One of the most paradoxical sequels I have ever played. Mechanically a huge improvement on the first game, which adds in features that make total sense for a sequel and refines what was there. It is also much worse than the original and made me raise my star rating for the original.

There is so much here that I love: the opening, first few levels, refined combat and the great sense of humor remain in tact, the fact that Clank isn't with Ratchet at first because he just wants to stay at home and kick back is incredibly funny, and I have to say that the first half of the game lives up to the hype and is where the game is at its absolute best. The combat can offer more unique challenges due to strafing, the platforming is as tight as ever, and the dialogue maintains that snappy wit that made the first game so enjoyable to get through.

The second half of the game, after the Thief's identity gets revealed, is a very dramatic nose dive to the finish line, leading to an interminable final level and shit boss fight before the game just runs out of steam.

A lot of it has to do with the game being over-designed. During development they found that players were favoring weapons, so weapons could only level up once, the hope being that it would make the player have to use more of the weaponry on hand. The problem here is that by the end of the game, EVERY WEAPON that isn't the Minirocket Tube or Plasma Coil is not worth using. Lancer, Blitz Gun, Mini Nuke, all become completely irrelevant in the end. So they essentially took different steps to get to the same problem.

The final level will just become the player picking enemies away with the plasma coil and minrocket, running back to the ammo vendor to refill, and going back to do it again. It becomes as unengaging as the final level of R&C1 being sitting in a corner using the visibomb to deal with every enemy. But at least every tool in R&C1 CAN be used! They don't just completely fall off at a certain point, the game allows you to try whatever method works, whereas Going Commando strong arms you into one playstyle.

I should note that this game was made in about 10 months, which is fucking crazy and irresponsible for a publisher to insist on something like that, and the fact that the game is this good and this packed with content is nothing short of miraculous. But its story being strung together haphazardly and levels becoming very uninspired makes it very apparent that at a certain point a game just had to get done. The story still has the great satire on capitalism and consumerism that defines this series, and is very biting and funny in regards to that, but the actual narrative thrust goes nowhere and the ending is a total flatline. It's like they just ran out of time to actually round things out, compared to the original having an actual for real ending that is the culmination of character arcs.

The biggest issue with the story is not only that Ratchet has been sanded down a little. Nowhere near as dramatically as he will be in 2016, and he still has definition here, but I can't help but find the more dynamic and changing character in the first game more compelling, as we see him become heroic and learn a lesson. Here the game strains to find something for him and Angela to do when they talk but is incapable to extract any character from it whatsoever. WASTED CHARACTER!!! AH!!!

I want to compliment the battle arena though. That is a great idea and is a ton of fun, implemented perfectly and is easily the highlight of the game and a great way to play with the weapon sandbox.

Back to my ANGER!! The hang-glider stinks, throw it in the trash. The tractor beam is so worthless they might as well have not even bothered. The snowbeast yetis are worse than anything in the first game, it's alien to me how no one realized what a stinker they had on their hands there.

That's the biggest issue, is that the shit here is stinkier than anything in R&C1! The bad bits of Going Commando are fucking horrible. Giant Clank might be the worst thing ever put into a game, whenever an enemy knocks you back the camera swings towards Clank, messing with the perspective to such a degree you have to readjust. Bad! The regular Clank sections are still as unnecessary as ever, slowing down the pace to a grinding halt. Stupid! Why do ammo boxes only ever give me visibomb ammo? I am in the middle of the final boss that takes a fucking hour to beat, I need ammo for the guns that actually work on him!!

Oh, and the charge boots. The fucking CHARGE BOOTS. In a game with some really punitive checkpoints, having a device that is basically designed to blast you right off the sides of cliffs is a Dick Move. There's no way to stop it once its started, and you will always do it by accident while throwing your wrench, it's like a troll gadget. You have to turn it off so you don't accidentally kill yourself while playing casually, but you have to turn it back on to zoom through the empty, flat levels when you need to refill on your Minirocket Tube ammo.

I have been nothing but incredibly negative here, and I think the game earns it with some truly nasty design choices, but it's just too well made to truly deserve less than 3 stars. I played through all of it, had fun generally, loved the world design and art direction just as much as the original. I still think it's leaps and bounds better than any of the Jak games, and most PS2 platformers for that matter. I think back to some of the minigames in the first Sly Cooper and am tempted to give this 5 stars just for not being that game, but given how good Ratchet & Clank was, it's hard to not find the ways this one takes a step back to be a massive leap backwards.

I really love this game even in spite of the snow yetis. This is the game that introduced the now standard feature of weapons that evolve with use. The game's just bigger in scope compared to the first and the shooting is improved with some much needed features like the ability to strafe while shooting. This game also starts the tradition of a hidden museum that features developer commentary and content that was cut from the game. It's a lot of work, but I wish more games would do something like this.

Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando is what I would call one of the most perfect video game sequels of all time! It improves on literally everything the first game did, while introducing some new mechanics like the weapon leveling system and strafing. Call me nostalgia blind, but I love the ship battles, giant clank sections, and hover bike races as well. I also believe this game has the most creative and coolest planets in the series history.

I also find this to be the most replayable game in the series. Seriously, I could play this game over and over not get sick of it.

The only thing that's kinda meh is the story. Though considering the troubled development early Ratchet games had, it's understandable why it turned out the way that it did.

So after positive reviews from play testers on the first game, R&C 2 began development 5 months before the first game released and the development was worth it because not only is this better than the first game but this is a PlayStation 2 highlight.

One of the major issues with the first game was Ratchet. He came off as cocky and unfriendly to Clank, so Insomniac changed Ratchet so he would be more friendly and handle himself better in stressful situations. Mikey Kelley was replaced by well known voice actor James Arnold Taylor and he does a good job while giving Ratchet a more mature voice.

This game has a bit of RPG in it. The more you use weapons it will level up becoming better. One of the best weapons is the Bouncer when fired it will split up into multiple shots dealing great damage.

Bolts are still needed in plentiful amounts because weapons and armours are expensive but luckily there are ways to obtain massive amounts of bolts without the need of grinding multiple levels to obtain tons of bolts.

The story is just here and there with goons for hire and an ending that came out of nowhere. One boss was just annoying to deal with and was a lot more tedious and terrible than the final boss.

Ratchet & Clank fans and fans of platformers should play this because it is one of the best games and PS2 games there is.

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.

An almost perfect sequel that fixes every problem I had with the first game.

Strafing was a master stroke addition to the series, but more importantly than anything else, Ratchet is now fast and responsive and only moves when you're actively giving inputs, fixing every problem the first game had with platforming and combat. The health upgrades, weapon upgrades, and armour are also welcome additions. On top of all of that, the game has a banger soundtrack.

I don't have much to say about the gameplay besides that it's still tons of fun and I love revisiting this game every couple years.

My only criticism is that in trying to be bigger and outdo its predecessor, like many other platformers of the time, it's a tad bloated and not all of the new features are good. The arena was good enough to become a mainstay of the series, but other additions like the vehicle races and Giant Clank battles range between okay and annoying. Ship battles are a good idea, but feel a bit awkward to control in this game, and were improved in later entries. The collectathon exploration levels are another idea with a lot of potential, but needed fleshing out more. The desert environments these levels take place in are very dull and become monotonous fast. The PS3 Ratchet games executed the idea much better.

There are also a few too many weapons. Some of them aren't very useful and it's better to save your bolts, but new players won't know ahead of time which ones to skip.

But taking all of this into account, I think this game did a better job of growing and evolving the series than its contemporaries such as Jak and Sly did. Although those series introduced some very unique and interesting ideas too, the new mechanics added in this game were a lot less awkward and clunky than some of the new mechanics in those games, making this one much more replayable for me.

Going Commando is my second favourite in the series after Deadlocked and these two are by far my most replayed games in the series.

"Watch this" - pulls out comically large monitor from my left pocket

It is literally a 90's/00's Saturday morning cartoon as a video game which makes it extremely charming. I understand how much this game did for the series though I can't help but not enjoy how dated it controls. My standard for "gun-centric" platformers is Destroy All Humans!, which controls like butter to this day. I also felt like there was random spikes in enemy scaling which was jarring - common in games from this era but since I haven't experienced it in a while it came off frustrating. The door opening minigames are also really bad imo. Overall I enjoyed my playthrough - albeit a little frustrated by the end.

The first Ratchet and Clank was a very fun outing for the titular duo but then a year later comes the sequel Going Commando which improves on just about everything it possibly can.

The weapons are some of the most fun to mess around with and it's made even better thanks to the ability to upgrade them as the game goes on transforming them into weapons of mass destruction that could make even the fiercest of enemies cower like a whimpering dog. Your health system is much improved as well with a levelling up mechanic meaning that Ratchet's rocking more health than last time.

The arenas and space battles are a great addition to the series as well giving you the chance to face more battles and earn a lot more bolts. Even the controls are better with Ratchet being much more responsive and he can finally strafe as well for those little shoutout moments.

And once it's all done, you can do it all over again with Challenge Mode where the enemies get more tougher but the rewards even greater with more bolts and fiercer weapons.

With the fun levels and set-pieces combined, Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando makes for a superb sequel to the original game and one of the most essential games to have on the PS2. You really do owe it to yourself to check out this gem.

Pros:
R&C 2 gives us more weapons to experiment with, with the game including some of the original ones. The adventure players go through in R&C 2 definitely develops Ratchet and Clank's relationship significantly. I love the ending with Captain Quark and the numerous Jak and Daxter Easter eggs hidden throughout. The jokes and mood of R&C 2 have the same vibe as R&C 1, which I love and hope to keep seeing.
Cons:
Enemies have the same tone and feel monotonous. The worlds are filled to the brim with enemies. The worlds themselves do not feel as alive as in the first game. On top of this, the soundtrack was not as good as I hoped it would be. The overall plot and story felt somewhat like filler. Each time you would complete a world, you would have to spend a lot of the bolts earned on story items, which stops players from being able to buy more weapons and test them out (40k bolts for an item once!). On to my biggest ick now, the difficulty spike. The game starts out nice and simple, being easy. Around 3 hours, the level design of the world felt as if it had no testing (creating very frustrating segments), with very hard courses of countless enemies swarming you with endless rounds of bullets (while also hoping they do not respawn infinitely). The game has improved with checkpoints since R&C 1, but still lacks in that department.
Overall, this was a pretty disappointing sequel with few merits. Most of the time, I was frustrated beyond belief. It felt like Jak II all over again...

A vast improvement over the first game in so many ways, it's so much more fun and enjoyable. Hit points constantly upgrade with the XP system, no longer limited to only 8 hits, you get armor that can decrease damage, and many minigames that award large amounts of bolts are included so it's no longer a necessity to grind via glitches.

Though things like the RYNO 2 and final armor are still massively expensive. I also found the end game to be weaker than Ratchet 1 with a surprisingly abrupt ending after such a huge twist. Space shooting segments were meh too with controls that were just way too twitchy.

Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando is almost a classic,

There's so many platformers that, given the opportunity for a sequel, want to reinvent themselves in some way in order to create a new identity. Usually it's this identity that acts as a sort of second chance to prove to the audience that the character has something to offer that the player and the publisher maybe didn't see initially. If the gameplay shifts in some significant way, then it's likely an attempt to grow the story and world so that it gives the IP some long-term staying power. Though ultimately I don't think many would argue that the best platformers are almost always direct sequels to their original title, building on what made the first so appealing. Even within the console generation that Ratchet and Clank exist, I think you'd have a hard time making the argument that Sly 2 is a worse sequel than Jak 2, unless you really like Jak 2 and hate Sly 2. What I think makes Ratchet and Clank 2 such and interesting case study is that it kind of has it both ways.

While on the surface, especially if you haven't played in a while, this game looks and feels like a direct sequel it really does change the dynamic the player has with the characters and their mechanics. By simply adding a strafe button, more enemies and gauntlets, and a leveling mechanic the core experience has shifted from a Platformer With Guns to a Shooter With Platforming. And of course the platforming still exists and is fine, but if you play the game again after years of not touching it, seeing it mentioned for a moment in video essays, and trying to remember what it was like, it becomes super clear that while the series wasn't shifting from it's core appeal in most ways, it definitely changed the essentials enough that I think you could safely say the genre the game lies in is different now. And to me that's really exciting, I like that Ratchet and Clank 2 embraced the more gun-focused gameplay and explored that part of its identity rather than keep to its platforming roots, because to be I think the series (from a gameplay perspective) ended up being a lot more interesting in the long run. I think it's the reason I keep coming back to the series, because there's no other game that really does what Ratchet and Clank does with the same level of polish and depth. Ratchet and Clank has carved out its own little niche that I think explains fairly well why this series has continued for as long as it has while it's peers didn't. Jak strayed way too far from its core appeal and unfortunately picked a lane that already had better contemporaries. Sly chose to keep its cards so close to its chest that the series' creatives had to make the call to close the book because none of the new ideas they were throwing at the series were really working. So to see Ratchet and Clank all these years later still getting not just sequels, but sequels with thoughtfulness and effort put into them, it makes me really happy. To be honest though I believe that the peak of this still really lies with Ratchet and Clank 2.

The sense of exploration and story progression that platformers tend to do well with is still here without too much unfunny garbage and the weapons are some of the most creative in the series. Considering the year they had to work on this I think the team here created nothing short of a miracle. The planet variety is on point here as well. Places like Dobbo and Damosel really flesh out the manufactured reality that Megacorp has managed to fully realize, while it's headquarters in Yeedil puts a nice pin in the hyper-capitalistic theming the first two games orbit around. Going Commando is truly a spectacular game and still the best the series has to offer in terms of engaging gun-play, variety, and exploration. I think if it wasn't so rough around the edges re: the technical art, this could've been considered a modern classic.

---

Would you get the same experience watching the game?: If you played the first game maybe, but no not really at all. The leveling mechanic for weapons is too satisfying to really get through video alone.

The shooting is better than the original with cooler and more fun weapons, as well as an improved camera and strafing. It also retains the strategic weapon choice aspect of the first game and that's great. Of course the evolving weapon system is really cool as well.

The checkpoints got better compared to the first game, bolts and ways to get them are more plentiful. The health system is also more lenient which is good.

But that's just about it for the improvements. The story and humor are worse than the first one, and the planets are less memorable. There is also less emphasis on platforming in favor of more shooting segments which I didn't like.

The fun parts of the game (shooting, platforming) are constantly being interrupted by annoying minigames. Seriously, almost all of them are bad. The space fights, the levitator, the glider, the infiltrator, the electrolyzer - all shit.

The game becomes much more annoying after Boldan with very spongy enemies, I recommend the Meteor Gun + Lock-On mod combo, the shield and the Heavy Bouncer to make it tolerable (I sadly tried the shield way too late but it helped).

Also, there are many sections with seemingly impossibly hard enemies or constantly respawning enemies. I recommend that you treat the game as a speed-run and just skip past the enemies, most of the time it just works.

The game has a lot of "that part"s like the Snivelak boss, or Grelbin as a whole, or the respawning enemies on Damosel etc etc. People say that the original is unfair but this was worse. I know the game had a troubled and short development period so I can't be too hard on them for those though.

That might be a skill issue but I think the high bolt prices on the weapons and the upgrade grind discourage me from experimenting as much as I would have wanted, so I didn't realize just how useful some weapons are before I stumble upon that info on the internet.

I might sound overly harsh on this game, but in the end the great core gameplay is still there, and for every downgrade there was an upgrade so the score is just a bit lower than that of the original.

The first Ratchet has some pretty big and obvious flaws, so Going Commando gets to make some big and obvious fixes up front. You can strafe! Auto aim is way more generous! The puzzles aren't as slow and annoying! You have way more health! Ammo is cheaper! Within the first ten minutes you can immediately tell this is a huge step up.

There are also a number of other smart design tweaks that aren't just fixes. Weapons gain exp now, which really encourages you to use everything in your arsenal. There are new optional challenges which means if you're stuck you can earn bolts to upgrade your character or get some new weapons.

Okay now the stuff that sucks.

The story is a complete mess. Character arcs aren't set up properly, or go nowhere, or don't exist. There are a number of twists that just don't land. It's hard to even discern what the overall narrative is. It very much feels like the thing has been hastily cobbled together into something resembling a complete story, but it doesn't feel cohesive. This is a shame because the characters and world on the first game were so strong, and it makes the sequel feel a little meandering and aimless.

The environments here are lovely to look at but feel a bit less lived-in. They rattle by so fast and there are very few characters to meet, so you don't get a strong sense of the world.

The game is really, really fun. All the design additions and fixes make this a really fantastic game to play, but it also feels more incoherent in its overall construction. Had a great time with it but like it less than the original.