Ratchet & Clank

As the last part of the PS2's holy trinity of anthropomorphic 3D action-platformers, I had the highest expectations for Ratchet & Clank. First of all, there's a robot. Second of all, of the three franchises, Ratchet and Clank is the only one still going (and is also by far the most prolific). Third of all, of each of the franchises' developers, Insomniac has arguably the best reputation in other genres. So I was more than a little disappointed, a few levels into Ratchet & Clank, to find that it was just as underwhelming as Sly and Jak had been.

R&C suffers from the classical tragic flaw of Mario64-likes: bad controls. Ratchet's unique gimmick is the inclusion of a bevy of secondary weapons, mostly projectile affairs, but tacking third-person shooting onto a 3D platformer is just as disastrous here as it is in the rest of the genre. It goes without saying that the camera is a pain in the ass. Forget seeing what's behind or next to you - when you can barely see what's in front of you, trying to properly use the game's armaments is a sick joke. Blind, mindless fire is pretty much the only way out of encounters with multiple baddies.

It's somewhat depressing that, though the menus, map system, planet navigation, graphics and sound, writing and voice acting, and almost every other aspect of the game is very well-polished, the meat of it - running through levels and fighting bad dudes - is more frustrating than fun.

I'm probably being too hard on it. Like Jak, R&C is far from a terrible game. But I just feel so let down. On the upside, Clank is an awesome robot.

Progress: Planet Rilgar