Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty review (PS3)

I’m fed up of hating on games. When you’re lucky enough to review a highly anticipated game there’s the element of hype around it that means you’ll often have to take a step back before slapping a ten on a product in case you’ve been drawn into the hype machine surrounding it; if we didn’t love games, we wouldn’t be doing this. Unfortunately that means it’s often down to me to point out the faults in some otherwise damn good games, so what a great opportunity for me, to review a game I thought that there was no way they could screw up. Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty.

In the franchise’s decent history I’ve been pleasantly surprised with just about every iteration thrown my way. R&C Future Tools of Destruction is the only other to be released on the PS3 and as a fun, varied, well rounded, replayable and beautiful entry, it was an easy 9/10 for me. Now, borrowing the same engine (and many of the assets), this currently only PSN downloadable title (Blu-Ray version coming soon) extends the cliffhanger, throws us a few new levels and asks a tenner for the privilege. The good news? It’s just as fun and looks just as good.

Add-on pack

Settling back in with the game I felt right at home. Despite being essentially an add-on pack that doesn’t require the original game, it coaxes in new players with the occasional helpful tip to explain or remind you of the controls and new features. Your wrench can now attach to items around the world and manipulate them like some kind of electromagnetic telekinetic superpower, and it’s a feature that adds to the design of the levels, pumping out some more interesting puzzles among the obligatory ‘remember the sequence’ button pushing music escapade.

While most of the enemies are from the previous game (and pirates no less), the few boss fights are dramatic and well designed, although won’t put up much of a fight once you’ve figured out their attack pattern, weak spot, or just thrown a couple of those nano insect-ish turret things near them. Indeed on the highest difficulty I only died there because there were so many projectiles flying around from various sources that I couldn’t really tell what to avoid.

Tools of Destruction

The seven weapons present are all available in Tools of Destruction, which doesn’t disappoint because of the well balanced nature, and still interesting design, although some notable items are absent. The gimmicky and not especially useful items that you could use (including the Groovatron) aren’t present, and the weapons are basically handed to you (with one exception) as you progress from level to level.

Straight in there at ‘level 3’, the upgrade system is still there, but given the shorter quest, seems rather gimped at two upgrades (to ‘level 5’) for each weapon. There aren’t any side quests or real diversions from the main linear levels either, so expect to have just upgraded all of them by the time you reach the end boss, not giving you any time to use their best form by the end if you’re sharing your kills between them. Equally as useless is the bolt currency, which only gives you one chance to buy something, and won’t have you hunting for stray bolts once it is available. Indeed, once you have the item there’s no point in hunting for more bolts.

Don’t leave that out

Championing replayability, Insomniac’s previous games have included an achievement/trophy style system of Skill Points that unlock various features within their games and give you some strange objectives to make it worth coming back for. Notably missing in Quest for Booty, it begs the question of why avoid the previously popular system, especially when tying it into the PS3’s relatively new Trophy system would all but guarantee more sales. Again, once you’ve completed the 3-ish hour campaign there is little incentive to return.

Even the varying difficulty levels only change the damage you receive, the damage you cause and the amount of health restored by one of those health crate thingies, so don’t expect different attack patterns; hard difficulty, available from the start was a good challenge, but a little unforgiving at certain points. I’d recommend starting on normal.

Short but sweet

The truth is, even without maximising the potential of the game, it’s still a whole load of fun, just like any of the other games, and shows general design that shows the production values and talent of the development team to be on an extremely high pedestal. The occasional bug creeps in, with the in-game cinematics that replace the FMV of Tools of Destruction (no doubt for file size and downloading reasons) being fine but occasionally too quiet and some camera clipping problems at various moments. One cinematic randomly ended mid line, but that can’t over shadow the humour and pleasure gained by continuing with the story.

I’ve already mentioned the production values, but they can be compared to any full priced retail title on the market favourably. Music is as swashbuckling and engaging as the mightiest of pirate themed adventures, and all of the voice actors make a welcome return to perform the characters that appear with obvious talent and great direction. It’s really a question of quality over quantity, and though some may balk at the £9.99 price tag for such a short non replayable experience, the actual gameplay reminds us all how platforming should be fun. Fans of the games should pick this one up, but only after exhausting Tools of Destruction’s complete features, since that’s a lot more game for just about twice the price. That said, it’s a great tease for the next Ratchet & Clank game. 2009 can’t come quickly enough.