I got Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters for Christmas and thought, Hey, I haven’t done a review in a while. So here it is 
It’s a Ratchet and Clank game, the series spawned from Insomniac (Spyro, Resistance: Fall of Man) on the PlayStation 2, and it surprisingly captures most of what the games were about – getting outrageous weapons while blowing stuff up. It is made by High Impact Games, made up of old Insomniac folks. Unfortunately I found the story a bit short and the writing didn’t have as much humour and wit as other Ratchet and Clank games.
The story goes (if the story matters in R&C) that Ratchet and Clank are on holiday at Pokitaru (from the first game) when a girl asks to take their picture, only for the girl to be kidnapped and Ratchet and Clank taking it upon themselves to find her. There are plenty of twists in this tale, so I won’t spoil it for you.
There are plenty of weapons to use at hand, you first start out with a simple point and shoot gun called the Lacerator, the Acid Bomb Glove, and the hypershot from previous games. Unfortunately I found that even at the max power the Lancerator wasn’t powerful enough nor had enough ammo, which I guess is put aside once you buy the PDA (Personal Delivery Assistant).
As since R&C2, you can upgrade the weapons simply by using them. The base weapons have four versions, at which point on your second run of the game you can buy the Titan version and upgrade that some more. Your health also increases based on how many bad guys you kill, this felt unbalanced as it can be very quick to go from one health point to the next.
I didn’t feel a sense of gratification with gadgets and armour. It is as if the game just gives them to you, which it actually does for most. Your hypershot is given at the start, you get another gadget for free which allows you to plant useful plants around the place just because you came across the guy on your usual travels. Two other gadgets you have to earn by racing on a hoverboard, which are easy (but the controls aren’t very tight). The usual array of helper gadgets such as the bolt collector and the map revealer you buy from Gadgetron vendors, previously these would have been found by going on a difficult course and then having to shell out lots of cash to get the attachment. This isn’t the case, as they can be bought rather cheaply.
Armour is given on your travel and rarely hidden. They have changed this system in that you have to collect the different parts of the armour. You can mix and match the parts to provide better protection, but the best thing is when you collect and apply the full set you get a special ability only available with the set. This is a nice addition to the game, and you must play several times to get all the armour.
The way to unlock doors in this game is to use the Shrink Ray to go into the lock and do a grind course where you have to knock the switches to get through. This seemed strangely incomplete though, one time I died and the door still unlocked, and another time I didn’t knock all the switches, yet it still unlocked the door.
The graphics are good, and the effects are outstanding. Sometimes though it can be way too much on the screen at one time and just be visual garbage, which can hinder the game. One of the worlds, Dreamland, is difficult to navigate around due to the spinning and blurring effect around the edges of the screen essentially make the viewable estate smaller than the PSP screen. But this may also be coupled with the poor controls which really do hinder the game, they aren’t as tight especially the camera which can only be moved around with the L and R buttons. This isn’t going to help, as the camera has some moments of disorientation which can kill even strafing. I suggest changing the default camera mode from Passive to Follow in the options.
The strafe controls do help a lot with this game, which can be accessed by using the D pad, and are a necessity for killing the bosses. But if you get in a tight corner the camera will break and suddenly you aren’t strafing as you were before.
There were some differences to the usual R&C. Most of the time the game is taking you to the next world itself, a more “I have the coordinates, let’s go” (whoosh) kind of way. Also you don’t really need to return back to previous worlds except for getting the Titanium Bolts (which I have yet to find a use for) or by doing the optional activities. Where in the other R&C games anything that was half (or twice) the size of you could be broken, that isn’t the case in this game. It left me with an odd feeling having lights not break, large-ish mushrooms no longer on the screen, and no general chaos everywhere. There is also little use of the wall-hopping, and only one point where Clank does his usual robot puzzle solving (although Clank is the centre of the mini-games).
The tough camera controls and the unbalanced weapons made the game frustrating. It was also a disappointment to finish it in six hours. The only save is the fact that there is more the second time around of playing (as is usual with R&C games).
All in all, it’s an OK game. It doesn’t bring anything new to the franchise, but in some cases breaks tradition. One thing I should finish with – the Clank lemmings is fun!
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