[PS3] Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal HD ROM Download

Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal HD ROM Description

Isn’t it weird when a game series treats a spin-off that you didn’t play as canon and then the next main game continues to make a running gag out of that spin-off, and then you’re like, Well, I guess I’m not playing this game. Yeah, I just got way ahead of myself, but it’s just one or two things about this game that bothered me, but I’ll get to those later.

I haven’t found much development history on the game except that Insomniac worked closely with Sony, listened to a lot of customer feedback, and refined the gameplay from the previous titles, which paid off pretty well as the game feels like a slightly improved version of Going Commando, which was pretty much a perfect game as it was. After Going Commando, every game would follow the same formula, but the core game mechanics are still the same; it’s a run-and-gun platform game.

Gameplay

This is one of those games where, if you’ve played the predecessor, you really can’t say much because nothing’s changed other than it’s a new story. When I reviewed Going Commando, there was a significant difference in gameplay. While the core mechanics were still the same, there were a lot of things that were different, like an experience system that would increase your health in weapons, armor that was available, and an easier way to get bolts. All that stuff from Going Commando carries over to Up Your Arsenal.

Even some weapons carry over, as the game can read your memory card to see what information is stored on it from previous titles. Once again, this is the HD collection, and the graphics look good, but they don’t look that good in HD. They added more detail to Ratchet textures, but they look pixelated in HD. Going Commando looked a lot better in HD, though, so like the first game, the third game looks better in standard definition.

The music is also much the same as that techno-magic theme. This is one of those times where I don’t want to say it’s more of the same because it is more of the same, but it’s not really that bad because it does improve on a couple of things.

You still go from planet to planet, fighting enemies that range from small to medium to extra large. Although in this game there’s extra space, it’s coming right for us! Yeah, there are enemies in this game that are massive in size, and they take a lot of hits to take down, and they’re not even bosses.

There are enemies who can take three fully charged shots from the shock cannon. Some have even taken five, which is weird because that weapon will carry you three-quarters of the way throughout the game, and it’s your starting weapon, which effectively makes it the weakest.

The weapons in this game are great, and they are better versions of the ones that appeared in the second game. I enjoyed using them all, and you can level them up the more you use them. In Going Commando, you only get one extra level for the weapons unless you go into challenge mode. In this game, the maximum level you get is five, and then there’s an extra level in challenge mode.

Here’s some advice from me to you: rotate your weapons because when you get to Quark’s hideout, you’re going to need everything maxed out; otherwise, you’re going to be crying because you realize that you’ve gone bankrupt replacing all those broken controllers.

In terms of difficulty, I found Going Commando to be the most difficult out of the PS2 trilogy and Up Your Arsenal to be the easiest, except for Quark’s hideout. Up until that level, I was having fun platforming and whatnot, but now I got to climb Mount Son of a, and my most powerful weapon is the shock cannon.

It’s carried me throughout the entire game until this point, so now I’m using everything in my arsenal and power-leveling them because the quark bots do a lot of damage, and there’s tons of them, and they will quickly destroy any barrier in seconds, and they take a lot of hits to destroy.

Before the encounter starts, there’s a Gadgetron vendor where you can refill your ammo. After that, you are SOL because there are no ammo pickups except for one Gadgetron crate at the end. Now that may not sound so bad, but you have ice physics to deal with, which severely limits your mobility, and you have four to five robo-corks shooting at you with rapid fire, and that’s just the beginning.

After that, it’s eight more robo corks, then another eight more, and then after that, about 12, and after that, the game goes back to being easy. I found this to be the hardest part of the game and, strangely, out of place. Up until this point in the game, it’s a cakewalk, and after it, it’s a cakewalk.

While the last two levels are bullet hell-type levels, they’re easily manageable, while Quark’s Hideout difficulty spike is not. Bad. I feel that it’s just something to bring up due to its odd placement.

On an interesting side note, the robot corks look a lot like Hack and Slash from the reboot cartoon. The game is also strangely paced. You’re instantly thrown into the middle of a war with little to no explanation until afterwards, and then it’s just action after action, and after the first hour, it felt like I was halfway through the game. At the halfway point, I felt like I was at the end of the game, and even the story is extremely fast-paced.

For a 10-hour experience, it feels like it’s 40 hours but moves at the pace of 4. Our game mod, I’m not saying it’s bad; it just feels kind of weird.

Story

Out of the original PS2 trilogy, this has the best-written story. It’s also the funniest because of Dr. Nefarious, who is the funniest villain, is animated so well, is just the right amount of over-the-top, and has the perfect sidekick in the form of a robot butler named Lawrence who doesn’t care much for his boss.

Nefarious has a plan to destroy all organic life and rule the galaxy by turning every organic being into a robot. He’s like Dr. Robotnik from Sonic, but only funny. The game also makes a running gag out of the PSP spin-off Secret Agent Clank, which I didn’t play, and that’s what I was referencing at the beginning of the review.

We also get introduced to a potential love interest for Ratchet in the form of Sasha, a catlike creature who is a pretty cool character, but sadly, she isn’t Ratchet Clank or Quark, so she’s never seen in a main series title ever again. She appears in Deadlocked, Gladiator if you’re in the UK, or Ratchet 4 if you’re in Japan.

She’s only mentioned in Tools of Destruction, but she does appear in issues 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the comics. I hate it when a lovable character doesn’t get main character status immunity, especially when that character has really good chemistry with the main hero.

I’m not saying that Ratchet needs a girlfriend, but when you create a character that works well with the main hero, I think you should have them return more than once, referencing Sly and Carmelita, two characters that play off each other really well but hardly interact, and they both show a romantic interest in each other, and Sly constantly hits on Carmelita, so it’s no secret to anyone that they like each other.

I am not saying that Ratchet and Sasha need to be in a relationship with each other far from it, but seeing those cute little shy and embarrassing moments like Ratchet asking Sasha to marry him or their reaction when Sasha kisses him, I like seeing little things like that; it adds some cute and funny entertainment while adding character depth.

It’s not uncommon for people to like a one-shot character or for that character to become extremely popular. I’d like to see more of her, because she just works really well with Ratchet. It’s all about how Brian and Stewie from Family Guy work really well together.

The fighting arena tournaments make a comeback, and there’s a really cool mini game where you play as Captain Qwark in a 2D platform game within a game. While a mini game, it does help push the story along as it gives clues on where you need to go.

Gameplay Continued

You also get money really easily in this game. I was able to buy nearly all the weapons and armor with no issue, but I do wonder, and this is something I noticed in the last game: the armor seems to be pretty ineffective.

Enemy hits seem to take off percentages of health instead of set numbers. Instead of taking off two hit points, they’ll take off 25% of your health because, no matter where I went or what enemy I faced, it was like they all did a certain percent of damage.

If I had 100 hit points and had the armor that reduces damage by 66% and an enemy hits me and a third of my health is gone, does that mean that with just the basic armor, the hit would have killed me? Maybe someone out there can answer that question for me, because if the enemies take off a set percentage of damage, then getting the armor is pretty much pointless.

I want to say that it is a percentage because at the start, when I had 10 hit points, the little guys that just punched took off two hit points, which is 20%, but later on down the road, when I got better armor and more hit points, they’re still taking off about 20%, and the nanotech appears to restore a percentage of health instead of a set number.

In the beginning, it restores like two hit points, but towards the end, it restores like 15, but I don’t know. Like I said, it’s an assumption. There’s also these battles that you have to do that are rather pointless because they don’t add anything to the story.

You’re required to go down to whatever planet there’s an invasion on, destroy the enemies, and set up turret defenses. You do get rewarded for it, and you’re given a gadget you need, but I don’t see why there couldn’t have been a story-driven reason to do it.

You’ll find yourself doing things that follow the main story, but then, for some reason, you need to take this little side trip. I’m not complaining because these sections are pretty fun; it just feels out of place in a story-driven game where these sections have no bearing on the story.

Conclusion

But in conclusion, out of the original PS2 trilogy, I think Up Your Arsenal is the best. It’s the most balanced, best-written, and funniest, in my opinion. I really enjoyed and had fun with it, so there’s no surprise as to why this is the highest-rated game in the series according to Metacritic and Game Rankings.

Anyway, it’s aged just as well as the other games, and out of the PS2 ones, I’d have to say this one’s my favorite. Like the original Crash series, the Ratchet and Clank series are perfect examples of classic PS2 games. I highly recommend playing them, and I suggest getting the HD Trilogy on the PS3.