Everyone at Insomniac was on their a-game here. Funny & clever writing the whole way through, really great variation between the levels with tons of branching paths to take & optional things to find, along with an absolute 10/10 soundtrack courtesy of David Bergeaud. The lack of strafejumping helps make an already varied arsenal of weapons even more well-differentiated from each other, having to switch weapons in real time means you have to think in advance about which one's best for the situation, and the strafing that is there has drawbacks which prevent it from being the one-size-fits-all deal it eventually became in the later titles. R&C1's also by far the most thematically focused of the series; it's hard to imagine Ratchet and Clank becoming as iconic as they are if their arcs weren't so well handled here.

Just such a uniquely designed blend of platforming with shooting that was never really replicated. It seems as though its (apparently) unorthodox controls are a common gripe these days, but I think this is more to do with skewed expectations than them being truly flawed - people seem to go in expecting this to be a shooter with platforming elements, like its sequels, instead of the platformer with shooting elements that it is. And to that end, R&C1 simply does too many things too well for it to not be considered great.