Why? Because it speaks to the core of the gameplay. Strip away the platforming, the inventive mini-games and the gadgets, and Ratchet & Clank is about two things – destroying stuff and collecting stuff, and smashing up crates gives you both those things in one. They explode in a joyous shower of bolts, the currency of the series, which you can then spend on bigger guns to create even bigger explosions. It's the cycle of life. Sunrise, sunset.
Erm, yeah.
Anyway, R&C may be all about having your way with crates and loving every minute of it, but that's common knowledge. What a lot of people may not realise is just how important story and characters are to this series as well. And that's where having moxie ('the ability to face difficulty with spirit and courage' – thanks Free Dictionary) comes in. A Crack in Time doesn't piss-fart around – this is Ratchet's biggest challenge yet. His last two adventures have led to this, and the future of his family and the Lombaxes, not to mention that of the Universe, hangs in the balance. As usual, the story is told with charm and humour through some fantastically animated cutscenes and amusing in-game conversations, and really provides a great framework for the action.
Speaking of which, while A Crack in Time builds on what has come before, it also – as you'd expect - has quite a few new tricks up its sleeve. Ratchet's gameplay is a great blend of fully fledged levels and smaller bite-size challenges. Regions of explorable space are unlocked sector by sector, and in addition to story locations – generally planets or space stations – the inky black is also littered with other challenges you can choose to do while tooling about in Ratchet's ship. You'll encounter hostile fleets to dogfight with, stranded vehicles that need towing and countless planetoids with combat and platform challenges. One may charge you with killing 60 enemies as you run (literally) around its surface, while another may take you through a gauntlet of familiar platforming tricks and traps. You'll be rewarded, not just with bolts, but other collectables, such as mods for your weapons or Zonis, which help upgrade your ship.
Then there are Ratchet's Gadgets, such as the Hoverboots, which let him zip along a few centimetres off the ground and slow his descent in the air. These are capitalised on by levels with speed boost ramps and large open areas where he can use them for quickly getting around. They can be a little unwieldy to control at times, but are a good addition. Another new inclusion is the OmniSoaker, which lets Ratchet suck up water, nectar and oil, each of which has its own puzzle solving relevance. We use the word 'puzzle' pretty lightly by the way, as you'll never be puzzling over anything for more than a second or two. Partly because the difficulty is pitched a little low, and partly because the game insists on telling you what to do a lot of the time.
Even so, they're good inclusions and fit in nicely with Ratchet's normal running, jumping, grappling and shooting gameplay. Clank also gets kitted out in some new gameplay duds. Not only does he find himself in the home of the Zonis – the Great Clock, which is located at exactly the centre of the Universe (give or take a few metres), but it turns out he has a pretty significant role to play in this place. We won't say any more obviously, but what this means in gameplay terms is that Clank gains some nifty time-related powers. He can throw out a large bubble of slow time, for instance, and he has a Chrono Sceptre, with which he can bonk enemies on the head, as well as use it to rewind time to repair any damage done to the Great Clock by Dr Nefarious – the villain of the piece.
Cooler still, however, is his ability to use Time Pads to create multiple versions of himself. This allows the player to record Clank doing things – stepping on switches to open doors or raise/lower platforms, and use those recordings to complete sequences to get through to the next area. These start out simple – make a recording of Clank moving to and standing on a switch so you can go through the now-open door, but become a bit more complex when you have three Time Pads to work with. They never quite get hard enough – a separate mode of challenges would have been awesome – but are satisfying nonetheless.
So Ratchet and Clank have their own separate gameplay thing going on throughout A Crack in Time, and both – gratifyingly – are really entertaining. The lion's share of the game, however, will be spent as Ratchet and that's for good reason, as he's all about combat that ramps up steadily over the course of the game, which is basically R&C's raison d'etre. As the game progresses you'll unlock new weapons at a steady rate, level up those weapons through use, and earn all sorts of mods for them, not to mention buying new armour, upgrading your ship and unlocking new gadgets. The progression really is great - the gameplay never stands still.
Not all the weapons hit the mark – we didn't really think much of the Tesla Spikes or Dynamo of Doom, for instance, but there are so many that a few average inclusions really don't damage things. Who could care less that the SixAxis controls for the Dynamo of Doom electricity ball is a bit wonky when you're running around with fully levelled up Constructo Bombs kitted out with proximity triggers and a Skyburst payload? Or unleashing Zurkon the Destroyer, a little assault hoverbot, to fight alongside you? Or timing when you let loose with the deadly mating call of the Sonic Eruptor - a genetically mutated Zenogote bioweapon – based on its breathing patterns? Or jumping about like a madman firing Buzz Blades? Or tossing out a Groovitron Globe to force your enemies to dance? You get the idea.
The weapons don't always feel like they're part of a set, but they're great fun to play with nonetheless, particularly as you're often pitted against large numbers of enemies in quite open areas. And yes, the gladiatorial contests are back, natch. Probably the biggest weakness of the weapons is that if you play it smart you won't ever be truly challenged. Sure, you might die once or twice, but every battle is easily surmountable – bosses included. This goes for the wider game too. It's hugely enjoyable, but your platforming or puzzle solving skills will never really be pushed, and the game seems determined to spell things out for you a lot of the time too.
To be honest, this isn't a huge problem, just a mild disappointment, and an indication that Insomniac is keen to lure new players to the series by pitching things a little younger than the old guard might want. Another example of this is Dr Nefarious, who is annoyingly overacted. We get it – he's quick to anger and the kind of villain who screams every sentence and jumps about like a mad-bot, but did you have to dial it up quite that much? The result isn't that funny and has no subtlety whatsoever – he's just a funny robot for kids to laugh at. Thankfully the rest of the cast is engaging.
Other aspects of the game have caveats too. The visual design is largely very good, but on a technical level the engine is still a bit behind the pack, so some areas look much better than others. It seems to struggle a bit with organic matter like plants and textures with any level of detail, so don't let the tropical technicolour first world, and its ugly race known as the Fungoids, turn you off. That's the engine at its worst. Anything man-made or flat shaded looks great, so give the game a futuristic city with blue neon signs and spotlights, hovercars zipping about the place, and – importantly – plain surfaces with simple designs, and you're up and running. Give it a ramshackle desert town perched amongst arid rocky hills and you'll have no complaints. Travel inside Clank's brain for a training sequence and you'll discover a stark white world, where memories are projected onto screens and where platforms comprised of hundreds of grey and blue blocks undulate gently, before rising to create a level surface as you walk across them. Gorgeous.
Animations are first rate too, with a huge amount of polish evident in every aspect. Ratchet and Clank's movements are super smooth, while the game incorporates an old school elasticity in enemies and objects to give them more character. Clank can knock back energy balls fired by mounted cannons, for instance, which results in the cannon platform flipping over to give him a surface to jump to. The way it's executed, however, is comical, with the movement of the platform more like a startled jellyfish than a hunk of metal. The weapon videos are a real treat too, and are presented in a highly stylised way – reminiscent of Ren & Stimpy, actually.
