Coming fresh off my first play-through of the excellent Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando - what the hell happened??? This game did away with everything I loved about the first two games and doubled down on everything I hated. It’s ugly, buggy, bloated, and straight unfun to play. That this game has the same or higher average rating as the first two games on this site makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Up Your Arsenal is such a clusterfuck it's hard to pick a starting point. If this was a fan project, I’d give it a gold “you tried” sticker and move on. Its faults are equal parts incompetence and commitment to terrible ideas. Stick around if you want to watch me chug a whole bottle of Haterade.
At its core, Up Your Arsenal is not interested in being part platformer, part shooter - it wants to be all shooter, and apparently doesn’t care if it's a good one. “Wants” is still doing some heavy lifting, as UYA’s level geometry is so hallway-core I can’t tell if the enemies were crammed in unfinished levels to hide the fact there’s nothing else to do but shoot. The game balance is so bad I can’t tell if game design happened at all.
For example, one of the first weapons you buy is a whip. For a single button press, Ratchet whirls it around him so fast and in such a wide-reaching radius that it trivializes the first few planets. Mobs of enemies are downed without having to consider cover or positioning. Even the first boss fight is easily stun-locked to death without having to move Ratchet at all. Until suddenly, the whip is useless.
Like Going Commando, UYA has a weapons leveling system. In Going Commando, different enemy behaviors and level designs would encourage experimentation with new weapon types, so upgrading a weapon came naturally through its contextual utility. In UYA, all enemies cluster and spam high rates of fire in similar ways. This means you always want to use the strongest area of effect weapon you have at all times. Unfortunately, I repeatedly learned too late that my previous go-to weapon had a damage cap useless against a new planet of bullet sponges. This led to multiple instances where I hit hard number walls. I died multiple times, progressing only after I’d killed the same enemies a dozen times over for my rocket launcher or sniper rifle to level up and not run out of ammo before the gauntlet was over.
I cannot overstate how grueling some of the enemy gauntlets were. The first two games both had their shootouts, but those were usually reserved for the finale of the campaign. By sheer body count, UYA matched the finale of the first game within my first play session - but without all the tools to make it interesting.
Ratchet has fewer, different, and worse support and utility gadgets than the previous games, and some that returned straight up do not work. Stationary turrets and heat seeking robot minions, previously staples of open-space mob control, would routinely fail to spawn while still ticking down their limited ammo count. Or Ratchet would lag in his throwing animation and chuck them over a cliff. The new energy cover wall routinely had laser blasts clip through it, and caused major slow-down if I used more than one. Worst of all, sometimes upgrading weapons turned them into a less useful tool with different functionality, with no way to roll back to their earlier version. More than once after a weapon upgraded, its niche utility was gone, forcing me to grind to upgrade a different weapon in the hopes it would evolve into a half-way decent replacement.
The denial was strong as I slowly came to the realization this game sucked. Gone were the segments of walking on walls, the grinding on rails, transforming into Giant Clank, or go-kart racing. Variety in UYA comes in the form of shooting enemies in a linear level, or shooting enemies in an arena from a mission menu. The rocket boots, (the equivalent of a run option in Going Commando), had their physics changed, causing Ratchet to skid so far after stopping they became a liability. Nothing like clearing two rooms out of five before the next checkpoint, trying to get there faster after the 5th attempt, and falling into a pit to do it all again! Just walking at one speed forever down jaggy-lined hallways teaming with enemies who don’t go down after three rockets to the face.
Eventually by the later levels, I realized it was often faster to jump past enemies instead of trying to engage with them. The most efficient, least non-fun way to play the game was to literally ignore the shooting as much as possible.
(I guess there were some skydiving levels, but Ratchet often loaded separate and away from all the missiles and spaceships I assume you were supposed to avoid. What was meant to be an action set piece instead gave me time to admire the screen tearing of the skybox.)
Now that I’ve reassured myself that the game’s bones are rotten, I will indulge myself in hating on everything else they support.
The writing. The Ratchet and Clank wiki singles out a single writer who was responsible for the scenario, dialog and cutscenes in this game, and having a name to hate on is deliciously tempting. But this project had over a 100 people on it, and several management people who must have signed off on everything. My contempt is for everyone who allowed this militaristic propaganda and regressive, sexist bro-ish-ness (all obscene by the series’ own standards!) to come to market, and my despair for this release’s commercial and critical acclaim.
I was in disbelief for multiple characters and scenes in this game. Gone was the plucky and funny anti-hero turned ally lombax Angela, who was taller and more capable than Ratchet. Instead the new female lead has no personality, diminutive features, and a dad who reveals her species’ character design to follow this bullshit. She and Ratchet have no chemistry, but she kisses him out of nowhere, twice!They’re not even the same species! That somehow bothers me so much! But even worse, there’s a Britney Spears send-up with a sexy robot pop-idol named Courtney Gears. She gets an equally out of nowhere horny music video, and a whole boss fight, where she repeats “Ooops, I did it again~” every ten seconds. A boss fight that is legitimately terrible, as she has multiple attacks with no wind-up animation, and can teleport to vantage points anywhere the camera can’t see. I probably died more than a couple times out of disbelief this was actually happening.
In the previous two games, Ratchet was a free spirit. He had no allegiance or obligations, and wandered the galaxy for charmingly petty and self-serving reasons. But importantly, he made decisions on what to do next with his own expertise or his collaboration with Clank. In UYA, suddenly Ratchet’s a sergeant in an army, spouting jingoistic action movie quips and relishing the idea of shooting sentient aliens in a war setting. What happened to wanting to be a hoverboard racer???My mind wanders to the proximity of this game’s release date to 9/11 and the related war in Afghanistan, thinking, did things get like that, that bad, that fast? Ratchet gets conscripted into a defense force of some sort, with a commanding officer and a hierarchy and a half dozen NPCs who all get screen time for Penny Arcade level jokes. I hate it all so much!
The decision to give the game a mother ship that acts as a hub world completely kills the pacing of the play experience. In previous games, one of a planet’s levels would end with Ratchet finding coordinates to the next planet. Planets were selected via menu every time Ratchet returned to his ship. The gap between exposition and player action was short and snappy, so I always knew what I was doing next. In UYA, Ratchet instead finds a clue of coordinates to the next level, necessitating flying back to the hub ship, talking to an NPC, sometimes playing a god-awful minigame to get the new coordinates, then walking back to his ship to fly to the next level. Sometimes I would find multiple coordinates in one trip, necessitating more menus tracking story missions and side missions. More than once would I decode a coordinate, fly to the new planet, realize the planet was optional, and have to fly back to decode the other coordinate to advance the game. This was excruciating, and completely killed the feeling of exploration both in terms of pacing and Ratchet’s agency. He’s completely dependent on the expertise of other NPCs that the game only holds in contempt.
Because they are all terrible stereotypes of how corporate adults imagine children’s media characters should be. They’re outdated, were never funny in concept, and are certainly not funny in execution here. But most importantly, the game hates them. Ratchet doesn’t have any friends besides Clank. Ratchet and his other crew members are assholes to each other in a way where they avoid outright fighting only because both parties see each other as beneath their dignity. But while you are in the hub ship, you will hear their “gags” over the intercom from the moment you arrive until the moment you leave.
Quick aside to mention, the audio of voice clips is so badly handled that multiple characters can talk at once and cause them all to cancel out. I once completed a challenge and won a new tool, and the combination of Ratchet’s happy dialog, with some NPC’s pithy intercom retort, cut over and interrupted the audio-only tutorial voice telling me what the new tool actually did. Which was then all cut out because the game immediately slammed me into another menu for taking on another challenge. Three lines of dialog recorded and I didn’t get to hear any of them! Pure insanity!
If this game has a saving grace, the villain is the obvious stand-out of the trilogy. Dr. Nefarious and his robot butler are a great comic duo that finally step away from the weird corporate-politics humor of the first two games’ villains. As much as I adore his scene chewery, the game refuses to leave any good thing unblemished and marries him to even more screen time for Captain Qwark.
I absolutely hate Captain Qwark. I do not think he is funny. Whatever conventions he was mocking in 2002 have aged out of relevance, and his material does not stand on its own. Every scene with Captain Qwark in any game absorbs all focus from Ratchet and Clank, as it is obvious the developers find him infinitely more interesting than I do. Because he is ham-fisted into games that do not need him, how Ratchet and Clank treat him is not consistent between or within games. His lines exist to hear him talk, the plot bending and breaking itself to indulge his inclusion. UYA sees fit to bless us with terrible 2D platforming levels where we play as Captain Qwark. They have the cheapest, stock sound “boing!” effect in existence that plays every time Captain Qwark jumps. If they weren’t required for story progression, I could understand their inclusion as “variety,” but by being mandatory, they feel like filler. Also I hate them.
Although UYA might look the same in screenshots compared to the first two games, the art direction is substantially worse. Writing this review without the game in front of me, I can barely remember a single planet past the first, its jungle theme memorable only because of its cringey indiginous “savage” monkey people. I can remember planets from both the previous games, like the resort town, the raining city, the solar punk metropolises - UYA had at least three desert planets that all bled together into red mud. Even the mini planetoids I loved so much in Going Commando here have all the appeal of a 1980’s office poster that survived into 2020, faded in the sun and given its visual interest by a coffee stain.
Second quick aside to complain about the hideous menus. They are butterscotch yellow and orange with white text. Someone deserved to be fired. Also gone is the excellent health HUD I praised about Going Commando, instead replaced with a hard-to-discern health bar hiding behind some loud numbers.. Numbers are not easier to read than graphs! What is happening!
In my rating system, 2 stars is an average, C rank game, and Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal is clearly a 1 star, D rank game. Enemies regularly clipped through level geometry, as did the camera, and occasionally Ratchet. The game is playable and beatable, but feels like the tools for winning are accidental instead of designed. I was so disappointed since I loved Going Commando so much, and was hopeful the series would keep building on strength to strength. Now I’m filled with trepidation for how the series will progress, since my experiences are now split 50/50 between having a pleasant or an aggravating time.
At its core, Up Your Arsenal is not interested in being part platformer, part shooter - it wants to be all shooter, and apparently doesn’t care if it's a good one. “Wants” is still doing some heavy lifting, as UYA’s level geometry is so hallway-core I can’t tell if the enemies were crammed in unfinished levels to hide the fact there’s nothing else to do but shoot. The game balance is so bad I can’t tell if game design happened at all.
For example, one of the first weapons you buy is a whip. For a single button press, Ratchet whirls it around him so fast and in such a wide-reaching radius that it trivializes the first few planets. Mobs of enemies are downed without having to consider cover or positioning. Even the first boss fight is easily stun-locked to death without having to move Ratchet at all. Until suddenly, the whip is useless.
Like Going Commando, UYA has a weapons leveling system. In Going Commando, different enemy behaviors and level designs would encourage experimentation with new weapon types, so upgrading a weapon came naturally through its contextual utility. In UYA, all enemies cluster and spam high rates of fire in similar ways. This means you always want to use the strongest area of effect weapon you have at all times. Unfortunately, I repeatedly learned too late that my previous go-to weapon had a damage cap useless against a new planet of bullet sponges. This led to multiple instances where I hit hard number walls. I died multiple times, progressing only after I’d killed the same enemies a dozen times over for my rocket launcher or sniper rifle to level up and not run out of ammo before the gauntlet was over.
I cannot overstate how grueling some of the enemy gauntlets were. The first two games both had their shootouts, but those were usually reserved for the finale of the campaign. By sheer body count, UYA matched the finale of the first game within my first play session - but without all the tools to make it interesting.
Ratchet has fewer, different, and worse support and utility gadgets than the previous games, and some that returned straight up do not work. Stationary turrets and heat seeking robot minions, previously staples of open-space mob control, would routinely fail to spawn while still ticking down their limited ammo count. Or Ratchet would lag in his throwing animation and chuck them over a cliff. The new energy cover wall routinely had laser blasts clip through it, and caused major slow-down if I used more than one. Worst of all, sometimes upgrading weapons turned them into a less useful tool with different functionality, with no way to roll back to their earlier version. More than once after a weapon upgraded, its niche utility was gone, forcing me to grind to upgrade a different weapon in the hopes it would evolve into a half-way decent replacement.
The denial was strong as I slowly came to the realization this game sucked. Gone were the segments of walking on walls, the grinding on rails, transforming into Giant Clank, or go-kart racing. Variety in UYA comes in the form of shooting enemies in a linear level, or shooting enemies in an arena from a mission menu. The rocket boots, (the equivalent of a run option in Going Commando), had their physics changed, causing Ratchet to skid so far after stopping they became a liability. Nothing like clearing two rooms out of five before the next checkpoint, trying to get there faster after the 5th attempt, and falling into a pit to do it all again! Just walking at one speed forever down jaggy-lined hallways teaming with enemies who don’t go down after three rockets to the face.
Eventually by the later levels, I realized it was often faster to jump past enemies instead of trying to engage with them. The most efficient, least non-fun way to play the game was to literally ignore the shooting as much as possible.
(I guess there were some skydiving levels, but Ratchet often loaded separate and away from all the missiles and spaceships I assume you were supposed to avoid. What was meant to be an action set piece instead gave me time to admire the screen tearing of the skybox.)
Now that I’ve reassured myself that the game’s bones are rotten, I will indulge myself in hating on everything else they support.
The writing. The Ratchet and Clank wiki singles out a single writer who was responsible for the scenario, dialog and cutscenes in this game, and having a name to hate on is deliciously tempting. But this project had over a 100 people on it, and several management people who must have signed off on everything. My contempt is for everyone who allowed this militaristic propaganda and regressive, sexist bro-ish-ness (all obscene by the series’ own standards!) to come to market, and my despair for this release’s commercial and critical acclaim.
I was in disbelief for multiple characters and scenes in this game. Gone was the plucky and funny anti-hero turned ally lombax Angela, who was taller and more capable than Ratchet. Instead the new female lead has no personality, diminutive features, and a dad who reveals her species’ character design to follow this bullshit. She and Ratchet have no chemistry, but she kisses him out of nowhere, twice!
In the previous two games, Ratchet was a free spirit. He had no allegiance or obligations, and wandered the galaxy for charmingly petty and self-serving reasons. But importantly, he made decisions on what to do next with his own expertise or his collaboration with Clank. In UYA, suddenly Ratchet’s a sergeant in an army, spouting jingoistic action movie quips and relishing the idea of shooting sentient aliens in a war setting. What happened to wanting to be a hoverboard racer???
The decision to give the game a mother ship that acts as a hub world completely kills the pacing of the play experience. In previous games, one of a planet’s levels would end with Ratchet finding coordinates to the next planet. Planets were selected via menu every time Ratchet returned to his ship. The gap between exposition and player action was short and snappy, so I always knew what I was doing next. In UYA, Ratchet instead finds a clue of coordinates to the next level, necessitating flying back to the hub ship, talking to an NPC, sometimes playing a god-awful minigame to get the new coordinates, then walking back to his ship to fly to the next level. Sometimes I would find multiple coordinates in one trip, necessitating more menus tracking story missions and side missions. More than once would I decode a coordinate, fly to the new planet, realize the planet was optional, and have to fly back to decode the other coordinate to advance the game. This was excruciating, and completely killed the feeling of exploration both in terms of pacing and Ratchet’s agency. He’s completely dependent on the expertise of other NPCs that the game only holds in contempt.
Because they are all terrible stereotypes of how corporate adults imagine children’s media characters should be. They’re outdated, were never funny in concept, and are certainly not funny in execution here. But most importantly, the game hates them. Ratchet doesn’t have any friends besides Clank. Ratchet and his other crew members are assholes to each other in a way where they avoid outright fighting only because both parties see each other as beneath their dignity. But while you are in the hub ship, you will hear their “gags” over the intercom from the moment you arrive until the moment you leave.
Quick aside to mention, the audio of voice clips is so badly handled that multiple characters can talk at once and cause them all to cancel out. I once completed a challenge and won a new tool, and the combination of Ratchet’s happy dialog, with some NPC’s pithy intercom retort, cut over and interrupted the audio-only tutorial voice telling me what the new tool actually did. Which was then all cut out because the game immediately slammed me into another menu for taking on another challenge. Three lines of dialog recorded and I didn’t get to hear any of them! Pure insanity!
If this game has a saving grace, the villain is the obvious stand-out of the trilogy. Dr. Nefarious and his robot butler are a great comic duo that finally step away from the weird corporate-politics humor of the first two games’ villains. As much as I adore his scene chewery, the game refuses to leave any good thing unblemished and marries him to even more screen time for Captain Qwark.
I absolutely hate Captain Qwark. I do not think he is funny. Whatever conventions he was mocking in 2002 have aged out of relevance, and his material does not stand on its own. Every scene with Captain Qwark in any game absorbs all focus from Ratchet and Clank, as it is obvious the developers find him infinitely more interesting than I do. Because he is ham-fisted into games that do not need him, how Ratchet and Clank treat him is not consistent between or within games. His lines exist to hear him talk, the plot bending and breaking itself to indulge his inclusion. UYA sees fit to bless us with terrible 2D platforming levels where we play as Captain Qwark. They have the cheapest, stock sound “boing!” effect in existence that plays every time Captain Qwark jumps. If they weren’t required for story progression, I could understand their inclusion as “variety,” but by being mandatory, they feel like filler. Also I hate them.
Although UYA might look the same in screenshots compared to the first two games, the art direction is substantially worse. Writing this review without the game in front of me, I can barely remember a single planet past the first, its jungle theme memorable only because of its cringey indiginous “savage” monkey people. I can remember planets from both the previous games, like the resort town, the raining city, the solar punk metropolises - UYA had at least three desert planets that all bled together into red mud. Even the mini planetoids I loved so much in Going Commando here have all the appeal of a 1980’s office poster that survived into 2020, faded in the sun and given its visual interest by a coffee stain.
Second quick aside to complain about the hideous menus. They are butterscotch yellow and orange with white text. Someone deserved to be fired. Also gone is the excellent health HUD I praised about Going Commando, instead replaced with a hard-to-discern health bar hiding behind some loud numbers.. Numbers are not easier to read than graphs! What is happening!
In my rating system, 2 stars is an average, C rank game, and Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal is clearly a 1 star, D rank game. Enemies regularly clipped through level geometry, as did the camera, and occasionally Ratchet. The game is playable and beatable, but feels like the tools for winning are accidental instead of designed. I was so disappointed since I loved Going Commando so much, and was hopeful the series would keep building on strength to strength. Now I’m filled with trepidation for how the series will progress, since my experiences are now split 50/50 between having a pleasant or an aggravating time.
Hejin
1 year ago