Masem’s Gaming Blog

Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty is a downloadable title from Insomniac games for the PlayStation 3, continuing on from Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction in both story and gameplay.  The overall game continues the high quality work from Insomniac in the past and include new gameplay elements, but there are some aspects of design that are questionable and make the game feel as if it is lacking in features and content.  It is still a good effort and captures the series’ gameplay faithfully, but I feel more could have been done for such content.

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Story: B+

The “episode” (for lack of better term) starts after the events of Tools of Destruction, with Ratchet seeking clues as to where the Zoni have taken his buddy Clank.  He chases down rumors of a Captain Darkwater who had a telescope that could see to the Zoni world, and with the help of Talwyn and Rusty Pete, makes his way to Darkwater’s last location.  However, as they seek for answers, they find themselves betrayed, and suddenly awash in ghost pirate robots (not zombies or ninjas, unfortunately), and Ratchet must defeat a helpless island village from the undead Darkwater in order to get the necessary part to run the telescope.

The story is a bit trite (the “twists” I saw coming from a long ways away) but its a nice carryover from the end of the last, without deviating too much.  The one thing that I’m still not thrilled on is that there are small but significant conversation trees, ones where you select an answer for Ratchet, but while everything else in the game is nicely voiced, there’s no voice to Ratchet’s replies, and one of the things that I enjoy about the series has been the voice actor’s work in delivery Ratchet’s lines, getting the right amount of sarcasm down; to not use it here just seems weird.

Gameplay: B+

There’s little difference in Quest for Booty as there is for any other later Ratchet & Clank game - a mix of platforming and third-person shooting elements.  However, for one, the weapons are less emphasized here.  All the weapons are repeats from Tools of Destruction, and you only gain them at certain points of the story.  They can be evolved, but not to a great extent.  There’s no Gadgetron vendors, so you’ll have to rely on ammo boxes in the wild to restock; fortunately, for all but a few sections, areas where you are using weapons repeating will have an infinite supply of ammo crates pop in.  Bolts are still collected, but these are primarily used to buy key equipment from the Smuggler to complete the missions given.

The new feature to the game is the ability to use Ratchet’s wrench to manipulate the environment.  Certain objects have wrench-grappling points, and once latched, you can move them around: extending a bring, resetting a spring-loaded jump-pad, or getting platforms into place in order to make jumps safely.  The idea fits naturally into the game, though I found that the choice of control scheme a bit odd.  To do this, you hold down R2, then press the square button to make the latch (both on right hand, note); movement is then done on the right control stick.  While at this point you can disengage the latching controls, this didn’t feel natural for the series, and because my right hand was busy (ahem) it felt more natural to move things with the left analog stick.  Of course, once I discovered that you could release the R2/square combo and then move to the right analog stick, it sorta helped, but again, the overall scheme was just a bit odd.  Not a gamekiller, but just something I would have liked to see handled differently.

The wrench also gains the ability to carry small objects as long as Ratchet is walking or jumping.  These include flaming lava stones to break objects and glowing bugs that are used in dark sections in order to scare away critters that will actually seek to hurt you.  This aspect fits right in - or at least under you get surrounded by things you want to swipe at with your wrench and instead pick up the object you just dropped (a habit you quickly learn to get over).

As such, the game ends up being about 1/4 platformer (grind rails and magnetic paths to walk across), 1/4 puzzlers (using the wrench latching and carrying abilities to get through sections) and 1/2 combat.  The combat is more intense - while there are enemies you encounter just walking about levels, there are three major sections of the game where you are pretty much strictly on weapons-duty, defending points from assault or the like.  Again, you get effectively infinite ammo here (at the rate that ammo boxes regenerate) but annoying you don’t get infinite health.  I played the game on the hard setting (side note: I don’t remember any R&C game having a difficulty setting - there was challenge mode, but that’s not the same here), and the first major assault point took a long time to work through due to limited health and the number of foes.  Not impossible, mind you, just a careful application of figuring out each wave and working from there.  There are checkpoints, so the longer drawn out battles don’t require restarting anew each time you die, and your health experience and weapon growth carry over, so eventually you’ll get strong enough to finish these off.  Hard was sufficiently challenging but nothing to break a sweat over.’

The rest of the game may be rather easy for anyone experienced to the R&C series or to puzzle games in general.  The puzzles are sufficiently simple that you’ve likely seen several variations of them before, and while the magnetic paths or grind rails are fun, they don’t offer any intense moments like they have in past games.  Basically, it feels that the game lacks an oomph with these sections - they’re present but seem to act as areas to tidy you over between combat sections.  I don’t necessarily know how they could have improved these without significant design changes, but that might be something addressed in the next game (whether its full or downloadable).

Unfortunately, there’s no extras with this game.  No challenge mode, no skill points to seek (I’m surprised at the lack of trophies for it).  This is rather unfortunate, as while I can see them trying to keep the length down for a downloaded title, certain things that are built into the gameplay shouldn’t add that much more space.

Value/Replayability: C+

The game took me no more than 5 hr to complete (maybe closer to 4 but I didn’t track this exactly).  It may seem expensive but when you compare it to the full Tools of Destruction, it’s about right in terms of core gameplay to dollar ratio.  However, the decided lack of extras makes the overall value and replayabilitiy disappointingly low.

Graphics: A

Expect nothing less from how good the game looked in Tools of Destruction.  My only nit is that dark areas were incredibly dark and while you were to carry the light bug around to help, there are times where you don’t have access to one and you’re jumping about in nearly-dark areas, which can make it hard to see where you are supposed to land.  This could be a function of LCD monitor, however, and you do have the opportunity at the start of the game to adjust the brightness to account for this.

Audio: A

All the major voice actors return here, and are helped by the witty dialog (though my point about voiceless Ratchet responses still stand).  The music is good and thematic, being based on your average pirate themes, and suits the mood nicely.

Overall: B+

Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty fills a nice gap given that Insomniac is working on getting out Resistance 2 this year, thus another full R&C title may not be for a while.  It introduces new elements to the gameplay that I see no problem fitting into the overall series aside from control issues.  However, the game does feel short and not overly difficult, and the lack of some of the typical elements of the series such as completely new weapons, ammo strategy, and other considers, make the game feeling wanting for more.  Ultimately, it is still a high quality title from Insomniac, but it is not exactly how I expected them to approach the concept of episodic gaming, though there is room for correction in the next game.

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