Sunday, August 24, 2014

Hours of glory with the Ratchet & Clank HD Collection


(YouTube Screenshot)
Insomniac Games has created multiple game titles that brought both excitement and creativity to Sony's consoles. The Spyro series allows players to play as a fire spitting dragon that thrust his horn into evil baddies in clever designed levels. Eight years later, the Resistance series was introduced to the gaming world, and is well known for it's unique weapon design. Between the birth of these two popular series is, Insomniac's action platformer series, Ratchet & Clank. My first Ratchet & Clank game I played through and completed was Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction on the PlayStation 3. I instantly felt in love with it's combat system, visuals, challenging levels, sense of humor, and it's charming dynamic duo. I missed out of all the Ratchet & Clank games on the PlayStation 2, so I decided to do a good deed and play the entire HD collection.

 The HD collection includes titles from the original series such as: Ratchet & Clank, Ratchet & Clank 2: Going Commando and Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. All games are running in 60 frames per second at 1080p. In the first out of the three, the development team done a outstanding job establishing a well combat system with over thirty weapons to use to take down various enemies. In the beginning of the game, you start out with the OmniWrench 8000, a wrench that is use for both melee and solving small puzzles, and the Bomb Glove, a grenade thrower. As you advance through the game, you are introduce to multiple weapons and gadgets.

 After completing Ratchet & Clank and jumping straight into it's sequel, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, I immediately noticed the improvements Insomniac Games made from the first game. Everything from the user interface, controls, new weapons and gadgets made the experience even better. In this game, Ratchet has the ability to participate in mini games in order to earn extra bolts. These mini games are, hover bike races, arena battles, and spaceship battles. After defeating enemies, Ratchet gains experience which extends his health meter and also, levels up his weapons, ultimately becoming more stronger. The small things really made Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando my favorite among the three titles. I thought it was a smart design choice to pause the game while the player choose weapons in the quick select menu. This design choice was found only in the second game.

 The third and final game in the collection is, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. The great combat, challenging levels, Clank's segments, and humor are all found in Up Your Arsenal. What differentiates the third game from the others is, players can play as Captain Qwark in 2D side-scrolling levels which reveals the history between Captain Qwark and Dr. Nefarious. In addition, the game offers a online mode as well. Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal was the first out of both the original series and the Future series to have a online mode. Overall, the Ratchet & Clank HD Collection is a great collection to own in your PlayStation 3 video game library. I'm truly impress that these games still holds up today, and I highly recommend it.