Ratchet: Deadlocked

Ratchet: Deadlocked was not part of the Ratchet & Clank HD Collection, but they did end up porting it eventually and throwing it onto PSN as a standalone download. Now, the HD Collection had its problems, but for the most part they were minor aesthetic bugs and you had to know what you were looking for. The HD port of Deadlocked is another story. Within the first twenty minutes you'll see the main villain's gums and teeth clipping through the front of his face. You'll also see a cinematic camera clip halfway through Ratchet's head.

And these are during cutscenes. It's not like I was doing something weird, this is just what happens when you put the controller down and watch. It's really embarrassing to see, and really highlights how quick and sloppy a port job this is-- and on a Sony first party! While these two events are fortunately as egregious as the graphical glitches get, there are many minor issues. Clank's eyelids are consistently very clippy, and I even caught the little rascal T-Posing in the background of another cutscene.

If it was just cringey graphical bugs that would be one thing, but gameplay is affected by the port as well. Massive fits of slowdown are quite common when a lot of action is happening, which was not true with the HD Trilogy OR the original PS2 version of Deadlocked. During one challenge the framerate went so low that the AI broke and one of the monsters froze in place and could not be killed. Furthermore, the game has a tendency to 'hitch' up whenever weapons are switched. Of course, bringing up the weapon select wheel pauses the game anyway, but this hitching is most noticeable in moments where the game automatically switches your equipment for you, such as when jumping onto or off of grind rails or swinging from grapple points. Say, those sound like the types of moments you absolutely would not want to have the game hitch up and mess with your timing! Yuck.

Okay, so porting issues aside, the game is pretty alright. I like the premise-- a media mogul who specializes in trashiness kidnaps heroes (such as Ratchet) and forces them to compete in a televised gladiatorial arena. The mogul is a sharkman named Gleeman Vox (lots of "Vox News" jokes) and his interests are primarily in merchandising his current 'over' guy so he sandbags everyone else-- especially Ratchet. It's clever and fun to subvert the bad guy's operations from within. It's also an excuse to get rid of everything besides combat arenas and battlefields. And that suits me fine, I suppose. I didn't exactly miss the tedious lockpicking minigames, puzzles intended for seven year olds, and undercooked race courses. That said, they go too far in trying to make this one a "true" shooter. The level design is consequently much more boring than it ever has been before. There are no secret areas and only the barest minimum of traversal challenges. Terrain is generally very flat and open, and as a result combat sections tend to feel quite samey. That might also be due to a dearth of enemy types. There are about ten-ish enemies in the entire game, while other Ratchet games have around two or three new enemies per level, even if they did fit into common archetypes. The enemies that are in Deadlocked aren't very interesting, either, and often feel a bit cheap. I was playing on a difficulty a step above 'normal' this time around, so that could be my fault.

Weapons are similarly lacking in imagination. There are much fewer than other games in the series, around ten, and they aren't very creative. There's dual pistols, a shotgun, a rocket launcher, a sniper... it just kind of goes on like that. Very typical stuff. There is an interesting two-tiered modding system in place, however. "Alpha Mods" unlock as you level up and allow you to customize the basic properties of your weapons (ROF, knockback, mag size, etc) while. "Omega Mods" attempt to fill out the lacking weapon roster. You purchase them with money and they apply specialized effects, such as chain lightning or bomb clusters. The mods don't really give the weapons the extra oomf they need, but it at least partially covers for the lack of ambition in the default loadout.

During gameplay you are teamed up with two robot companions. I'm not a fan of AI teammates in games. The thing is, I'm playing the game so I can shoot things, and I don't appreciate the game shooting things for me... especially when they're stealing XP! But aside from that the bot buddies look like enemies at a glance, which can be confusing, and sometimes they fly in front of your aim. I don't think they block your shots, but blocking my view is bad enough! You can order the bots around with the d-pad, although it's usually just to do context-specific things that only exist so that you have something to order the robots to do. I do appreciate them being able to turn the otherwise slow, annoying bolt cranks so that I don't have to.

All the fundamentals aside, there are some things about Deadlocked that I just don't get at all. How come Clank can't be on Ratchet's back? What is it about being in a gladiatorial combat arena that makes hovering off-limits? Why put Ratchet in a head-to-toe robot suit like the Master Chief? The Master Chief wears a suit because he's a nothing character without it. When you have a crazy cartoon mascot you gain nothing by covering their face up! Imagine if they made a show called 'Popeye 2125' and it's Popeye in the future except it's just a robot and it's like, "Where's Popeye? All I see is a spider robot," and the answer is, "Popeye's consciousness was uploaded to the spider robot's CPU. It's Popeye it just doesn't look like Popeye whatsoever." What a weird, counter-intuitive time the nu metal mid-00s were.

The game's alright, but it's not Peak Ratchet. The PS3 version is kind of busted in a pretty shameless way. The End.