While many gamers might have their doubts about the transition of the Ratchet & Clank series onto a handheld, let me tell you right away that the duo’s debut on the PSP is a very good one and sure to please fans of this series.
Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters features the same platformer style and shooting action that made the previous games famous in a brand new sci-fi setting. The story begins as Ratchet and his little metal buddy Clank take a vacation from adventuring, only to be interrupted by a little girl wanting to see some action in order to take some pictures. While showing off to the little girl, she ends up being kidnapped. The reasons why are for you to discover, but the plot proves to be much more complex that it originally seemed.
In this interplanetary adventure, you get to play as both Ratchet and Clank, but in very distinguished ways.
Ratchet is his usual self, with an arsenal of weapons and different attacks that allow for some very cool environmental puzzle solving. Some of his weapons are directly related to level progression. There’s the Hypershot, a grappling hook to swing across great gaps, the Omniwrench to turn bolt cranks and the Sprout-o-Matic, a sort of watering can pistol that makes little plants follow you around or plant themselves to help out with some obstacles. The plants were the coolest, since they’d follow Ratchet after being watered and then would transform into ladders, toss him in the air or grow berry bombs to break walls with.
And then there’s an array of bombs, ammo and weapon upgrades available from vending machines spread out across the galaxy, and switching between them is fairly easy during combat, with just a press of the Triangle button and a touch of the analog stick. The weapons also level up as you use them, so the more you use one, the better.
Ratchet will also come across pieces of armor (suits, gloves, gloves and helmets) that you can mix and match according to the situations.
Now and again Ratchet will have some hoverboard racing competitions to win for prizes and bolts (the game’s currency), and controlling him during a race is easy enough. Move with the D-pad or analog stick, jump with X, use your boost with Square. Another cool mini-game with Ratchet is the Grind Lock, where you shrink and go into a lock to open it, but while inside you grind on a series of rails and have to avoid obstacles and deactivate traps. It’s a lot of fun.
With Clank, you play in a completely different manner. While the little guy can still attack on his own, the stages where you get to use him offer more of a brainteaser. Clank can command Gadgetbots to do his bidding. This happens because the bots are on Clanks’s frequency, which allows him to just issue simple commands to tell them to follow, wait, enter or attack. These orders are given the same way Ratchet picks his weapon, using the Triangle button and analog stick, but they are only available once a Gadgetbot has been released and is in range. Gadgetbots can also be tossed around to press switches or reach other platforms.
Clank has a couple of mini-games. One of them is a robot destruction derby where you must destroy the competition. The other is a lot like Lemmings, where you must guide the constantly moving little bots to safety, while issuing simple commands such as Bridge, Swing, Electrify and Detonate.
The game also comes equipped with four options of multiplayer games: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Iron Lombax Challenge.
Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters looks great. The cutscenes are very sharp and well-rendered (although the loading made them chop a bit), the level design is great, and the particle effects are extremely well done. The one bit that seemed very superfluous was the intro for starting and abandoning a race, you get stuck with a little scene of Ratchet on a hoverboard for a few seconds that seem to take forever. Beautifully animated, nonetheless.
The sound is fantastic, be it the music or the voices. I particularly enjoyed the voice acting and the dialogs, since there’s a good sense of humor throughout the game. As for sound effects, some things could have used a little more work, such as a character taking damage and maybe an alert sound for being dangerously low on life.
There really isn’t much to complain about Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters. It comes through as a great action game that fits the PSP really well, and the different types of gameplay with the two characters and some mini-games offer enough variety to keep us interested for long periods of time.
Special thanks to Alyssa Casella and SCE for providing a copy of this title.