I’m going to admit that my taste for platform titles died off a long time ago. Simple action-oriented games kind of lost their luster for me once masterpieces like Freespace, Half-Life, Deus Ex, Mechwarrior, and the like started appearing on the market – suddenly, my brain deemed it “uncool” to play anything that wasn’t a hardcore sim or storyline-driven experience. Then, one day, a significant amount of time after the rest of the self-respecting gaming community at large had finished with it and moved on, I picked myself up a copy of Ratchet & Clank. I’m not sure what kind of urge exactly led to my picking up that title, but suddenly a door opened in my brain and, as I played through the well-balanced, beautifully crafted world Insomniac Games had created, I realized what a close-minded, idiotic buffoon I had become. Soon after, my craving for more action led me to R&C2: Going Commando, which ultimately left me immensely satisfied and also begging for more. In a move that utterly failed to disappoint me in any significant way, Insomniac has now released the cutely-named Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, which is now in my abusive little hands. Could the developers maintain the excitement, coolness, half-decent storyline, and hilarity of the series a third time around? A brief prayer later, and I was ready to find out.

Just like Going Commando, R&C3 takes place a short time after the events of its predecessor. Following their mighty victory over the Protopet invasion that threatened (once again) to consume the galaxy, the destructive duo is taking a breather and trying to live up the good life. Clank has landed himself a sweet gig as “Secret Agent Clank” in a James Bond-esque series, with Ratchet (much to his irritation) starring as the bumbling chauffeur. After reviewing a past episode on TV, Ratchet changes the channel in disgust and ends up with a news report indicating that his home planet of Veldin is under attack by an army of Tyrranoid raiders, rumored to be under the command of the feared “Dr. Nefarious”. After hastily fitting an experimental, untested, and highly unstable gravimetric jump drive to his ship, Ratchet and Clank take off to save their home before it’s too late.

Right, so the storyline won’t win any big awards, but those looking for a totally serious, non-cliché plot should point their controllers elsewhere. The Ratchet and Clank series has always been about light-hearted and funny storytelling, which the third game definitely carries on faithfully. While R&C3 didn’t exactly make me laugh as much as my first encounter with the original did, it’s still good to see that the team has kept their sense of humor. But more importantly, the development team has also maintained their philosophy of not trying to fix something that isn’t broken, which became obvious as soon as I touched down on Veldin and was given control. The gameplay in R&C3 works on largely the same addictive formula as the other games in the series, in that it feels smooth to control, has pleasing graphics and animation, and offers a non-stop ride of fun, explosive action. The first level of the game puts the duo right into the action, with Galactic Ranger forces desperately engaged with an alien army all over the area. The first few minutes of the game actually involve helping the Rangers push the aliens off the planet, which shows off a neat little adjustment to gameplay – rather than the player being on his own for most of the action, several segments now involve helping out friendly forces attack enemy positions or hold the line. In fact, most of these segments are now set up as “missions” that can be played repeatedly if desired and offer quite a nice reward of bolts. The troopers (who take to calling Ratchet “Sarge” for some reason) aren’t particularly exceptional in terms of combat prowess or AI, but it was cool to actually see some friendly characters moving about for a change.

That said, the enemy troops aren’t exactly any kind of slouch either. As is the norm for modern-day titles, enemy troops in R&C3 are less prone to becoming random targets, and more focused on actually being interesting opponents. R&C2: Going Commando saw a bit of a hike in how enemy units react to the player’s vast arsenal, R&C3 seems to have improved things even further. While basic enemy grunts just did a good job of either flying at my guns, or flying at my guns en-masse, the bigger soldiers seem to know how to take cover, attack from far away, and even avoid some of my bigger attacks. Ultimately they were all still cannon fodder (and if I wanted ultra-intelligent/reactive enemies, I’d play through Half-Life 2 again), but it was cool to see them make more of an effort to avoid my tools of mass-purification. Enemy types in R&C3 range from tiny little annoying grunts (including pirate/ninja gnome-like things, my worst nightmare in a nutshell) to gigantic flying gunships that try to pepper you with machinegun and missile fire, as well as a few miscellaneous in-between monsters (like robotic ninjas) that gradually scale up in terms of difficulty and damage potential, so there’s no shortage of fresh targets to shoot at. There are also a number of boss monsters, although I was a little disappointed at how few there were and how they seemed somewhat generic overall.

Of course, the chief selling point of the Ratchet and Clank series (and highlight of the game’s commercial campaign, no less) is the wacky and unique weapons featured in each product, but sadly, R&C3 tends to suffer a little in regards to the overall number of new and crazy weapons available – I suppose there are only so many ways to represent a generic assault cannon, sniper rifle, and bomb/grenade launcher, but I was hoping that R&C3 would have the largest arsenal of the entire series, and this just doesn’t seem to be the case. Given the scope of the game though, the developers may have just seen fit to cut some of the less-useful weapons from R&C2, and at least the ones that are included are done very, very well. My exact memory of what exactly Going Commando offered is admittedly a little fuzzy (and there are a few weapons in R&C3 that I still haven’t obtained), but as far as I can tell, the new weapons introduced in R&C3 include the “Shock Blaster”, a shotgun-like weapon that can (eventually) be charged up to fire one hell of a powerful bang, the “Infector”, which can cause enemies to turn against one another until they eventually self-destruct, the Plasma Whip, a really kick-ass piece of melee hardware that is as pretty to look at as it is effective, and, as my personal all-time favorite, the “Rift Inducer”, which launches little black holes at enemies that can be used to suck them into the void, as well as surrounding destroyable crates and other objects (don’t worry, the candy inside remains on the ground). Beyond that selection and possibly a couple of others, however, most other weapons are a carry-over from previous games in only a moderately-modified state, including the sniper rifle (called the “Flux Rifle”) and the machinegun, and several weapons are even direct carry-overs from R&C2 (the Lava Gun, Disc Blade Gun, “Agents of Doom”, Mini-Turret Glove, and Bouncer all make a return in one form or another) that can be purchased at a discount if R&C2 save data is found. So just to re-iterate: While players looking for a deluge of totally new and wacky weapons in R&C3 might be disappointed, the existing toys work so well that it really isn’t that much of a problem, and the fact that all the major favorites from the previous titles make a return is pretty damn cool.

One major reason why the weapon selection feels a bit more limited this time around, however, may be because each weapon has five levels of functionality. Just like R&C2, each weapon gains “experience” with use, unlocking new functions and increasing damage and ammo capacity. Once the weapon hits level five, it gets a name change and (usually) unlocks a totally new devastating function. The mini-RPG system worked really well for R&C2 and does the same for Up Your Arsenal, offering the player a very strong incentive to maximize his gaming experience by running through Arena challenges and previous areas repeatedly to try and unlock the best weapons possible. Ratchet himself also gains experience based on the amount of destruction he causes, enabling the player to increase his hitpoints and durability as the game goes on. Finally, if the player saves up enough “Bolts”, he can buy better armor to decrease the amount of damage he takes, something that can be an obvious life-saver later on in the game. Neat little gadgets like the PDA (for buying weapons and ammo at any time without having to be near a Gadetron vendor) and map / bolt magnetizer upgrades (for seeing secret areas on your map and making it easier to collect bolts en-masse) also make a return and are well-worth the effort to collect.

Speaking of making things easier, R&C3’s difficulty is actually somewhat laid-back over that of the previous games, and I actually didn’t have much trouble at all progressing even through the game’s most difficult parts. Combat-wise, this may have been due to my obsessive reliance on dropping turrets / Agents of Doom everywhere to deal with enemies or picking them off from a distance, as well as upgrading my favorite weapons to their maximum level before tackling a new area, but even the non-combat puzzles, like the dreaded jumping challenges or death courses seemed to be a bit more tolerant this time around. Only once did I nearly send my controller out the window and cursed the gaming gods for not blessing me with a quick-save function, and that was during an attempt to unlock a secret. But while R&C3’s difficulty seems to have been lessened overall (at least for the first time through – I have yet to attempt the unlockable “Challenge” mode), there are still a number of situations to test veteran players. The boss fights definitely require a certain amount of skill to master, but the most demanding segments are the arena challenges. Even the arena seems to be a bit less crazy than it was in R&C2, but the higher-level challenges that eventually become available definitely made for some intense action. I especially enjoyed some of the more novel challenges (like the time-limited events, or the one that randomly switches your allowed weapon), but the 100-round behemoth was a certifiable bastard which I have yet to complete, but is thankfully minus the irritating broken-script bug that plagued R&C2’s arena when certain weapons were used. There’s also the return of the “Giant Clank” mini-game for some crazy destructive action, but I didn’t see this very often – and sadly, there wasn’t any fighter combat I encountered either, even though the player can still upgrade his fighter to a limited extent. The Captain Qwark vid-comic mini-games are also surprisingly well done and incredibly amusing, as is the little DDR-esque translation game that plays when you disguise yourself as an enemy and try to talk your way through security. While R&C3 has certainly rubbed off on me as the easiest game in the series, the game is still by no means a total cakewalk, and people turned off by the frustrating situations they were forced into in the previous games may finally decide to get onboard with R&C3 – though I strongly attest that not playing the entire series all the way through is quite a crime.

Graphically, R&C3 is quite the beautiful game (as expected from the series), with some stunningly large and open maps (that are still deceptively linear, although the secret areas and secondary objectives allow for quite a bit of exploration), excellent graphical effects, and some incredibly well-done character animation. Enemies fall apart in a rather convincing and destructive manner, with debris and other garbage falling all over the place depending on the level of destruction, but I was pretty disappointed to see that the game cleaned everything up so quickly that I hardly had a chance to enjoy the results of my slaughtering… ah, the perky limitations of the PS2. Sadly, a couple of bugs seem to have crept in – nothing terribly serious, but I noticed that a few enemies seemed to get stuck in walls on rare occasions (the sludge monsters in the sewer tunnels were particularly notorious for this), and that the framerates also seemed to slow down by quite a bit when I was busy destroying an unusually large number of enemies at once. Fortunately, this didn’t occur at any kind of severe or very noticeable rate, and I doubt the team could have worked around it without cutting something back, so I consider it quite forgivable.

Equally as great is R&C3’s audio presentation, which offers some really great sound effects (a must, for a game that revolves almost entirely around explosions) and the same quirky, tense, and atmospheric tunes that the previous games have done so well. Voice acting is also very much spot-on, but I kept running into a repeating bug where the announcer voice in the Arena matches would stop working if I played long enough. Not exactly a major hassle, but I somewhat missed hearing the lewd comments on how I was doing during my repeated attempts at the 100-round challenge. Other than that, everything seemed to work great and Ratchet & Clank 3 is definitely a game that is almost as fun to hear as it is to play – I still can’t resist cracking a grin every time I hear the little quack sound when I select my Quack-O-Ray.

Character control is a very critical part of any kind of third-person action title, and thankfully is something that I’ve found perfectly acceptable in the Ratchet & Clank series ever since the second game was released and added some proper strafe functionality. The third game carries this on, and also allows for a number of different control pre-sets based on if the player wants to run around with the default configuration, a variation called “Lock-On Mode”, or even first-person mode. Personally I found the default setup to be more than adequate (after I turned off the control inversion, of course), but I soon found myself wishing for a total key re-bind facility so I could set one of the shoulder buttons to firing from all viewpoints, rather than having to switch to first person mode first. Holding down the R2 button to strafe around enemies all the time isn’t too tricky, but combining that with actually maneuvering, as well as trying to turn and jump around to keep an enemy in my sights as well as actually shoot at the same time made me wish for an extra finger on my hand. The game’s tutorial messages made mention of some kind of function for changing the key bindings early on, so perhaps I’m just missing something in the options screen, but I get the feeling it was just referring to the aforementioned first/third person and “Lock-On” input change option.