24th
August
2008
Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty (PSN) - Review
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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LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures is another LEGO-based game from Traveler’s Tales, who have previously done both LEGO Star Wars games. While there are several elements that are reused, and much of the general gameplay hasn’t changed much, they have refocused the general approach on the adventure genre and solving puzzles to progress in the game, making it feel pretty fresh and showing that the series has more legs with other popular franchises. The game is generally on the easy side and is a bit short, but it is entertaining throughout.
After the rather disappointing Super Mario Sunshine, word of a new true Mario title for the Wii got a lot of people excited about it, particularly once the theme of Mario-in-space was established. Now that that game is here as Super Mario Galaxy, its amazing how much this game has exceeded expectations – not only making up for what felt lacking in Sunshine, but perhaps even going beyond some of the best Mario titles already out there like Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Bros. 3. It is amazing how well all the elements of the game, not only in gameplay but in presentation and difficulty, are pulled together to make one of the best video game titles to date.
I should know better about video games based on non-video game franchises - rarely are the games any good when they have to try to map back to the work in question. While this isn’t truly the case with The Simpsons Game, developed and distributed by EA, as The Simpsons have tackled nearly every other media form and thus is much more adaptable than other shows, the game lacks a certain degree of realization. The game tries to present itself parodying the cliches from the video game industry, but in the end the game itself uses and exploits too many of those cliches as to make the gameplay bland and uninteresting. It’s still worth a look to see how the Simpsons writers have taken on video games, but even to that extent, it doesn’t seem like the best effort possible, and that if the developers were going for a video game parody, divorcing the idea from The Simpsons would have been better in the long term.
Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction is the first installment of the Ratchet and Clank series to be made for the PS3. Developed by Insomniac games, the game continues exactly what the previous titles did: a fun platforming-shooting game that incorporates a variety of odd and exotic weapons. On its own, the game it outstanding, but considering where the series has been before, there’s a few elements that suggest that the number of ideas for new weapons and gadgets may be winding down, and some decisions on the approach to the game design are a bit disappointing to experienced players, though certainly are far from detracting from the overall enjoyment of the game.
Super Paper Mario published by Intelligent Systems and distributed by Nintendo, is an effort to combine classic 2D platforming gameplay with RGP elements from the past Paper Mario series, with a few additional twists to make the game interesting. While overall the game is very good, those coming into the game expected to find platforming-type gameplay as from New Super Mario Bros. will likely be disappointed due to how tedious and disjointed it ends up being. Regardless, the game is still a top-notch title, and continues the excellent Paper Mario series quite well.
God of War, developed and produced by SCEA, made a large impression on the gaming community when it came out 2 years ago (nearly to date), bringing life back into the stale genre of combat action games. With its success, a sequel was no surprise, but while the same developers could have stayed the course, they have instead started with a much more epic story and quest, and tweaked the gameplay just so in parts to make the sequel God of War 2 a much more impressive title, and maybe one of the top games for the PS2.
