet & Clank franchise.

    bhlaab's Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time (PlayStation 3) review

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    • 1 out of 1 Giant Bomb users found it helpful.
    • bhlaab has written a total of 91 reviews. The last one was for Quest 64

    Highly Recommended

    Okay, so, at the end of Tools of Destruction Clank was taken away by aliens called the Zoni and now Ratchet is looking for him. It turns out that an alien gave Clank a soul because his destiny is to look after a giant space clock that controls time. The alien is... sort of Clank's father in a weird, abstract way? The bad guy from Up Your Arsenal wants to use the clock to do fairly nonspecific bad stuff. On his travels Ratchet meets another space cat who wants to use the clock to go back in time to save the space cat race even though the clock is not to be misued. It's... okay, I guess. The game feels like a modern CGI cartoon movie, but I greatly preferred it when the stories were very simple and irreverent. There are quite a few 'dramatic' moments that are a bit cringey, but it's fine. There are still some decent jokes here and there, at least.

    I mostly bring up the story because, since the two characters are separated, they both have very different gameplay styles. Ratchet's gameplay is a well-executed iteration on the series' bread and butter, which is going through cool platforming levels and shooting things with crazy weapons. Just about every aspect of this is improved upon. For example, you can now throw the wrench while moving (in every previous game you had to come to a stop) which is one of those small tweaks that dramatically improves the overall rhythm of the experience.

    The design of Ratchet's levels falls somewhere in the middle of the platformer-shooter spectrum. I greatly prefer when Ratchet & Clank games lean hard on its shooting (such as in Up Your Arsenal and the underrated Deadlocked). There are some moments of real intense action, but they're a bit few and far between for my tastes. That being said, there is a near-constant stream of highly enjoyable combat dished out at a masterful tempo. What helps is that the weapons on offer are superb. After the somewhat disappointing selection of guns in Tools of Destruction and Quest for Booty, Crack in Time is a real breath of fresh air with only a single weapon feeling like a standout dud. What it comes down to is that this game has around sixteen unique, creative, fun, and useful weapons in it.

    While Tools of Destruction had an entertaining, but economy-breaking modification and upgrade system for every single weapon, Crack in Time goes the smarter route. Every weapon still levels up with use, but the three most basic-premise guns (ie: pistol, grenade, shotgun) have toggle-able mods that you can find through exploration or by completing challenges. For example, the pistol lets you decide whether you want rapid-fire or a Mega Man-style charge shot. Each weapon has three slots for modification-- barrel, ammo type, and special-- allowing you to mix and match. You can make a shotgun with a wide spread and stun ammo, or with tight spread and penetrative ammo, and so on. These mods are not permanent, either, so you're free to play around with it. You can swap on the fly, but it requires going into the pause menu and digging through a somewhat cumbersome inventory. So while it is possible to adjust for changing combat situations, it's not particularly feasible to do so.

    Gadgets, another series staple, are better integrated. Gone are the lame 'lockpicking' minigames that have killed momentum since the very first game in the series. Now every gadget directly interacts with the world. These include the standard grappling hook, a puzzle-oriented gun that sucks up and shoots elements such as water and oil, and rocket boots which both replace the hover ability (since Clank is no longer around to have propellers pop out of his head) and give you a speed boost if you hold down the R2 button. The hover boots are the biggest new addition to the game, and possibly the most underdeveloped. Equipping them intentionally makes your turning radius wide and your traction floaty. More of a nuisance than a trade-off. Sometimes the camera just will not cooperate with the boots as it constantly tries to shift to Ratchet's backside-- usually a good idea, but disastrous in the few times it's not a good idea. Despite this, they are a great addition if only because it makes traversal and exploration much less tedious than it would otherwise be. I just wish the implementation was a bit friendlier. Gadgets are now bound to the d-pad instead of taking up precious slots in your weapon wheel, which is another one of those small additions that turns out to be a godsend.

    The Ratchet series has always tried to include some form of spaceship gameplay, usually in the form of half-baked Star Fox-style missions that tended to be, in practice, more time consuming than enjoyable. Here, instead, outer space acts as a hub where you can go to the next level, run optional fetch quests for NPCs in exchange for bolts (money), or drop down on small Mario Galaxy-style planetoids for minor side challenges. I can take or leave the fetch quests, but these planetoids are great, fun little diversions that add up to a lot. There is some spaceship combat in these hubs, but it's all oriented on a 2-D plane, making it very simple but incredibly manageable. If the hub is simply not for you, you can always hit select and bring up a map to just warp to the next level immediately. That's nice.

    Now onto Clank. This series has always had solo Clank missions, and they've always been... not bad, but just kind of nothing. Wastes of time, really. You'd have these Pikmin-like dudes and either there would be an enemy or a door. If there's an enemy, you would select "kill enemy". If there's a door, you'd select "open door". That sort of thing. Well all that stuff is gone. Instead you're made to solve some pretty intense time-oriented puzzles based on recording your own actions, going back in time, and then co-operating with your past selves. It all feels very Portal inspired (it was 2009, after all) and I have to say the puzzles are of a high enough quality to make that comparison flattering. While they aren't prohibitively difficult, even for kids, I definitely felt like I accomplished something whenever I completed one. Unfortunately there are only a handful of these puzzles in the game. If you just want to get back to shooting things you can skip every puzzle, although you miss out on a big payout of bolts if you do so.

    All in all A Crack in Time isn't my favorite game in the series (that'd still be Up Your Arsenal) but man is it up there. Maybe #2? It's the best one in the so-called "Future Trilogy" on the Playstation 3. I highly recommend this game. I loved it.

    Other reviews for Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time (PlayStation 3)

      Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time 0

       I feel like I'm in a somewhat awkward position in regard to this game's place in the series. I think in some ways, it's an improvement on the last full release, Tools of Destruction. But that's true of almost every sequel they've done, and this is now the fourth console game to use pretty much the exact same formula, which was created in Going Commando six years ago. I still had a ton of fun with it, but it doesn't feel as fresh anymore.  It's not exactly a knock on the game, because it's not...

      12 out of 12 found this review helpful.

      Cracking over time 0

        Back in the 2002 action platformer Ratchet and Clank, it was revealed that the lovable dorkbot Clank was created in a robot war machine factory. Clank got ejected from that place and wound up becoming BFFs with the furry toughguy Ratchet, and later thwarted Clank’s robot mechanical brothers to neatly wrap up that story arc. But developers Insomniac were jonesing to create an origin story that could span three games, where Clank has some kind of important fate within the grand scheme of the uni...

      27 out of 31 found this review helpful.

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