Ratchet and Clank sucks

yeso

also forgot to mention, she pronounces “Clank” as “Kwank” because she’s a small child.

antillese

Man I post once in the Games you are Currently Playing thread and your forum buddy goonbag who you literally drew a forum avatar for comes out swinging with a sub-tweet style whole thread about how your opinion about Ratchet is wrong!!

I like it. New one has a few too many verbs though. Example: There is no difference between the grappling arm and the upgraded grappling arm because there isn’t a choice about how or when to use them. It’s just a yellow key/green key situation.

Another one is the fact you can run, dash, skate, and speed skate and you don’t really need to run or skate.

It’s a highly polished Saturday morning cartoon in both aesthetic and challenge. The series has had ups and downs over the years but they are overall 8/10s and not 7/10 Insert Credit games.

fetus8

antillese Rift Apart reminded me sooo much of a Saturday morning cartoon too.
Plus the darn game still feels like a PS2 game, in the best way possible. I don’t have a huge fondness for the series, but it was a ton of fun, and I enjoyed it enough to platinum the darn thing…

wickedcestus

I liked them a lot when I was in grade three! The game is linear, but the wide variety of weapons make for a sandbox-y experience. You could turn the enemies into sheep! (I think.) I put them in the same category of something like Destroy All Humans where you just boot up the PS2 as an eight year-old and mess around, and it doesn’t really matter if you accomplish anything.

saddleblasters

I haven’t played any of these games in years, but I like the idea of a cartoony Mario 64-style platformer with a bunch of outrageous guns (which might not actually be what Ratchet and Clank is). What do they do wrong? Are the level design and narrative just uninspiring?

goonbag

Ahh, what can I say? I had a couple drinks and was suddenly overtaken by an urge to state my feelings about Ratchet and Clank in a provocative manner. I’d keep it up but it’s too silly!

Rift Apart did feel to me like a relic of a bygone era, though, pitched as it seems to be for a late 90s-early 00s teen sensibility not shared by today’s kids (Oddworld seems to me to suffer from a flavour of the same problem). My nephew, who is 10 or 11, was at my house for a few hours yesterday, and he’s got an Xbox, so he was interested to play my PS5. But he showed zero interest in R&C, just wanted to play that Miles Morales. Go figure.

antillese

goonbag Ahh, what can I say? I had a couple drinks and was suddenly overtaken by an urge to state my feelings about Ratchet and Clank in a provocative manner. I’d keep it up but it’s too silly!

I read your post, and was suddenly overtaken by an urge to make you yet another avatar, in a provocative manner. Do with this what you feel you must…

pasquinelli

years go a couple rachet and kwanks found there way into my house and i put a lot of effort trying to get really into them, but it never took. i’m not assigning blame, just stating the facts as i see them.

rootfifthoctave

what the hell is becker

yeso

◉◉maru

Since this is a bit of a mean-spirited thread, to be perfectly honest, I was secretly hoping this embedded video titled Best of Becker [All Seasons] would reveal itself to last just five seconds.

yeso

mascot action platformer games seem to attract extremes of emotion for some reason. See also: discussion of Balan Wonderland on the podcast. I wonder what has a higher rate of failure: making a new mascot action platformer or opening a restaurant?

Gaagaagiins

yeso I wonder what has a higher rate of failure: making a new mascot action platformer or opening a restaurant?

This isn’t too stupid for the dirtbag but I don’t know how anyone would definitively answer it

Gaagaagiins

I think the good parts of the Ratchet and Clank games are not just the wacky weapons but that the wacky weapons also all have double wacky upgraded forms. How good a particular game in the series is I think rests very heavily on how well designed the weapon systems are, ’cause, uh, yeah, there’s not a whole lot going on otherwise. However, also, in practice this means you can spend what feels like a long amount of time on upgrading a weapon you don’t like using or that has weirdly small ammo capacity only to find that the upgraded form is a corny joke that doesn’t make the weapon more fun to use.

I think my feelings towards Ratchet and Clank are kind of like how Brandon and Tim talk about Call of Duty. It’s a way to just get to play a cute little videogame. They scratch those respective collect-a-thon and hunting down hidden doodads itches. Also, more than none of the corny jokes land.

saddleblasters

Gaagaagiins Which of them is the one to play then? I rented each of the first three ps2 games at various points, and I think I got farthest in the third one, but I don’t really remember much of any of them.

Gaagaagiins

saddleblasters Which of them is the one to play then? I rented each of the first three ps2 games at various points, and I think I got farthest in the third one, but I don’t really remember much of any of them.

The one with the graphics

antillese

So about 2 hours and 20 minutes into the 2021 top games podcast, Tim and Brandon had a short conversation about R&C. I think he said that it’s a pretty fun time and that it has the graphics.

Gaagaagiins The one with the graphics

👆 So agreeing with this one.

saddleblasters I rented each of the first three ps2 games at various points, and I think I got farthest in the third one, but I don’t really remember much of any of them.

The PS2 games get increasingly good. If you have never played one, I recommend skipping the PS2 ones now. If you do want to play a PS2 game, start with the second PS2 (Up your Arsenal) one as that’s the one that feels like they figured out the formula. The Third one (Going Commando) continues to refine it. And if you’re emulating, try to figure out how to use the same virtual memory card, because there are some fun extras in the game for carry-over saves.

You can skip Deadlocked. It was a good idea, but just didn’t quite work in execution.

Ratchet and Clank 2016 on PS4 (and 5!) is where I would suggest a new player start. If you are a PS5-haver, you got this game “Gratis” as part of the PS5 collection.

billy

saddleblasters The PS3 entries (Tools of Destruction / Quest for Booty / Crack in Time / Into the Nexus) are my favourites. Ignore the weird spin-offs and the soulless PS4 reboot.

2501

I’ve tried the demos for a couple of them and they always seem like… idk, big production, goes-down-easy, totally indistinct mediocrity. Jak & Daxter without the tonally elastic writing or cool setpiece ideas (I’m told Jak & Daxter has cool setpiece ideas). Then again I’m not really a platformer guy so idk what the appeal is for most games in this genre except Mario.

I invite more IC threads expressing displeasure with middling yet omnipresent games

Gaagaagiins

antillese Ratchet and Clank 2016 on PS4 (and 5!) is where I would suggest a new player start. If you are a PS5-haver, you got this game “Gratis” as part of the PS5 collection.

Honestly though, gotta disagree on this one. It has the graphics for the time period, but it is a relatively joyless rehash of the first game, in that sort of way where it really feels like a PS2 game in a bad way.

antillese

Gaagaagiins I hear what you’re saying and respect your opinion, but you don’t respect the fact that you gotta hold down that “strafe” button on the PS2 for the controls to feel like it’s at all a modern game. Just glue it down and you’ll be fine. Otherwise, you’ll get carpel tunnel syndrome, and you don’t want your fellow forum-goers to get that! They can’t respond to your posts if they do!

Agree it’s a reboot sometimes in the worst way, but I didn’t feel like it was joyless at all. And you don’t need to hold down the strafe button.

gunk_rider

Check this out:
Ratchet sucks AND Clank sucks.

goonbag

antillese I’m honoured.

Re-reading this thread I note that most of the posts defending R&C are along the lines of “I liked it as a kid” or “someone else said it’s okay”. So I guess my next drunk hater thread should be about Final Fantasy 😎