ISWT Review: Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal

 

 

 

So after buying Playstation all stars Battle Roayle I'm kind of on a massive sony binge.The Jak Series,The Killzone games and of course my favorite The Ratchet and Clank series.Oh man do I love these games.Well after three anyway.The First game had a few too many frustrating parts and with no weapon upgrades or nearly the quality in comedy It was a rough title.Not terrible just rough.The second title Going commando was a huge step up giving weapons an upgrade.It's an improvement to say the least and I do reccomend it.But I only recently played The first two on the HD collection for the original trilogy.The third game on the other hand I have alot of experience with.I got it as a kid and between the comedy,the amazing weapons and one of my favorite villains This game is amazing,but lemme start at the beginning.

 

 

 The main story is basically self contained.While some back stories like Quark's are nice to have it's nowhere near considered and really the main reason to play the other games first is A. To play them for yourself (Duh) or B for the Discounts you get on weapons from having save data from said previous games.It's basically A three fold story, First off An alien race being unleahsed on the galaxy called the tyrannoids by An Insane robot named Dr Nefarious.Round 2 being against a massive celebrity who spreads nefarious' word against organic beings.and round three against nefarious himself.It's simple but it all goes together quite well.for the sake of spoilers I won;t go too far into details but it's not really the story that drives you.It's the characters and the comedy.The characters are a bit cartoony and whatnot but they're well written in that they're one note but not beaten over your head to the point of annoyance.Used when can be used for a good joke.

Seriously I fucking love this guy.In Fact I prefer him Over Dr.Eggman.....Oh yes...I went there.

In fact two of the best Comedic relief characters ever Are in this game.The complete Idiot/Super hero Captain quark and the aforementioned Dr.nefarious.Now It may sound beyond cheesy with some of the names like Dr nefarious or The aforementioned robotic Celebrity Courtney gears,And trust me that is the point.These games have a very old school cartoony feel to them in terms of comedy and while that may result in a few groaners (emphasis on few)  alot of the old school cartoon humor is dead on and it's done perfectly.It can be polarizing but I myself love it.

While the graphics and soundtrack may be A dime a dozen (Not bad just average sans a few tracks on the soundtrack which are fantastic,namely the nefarious and courtney gears boss music.) the gameplay is a hell of alot of fun.Incredibly simplistic but well implemented 3rd person shooter.Made in large part by the weapon variety.My god does this game have great weapons.From robot body guards to a lava gun(Which originated in Ratchet 2) to the almighty RY3NO (Or rip you 3 new ones) The weapons make this game fun.The level up system and how varied the upgrades are give massive drive to using different weapons to see how crazy things could get.

But Ratchet 3 has something extra.The captain quark vid comics.While playing you'll run into Quark Vid comics which are side scrolling platforming and beat 'em up sections and while simplistic they are kick ass.They just add a nice bit of cheesy fun to the game that adds just a little kick to the game as is.It's what pushes this game into a really good place in my mind.

 

 

I ALMOST want a full maybe 10-15 dollar title of that stuff.Seriously It's pretty neat.

 

 

But let's be fair here.The gameplay really is driven by the weapons and the desire to level them up and see what they do.The actual gameplay is pretty generic as far as 3rd person shooters go.Not bad just generic.The story really is again just okay.It has a few moments you don't expect but past that it's pretty by the numbers and at times can be a little contrived.Really what drives this game isn't the base gameplay it's the unique gimmicks that make this game good.The ability to level weapons,your own health,The comedy,the characters,and the level design are what make this game good.It's a very polarizing game I think.Some people will love it for the little things it has others will find it generic for the big things.I myself love this game to death.It's very hard not to say it's my favorite game ever and I kinda want to but sonic generations still tops it.I really reccomend this game.

 

In Sane We Trust Review: Playstation all stars battle royale.

 

 

Well it was a weird road leading up to this one wasn't it? This game had so much oddness following it right from the very start.When we all saw this we all thought the same thing I guarentee you.

 

 

 

"So It's smash bros with sony characters....huh"

 

 

No one was really certain what to think of this game other then it was a massive clone of the super smash brothers series from nintendo.For those who don't know what the smash bros series is.....what the hell are you doing on a gaming blog site? But for the record it's a massive series of fighting games with the characters being from a multitude of nintendo franchises such as Mario from super mario,Link from legend of zelda,Ness from earthbound Etc. and these games are big.By large one of the biggest franchises in the history of fighting games.One of the reasons it's as big as it is now is due to the size of franchises is takes from as well as the gameplay that fans have stuck to very closely and agressivly and really there are only two other companies which even have characters rosters that could make a decent sized roster; Sega who have made use of it with the sonic and all stars racing games and Sony.

 

 

But oddly enough it's the roster that gains the most controversy.While most of the roster is Sony exclusives it includes The Big Daddy from the Bioshock franchise which started on the Xbox 360 and moved to sony as a multiplatformer.The Opposite of which is true for Heihachi from Tekken and Dante From DMC (A version of the character that is fan hated generally and I'm not opening that can of worms one way or another until I do a review on that myself.) Both games that started on Sony and moved to multiplatform.Not to mention for some reason they put in both a good and evil version of cole from Infamous for some reason.That combined with the lack of massive sony characters from the PS1 era and you have alot of people very confused and angry.But when it comes down to it does the game suffer because of it?

 

 

Let's start off with the most obvious,Gameplay.Unlike the smash series from which it's concept comes Battle Royale does not use the percent system (Attacking increases a a damage percent and with higher percent you fly farther resulting in a ring out) It does however use a special system which baffled me at first.You attack filling up a bar and once it's full you can use a special attack that differs from character to character.You can fill this bar up to three times giving you three different specials each being (supposedly) stronger depending on the higher the level.The ONLY way to kill someone (sans the medusa head weapon) Is with a special.I was very unsure of that decision at first.It siunded very gimmicky and just off but after playing the game it honestly works rather well sans some balancing issues (Example.Sweet tooth's level 1 special is a massive kick that travels a very small distance but is generally reliable to hit.Meanwhile his level 2 is a remote control missle that moves insanely slowly,turns like a drunken elephant,and leaves you completly open to be attacked while you're doing it.

 

In terms of just how combat feels it's alot more arcadey then smash if that makes sense.More about combos and feels a bit less weighted in attack.It's honestly a matter of opinion with which is better and I'm not going to say where Battle Royale fits in because I'm not opening that can of worms either.It's fine gameplay one way or another.

 

 

Though to be fair alot of concepts like Colonel Radec of Killzone's Level 3 is very close to Snakes Special from Smash bros. Brawl.There are a fair amount of these but there is only some much you can do I guess.

 

 

 So the gameplay is good and often satisfying if a bit unbalanced in the special system at times.How is the graphics then? I hesitate to say great but certainly good to look at.In both gameplay and In game cinematics the game looks quite good for what it needs to be but I have one major gripe with the opening and ending cinematics.They look very wrong in some cases.I mean not only is the look off but my god in some cases it just looks terrible.Sweet tooth is not meant to be seen in Non live action sequences.I'd put a pic here from one but just look it up on youtube if you're curious.I do wish they had actual game style cinematics for each game but that may have been a bit more work considering game engines and whatnot but nonetheless they're okay and have some good moments to be fair.Colonel Radec's ending looks pretty cool I think with how they use lighting for the final scene.

 

 

So gameplay,graphics,What about the sound quality? Well The quality is great and the tracks from the original games were nice choices but it really depends on what you thought of their soundtracks to start with.I really enjoy ratchet and clanks metropolis track but the hades track from God of war is kinda bland I think.Like I said it all depends on how you find the original tracks and whatnot but in and of itself it's fine.

 

There is one more thing I wanna mention which is the use of the franchises.Every stage starts off as a stage from a game.Let's use the Metropolis stage from ratchet and clank as an example.After a while Captain quark shows up and so does the hydra from god of war and it turns into a double themed stage.Every stage does this and it's just fun to see what kind of things will pop up in a killzone or twisted metal themed stage.But that's not all they do.The rivalry system which has two characters at random.Some make sense like ratchet and jak or Sweet Tooth and Kratos.And then there is Evil cole and fat princess or Colonel Radec and Sir Daniel.It's entertaining if a touch random.The attention to detail is fantastic.Alot of the smaller things you see can be just cool.Like the use of the jump panels in metropolis.

 

 

Because of this,the good enough graphics,the pretty damn good gameplay, The Opinion based soundtrack and the sheer amount of customizables(Things like victory music,Taunts,Openings and ending can be customized) and the fact that for the first two weeks the dlc that was announced will be free this game is a very good buy.It's your opinion whether to wait or not for a price drop but I paid full and I'm very content with what I got.

Pokemon Retrospective.Gen 2/Johto

 

My apoligies if I tend to exaggerate a bit here but I feel a bit strongly about this and all things considered.That plus the fact this is completly off the top of my head And I do exaggerate a bit so my apoligies.Oh and also team rocket in gen 2 suck.