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Thursday 6 March, 2008
Gameplay
For the most part, little has changed over the course of my first couple sessions. There are of course bigger, shinier guns and new kinds of enemies, but at its core this remains a solid platform game that really doesn’t want to redefine itself a whole lot. The “free-falling” mechanic is pretty cool, but other than that this seems to remain true to its roots, and is definitely a lot of fun to play. This title seems to follow the idiom “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Design
Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction remains at its heart a platformer. You control your character in 3D, be it the “Lombax” Ratchet or his robot counterpart Clank, and you navigate through environments by jumping around or skating on rails. You come equipped with a whole arsenal of guns, and they’re pretty fun to play around with. The Tornado Launcher in particular speaks well of this game’s design, by utilizing the motion-sensitive capabilities of the Sixaxis controller.
As far as innovative design goes, or at least as far as I can tell so far, all innovation hinges around the PS3’s Sixaxis controller. There are some “free-falling” sequences where you tilt the Sixaxis to guide Ratchet as he falls, and the tornadoes you shoot via the Tornado Launcher are also controlled by tilting the controller. Other than these neat twists, so to speak, Tools of Destruction doesn’t break a whole lot of new ground. It’s yet another installment of the Ratchet and Clank series, which is nothing to be scoffed at, but this game doesn’t really break down any walls as far as level design or game mechanics. It’s a platformer, you run, jump, shoot, and collect arbitrary amounts of Bolts. But, this made for great games before, so there’s no reason that it can’t work again.
I’m actually pleased with this game, even though it doesn’t do a lot of new things, it does what the other Ratchet and Clank games have done, and it does them well. What else does a game need to do, right? It’s fun, and that’s really all that counts.
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