Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando

released on Nov 11, 2003

Ratchet and Clank return as heroes for hire in Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando, the second game in this action platforming franchise.There are 18 entirely new weapons, as well as five weapons from the first game (you can upload them if using your old memory save). Each weapon is upgradeable, utilizing a new experience system, where weapons transform into more powerful forms the more they are used. In addition to main story levels, new Maxi-games give players a chance to test their skills and gain experience.


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Was fun, but the new planets weren't super interesting.

Going Commando is the best Ratchet & Clank. Better guns, memorable planets and enemies, they even say "fuck" once - that's sick as fuck.

goated game. better than the first in every way. no complaints

so to start off I like this game a fair bit, maybe slightly more than the first one but I prefer it due to its more polished gun play and addition of strafing rather than it having more interesting planets (although the giant destroyed gadgetron facility was a really cool opening shot), I found the music a lot less memorable than the first game and also not as atmospheric, in the first game the music really set the tone and vibe of planets and had me turning my game volume up at several points just to be able to hear them to their fullest,

the game has sudden and abrupt difficulty spikes in the latter half that kinda come out of nowhere, I had been steamrolling everything up until the planet Snivelak and speaking of Snivelak the boss fight on this planet was absolutely abysmal and unfun despite the impressive technical aspect of it being accomplished on the PS2 and I felt very similarly about the spaceflight sections, while they are cool concepts and were smoothed out much more in later games I had alot of difficulty locating enemies and even hitting them as they are incredibly small targets,

the story of this game also kinda goes all over the place likely due the rewrites the game underwent and it felt incredibly inconsistent, arenas were introduced in this game and arenas having always been my favourite I was kinda excited to visit a PS2 ratchet arena that I had no experience with, I was sorely disappointed with the variety but had alot of fun with it nonetheless and really enjoyed some of the more specific challenges like surviving a ton of rounds with only 300 lancer bullets,

all in all I do like this game but it trades a lot of blows with the first game and I found its planets less memorable but its arsenal of weapons much more interesting, I didnt like space combat, but I really liked the hoverbike sections this time around and so on. I can understand why this is a lot of peoples favourite ratchet & clank game and absolutely do not hate it despite the issues I had with it.

The R&C train continues as I move right onto the sequel. It's still a very recognizable game from the first, but this game has a TON of small but super significant improvements over the original, so I was pretty immediately drawn in. It took me around 12 hours to finish the Japanese version of the game while only getting a couple collectibles.

In this game, Ratchet & Clank find themselves where they ended the first game: watching TV at home. When suddenly, an eccentric inventor from another galaxy transports them to his location and tells them he needs their help to recover his stolen Protopet! After 2 weeks of commando training (off screen), Ratchet and Clank set off to save this missing Protopet and figure out just who the real bad guys may be. The story is certainly better and more involved than the first, but its overall presentation is still pretty similar. Most characters just amount to being little more than quirky item vendors you meet only one time, but it's still entertaining, and the overall resolution to the story is fun. Ratchet & Clank's banter is still fun as ever and it's a pleasing overlay to the platforming action of the main gameplay.

The main gameplay is very similar to the first game, but with many improvements. It's still a series of planets with a few branching paths in each. You kill enemies to get money to buy weapons to keep going through those planets to find more tools and guns and navigation data to new levels. Just how much better this game plays than the first game cannot be overstated, though. You can FINALLY strafe! In a third-person shooting game, this helps the combat out MASSIVELY, as you can probably easily imagine. On top of that, Ratchet also moves way less clumsily than he does in the first game, and his jumping and walking are tighter overall. Checkpoints are more frequent as well as actually being told to you when they happen, there are far less annoying and awful minigames (although there are still a couple), and ammo boxes actually respawn now between deaths so ammo is far less of a worry.

The guns are also better across the board, with nearly all of them being far more generally useful rather than the more circumstantial-to-useless feeling so many guns in the first game had. They also level up as you use them, going from normal to upgraded, and helping your favorite guns stay more relevant through more of the game. Ratchet himself also has an XP bar of sorts now, as killing more enemies will eventually trigger you to gain a new quarter of a life container (they're basically like hearts in Zelda), so you end up dying a LOT less even though the game's enemies do hit harder as you progress through the story. This game, like the first, still has an issue with some super weapons and armor (which reduces the amount of damage you take across the board by a percentage) being HORRIFICALLY expensive and requiring hours and hours of grinding for cash to acquire. A lot of the normal guns and armor are also quite prohibitively expensive, but the game really doesn't expect you to collect them all on your first playthrough (given that the game has a new game+ mode of sorts).

Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is a radical improvement from the first game in just about every way. It plays so much better I was actually happy to chase some of the more silly in-game side quests, like collecting every crystal and moon stone, simply because I was having so much fun with the combat. It's not quite perfect, but it's held up damn well and is still very worth playing so many years after its release.

While performing a balancing act between being a shooter and a platformer, this game improves almost everything about its predecessor. Combat controls, weapon upgrade systems, optional content, and a refined bolt economy are all improvements that makes this game easier to pick up and replay. The story misses the mark, however, starting off strong and nailing the first act, but dragging the rest of the game along to a bizarre finale.