I’m not a big platforming fan, in fact there are probably 3 platforming franchises that I’d jump on a release of; Mario, Sly Cooper, and Ratchet and Clank…

The story was pretty complete, with no notable wholes that needed plugging for the end of the trilogy. laugh out loud moments scattered throughout, in a silly comedy style that Insomniac and the R&C series is well known for at this point. The story that is told would stand up on his own, without the previous chapters, however there is a cleverly told recap with one of the recurring characters to catch up newcomers. The story from my perspective wasn’t as deeply hooked into the previous episodes as I would have liked. The antagonist in A Crack in Time, is one that was introduced in “Up your Arsenal” for Playstation 2, which was before my time with this series. I didn’t find there was much introduction to him, there were however a few comedic breaks with Nefarious that I felt were back references so if you’re a long time fan of this series on multiple platforms, then you may get more out of this than the rest of us. The other gripe I have is some of the in-game cut scenes looked bad, surprisingly bad, very pixelated, particularly the ones with Captain Quark. One other note about the presentation, when you get a new weapon you are given a preview of how to use it, in a Sunday morning cartoon style and can actually be pretty funny, it was a very nice touch, and it gave something else to look forward too when you unlock weapons.

The locations you visit are pretty standard fare for the series, which isn’t a bad thing… the worlds are beautiful for the most part, the environments varied in amongst themselves, however, if you’ve played the others you’re not going to see a whole lot of “new” here. The world map is basically broken out into galaxies, each galaxy has a planet or two, several moons, as well as a few fellow space pilots who offer bolts for simple tasks (kill x ships, escort me here, etc…). The planets contain Ratchet’s story missions, in the expected shooter/platforming format that has made the series what it is. The moons are largely optional, and contain either platform based or shooting based and can generally be done in a few minutes with the reward of one or two of the in-game collectibles (weapon or ship upgrades, or gold bolts). What is new is that you actually pilot your ship from location to location, and introduces some space combat, more on that later.

The afore moons are spherical like in Super Mario Galaxy, and it does feel a little bit like a complete rip-off, but, I’m OK with that, my rule is be as good or better than the original, and it’s done in a way that makes it more of a nested mini-game than a full blown objective, since all the rewards are optional they are great to pass the time when you want a break from the story. The arena is back with some pretty challenging events, there is a lot of fun to be had there as well.

If you’ve never played an R&C game, they are action/platformers, with twitch combat gameplay, complemented with a huge array of unique weaponry for taking on a variety of foes, although there certainly could have been a larger variety of foes in this one I think, many of the models look the same with slight variations. To go along with your weapons you are provided with a few gadgets to solve the platforming puzzles and challenges. New this time around on the challenge side are hover boots which serve as a glide mechanic for Ratchet now that he doesn’t have access to Clanks propeller pack, but also serves as a dash for large gaps and what not. For puzzles you are provided with an “Omnisoaker”, which is used to drain a liquid which can be used to enable platform elements such as jumping elements, and platforms themselves, or to distract specific enemies that can’t be harmed. They were both implemented very well in the game, and it never really felt like they had put either in for the sake of variety, which is great because the variety is certainly needed.

They also added space travel when going from location to location which includes some combat, it’s not really what you might expect since you have no control vertically so what it mostly ends up being is simply holding your fingers down on both triggers and moving the stick from side to side and blowing over everything in your way. You can dodge and what not, and your ship weapons upgrade as you collect more Zoni, but all in all, its not as fun as it should have been.

Just a note on the difficulty, I played through on hard and it wasn’t all that difficult, a couple bottlenecks along the way, any easier and I think I may have bored on the experience, if it’s not your first foray into R&C then I suggest you do the same. My first play through clocked in around 13hrs with a 71% on trophy completions. This would probably be a very short experience if you stuck to the story, particularly on a less challenging difficulty level.

[Author Note: heres where I get a little out of hand...]
The best addition by far to the gameplay was clanks time puzzles, simply put these are AWESOME, I wish there was more of them, lots more of them. Hell, there should be a follow up DLCs with more of these puzzles… SOOOOOO good. As you progress into Clank’s storyline, you are presented with ‘x’ panels on the ground, and ‘y’ switches that need to be stood on to open doors, for each panel on the floor, you get to “record” a minute of action with Clank, the switches can be for anything almost, elevators, doors, in the later puzzles you have more switches than you have Clanks so you have to go back and “re-record” different version to further your progress… it’s all really fun when you get to thinking about what you have to do. There is another sort of mini-game in the Clank areas where you control a laser on the surface of a planet, and you basically control the laser to “zap”, “time anomalies”, unfortunately unlike the variety in Ratchet’s missions, this one does feel like its there just so you’re doing something else, and equates to little more than what you would find in a web based flash game.

I can’t recommend this game highly enough to anyone, even if you’re not big into platform games, you owe it to play this, however, if you haven’t played “Tools of Destruction“, I would even more strongly recommend you do that first, not because you need to to understand the story in this one, but the progression is truly remarkable, and really an adventure that can and should be enjoyed by all.