It's strange to read so many reviews say that Going Commando is where the Ratchet series started to find its footing, because ever since I was a child, I've always felt that this is where these games started to lose their way. Playing it again now only reinforces that feeling.
Going Commando is the game with which Insomniac introduced an internal "award" aptly named the Snowbeast Award, given to whichever member of their staff was responsible for the worst part of a game. I've always found this very telling. The idea for something like this probably didn't occur to them during the development of the first Ratchet because it doesn't have any dips in quality noticeable enough to warrant such a thing. By comparison, Going Commando's highs aren't as high and its lows are significantly lower to the point that even its developers noticed.
The gameplay mechanics Going Commando added are like a case study in why less is often more. Guns can now be levelled up, which means that you'll inevitably end up using some not because they're the most appropriate tool for the situation at hand or because you want to, but because you haven't killed an arbitrary number of enough enemies for them to be on par with the rest of your arsenal yet. In turn, this makes the bonus feature of allowing you to use weapons from the first game if you have its save data on the same memory card - a very cool idea in theory - pretty pointless in practice, because they (for some reason) can't be levelled up and are eventually invalidated by the new weapons as a result.
Strafing now allows you to aim and move just as quickly as when you're not strafing, meaning there's very rarely any reason not to be constantly shooting while jumping from side to side regardless of which weapon you have equipped, what enemies you're fighting or what environment you're in, because it's the best way to avoid damage in almost every single circumstance. Where the first game's guns were all functionally distinct enough from each other for switching between them all to be a conclusion you arrive at naturally, Going Commando's strafing homogenises its guns to the point where most of the reason to swap between them effectively comes down to tickling the dopamine center of your brain by seeing their level bars go up. In the rare event that you ever feel that you don't have the most appropriate weapon equipped while playing Going Commando, don't worry - its weapon wheel also now pauses the game, removing any potential tension or consequences you might have otherwise faced for misjudging the situation you've found yourself in.
The uniformity of most enemy encounters and weapons is exacerbated by how much less interesting the level design is than that of the first game. Flat, empty expanses devoid of anything to jump over, take cover behind or interact with at all beyond hordes of cannon fodder are found in relative abundance in Going Commando - this style of design would be fine if it were just relegated to the optional arena, but it regularly bleeds into main levels themselves, taking away from the adventurous appeal of travelling to planets that are meant to be diverse. Even where there is platforming (no longer the focus of the game, by Insomniac's own admission) it's largely disparate from the shooting, compared to the first game in which both sides of the gameplay formula were tightly interwoven with each other.
Ratchet himself isn't nearly as bland as he eventually became in the post-PS2 games, but he's still not as unique as he was in the first game. Insomniac toned down his attitude in response to complaints that Ratchet was a "dick" in the first game, but that characterisation of him helped much more than it hurt. Not only did it add to his arc about learning to put revenge behind him and make his arguments with Clank funnier, it also just makes sense that the protagonist of a game in which you mow down several planets' worth of people would be a bit of a hard lad. Remnants of that side of Ratchet are still present in Going Commando, but in general he's a lot more inoffensive and doesn't stand out nearly as much from the crowd of 6th gen 3D platformer protagonists as he did initially, which is also at odds with the gameplay considering it's much more combat-oriented than the first's.
"Doesn't stand out" is a descriptor you can apply to other aspects of Going Commando, too. The HUD's no longer this rickety, retrofuturistic VCR-like interface which matches the look of its world, but something sleek and much more conventionally sci-fi. Health upgrades aren't contextualised as an in-universe product people have to buy anymore, and are instead a pat on the back you receive for killing enough things like in any run-of-the-mill RPG. Even Ratchet's outfit is more typical of what you would expect the protag of a sci-fi shooter to wear compared to the grimy mechanic's getup he was introduced to us with.
It's a testament to how enjoyable Going Commando is that I still think of it as a decent enough game despite all of this. I'd even go as far as to say that I'd have preferred the onslaught of third person shooters throughout the 7th gen to have taken influence from this rather than the cover-based route that most of them ended up taking. It deserves credit for being forward-thinking in some other ways too, like - for example - pulling off rotating 3D planetoid levels four years before Mario Galaxy blew everyone's minds (albeit a couple of years after Sonic Adventure 2 did it).
The first Ratchet is my favourite game of my favourite console, though, and neither at release nor now have I ever thought that Going Commando was a particularly satisfying follow-up to that, let alone "better in every way" as some have bizarrely called it. It's worth playing by any reasonable standard, but no matter how you slice it, I think it's quite a downgrade all the same.
Going Commando is the game with which Insomniac introduced an internal "award" aptly named the Snowbeast Award, given to whichever member of their staff was responsible for the worst part of a game. I've always found this very telling. The idea for something like this probably didn't occur to them during the development of the first Ratchet because it doesn't have any dips in quality noticeable enough to warrant such a thing. By comparison, Going Commando's highs aren't as high and its lows are significantly lower to the point that even its developers noticed.
The gameplay mechanics Going Commando added are like a case study in why less is often more. Guns can now be levelled up, which means that you'll inevitably end up using some not because they're the most appropriate tool for the situation at hand or because you want to, but because you haven't killed an arbitrary number of enough enemies for them to be on par with the rest of your arsenal yet. In turn, this makes the bonus feature of allowing you to use weapons from the first game if you have its save data on the same memory card - a very cool idea in theory - pretty pointless in practice, because they (for some reason) can't be levelled up and are eventually invalidated by the new weapons as a result.
Strafing now allows you to aim and move just as quickly as when you're not strafing, meaning there's very rarely any reason not to be constantly shooting while jumping from side to side regardless of which weapon you have equipped, what enemies you're fighting or what environment you're in, because it's the best way to avoid damage in almost every single circumstance. Where the first game's guns were all functionally distinct enough from each other for switching between them all to be a conclusion you arrive at naturally, Going Commando's strafing homogenises its guns to the point where most of the reason to swap between them effectively comes down to tickling the dopamine center of your brain by seeing their level bars go up. In the rare event that you ever feel that you don't have the most appropriate weapon equipped while playing Going Commando, don't worry - its weapon wheel also now pauses the game, removing any potential tension or consequences you might have otherwise faced for misjudging the situation you've found yourself in.
The uniformity of most enemy encounters and weapons is exacerbated by how much less interesting the level design is than that of the first game. Flat, empty expanses devoid of anything to jump over, take cover behind or interact with at all beyond hordes of cannon fodder are found in relative abundance in Going Commando - this style of design would be fine if it were just relegated to the optional arena, but it regularly bleeds into main levels themselves, taking away from the adventurous appeal of travelling to planets that are meant to be diverse. Even where there is platforming (no longer the focus of the game, by Insomniac's own admission) it's largely disparate from the shooting, compared to the first game in which both sides of the gameplay formula were tightly interwoven with each other.
Ratchet himself isn't nearly as bland as he eventually became in the post-PS2 games, but he's still not as unique as he was in the first game. Insomniac toned down his attitude in response to complaints that Ratchet was a "dick" in the first game, but that characterisation of him helped much more than it hurt. Not only did it add to his arc about learning to put revenge behind him and make his arguments with Clank funnier, it also just makes sense that the protagonist of a game in which you mow down several planets' worth of people would be a bit of a hard lad. Remnants of that side of Ratchet are still present in Going Commando, but in general he's a lot more inoffensive and doesn't stand out nearly as much from the crowd of 6th gen 3D platformer protagonists as he did initially, which is also at odds with the gameplay considering it's much more combat-oriented than the first's.
"Doesn't stand out" is a descriptor you can apply to other aspects of Going Commando, too. The HUD's no longer this rickety, retrofuturistic VCR-like interface which matches the look of its world, but something sleek and much more conventionally sci-fi. Health upgrades aren't contextualised as an in-universe product people have to buy anymore, and are instead a pat on the back you receive for killing enough things like in any run-of-the-mill RPG. Even Ratchet's outfit is more typical of what you would expect the protag of a sci-fi shooter to wear compared to the grimy mechanic's getup he was introduced to us with.
It's a testament to how enjoyable Going Commando is that I still think of it as a decent enough game despite all of this. I'd even go as far as to say that I'd have preferred the onslaught of third person shooters throughout the 7th gen to have taken influence from this rather than the cover-based route that most of them ended up taking. It deserves credit for being forward-thinking in some other ways too, like - for example - pulling off rotating 3D planetoid levels four years before Mario Galaxy blew everyone's minds (albeit a couple of years after Sonic Adventure 2 did it).
The first Ratchet is my favourite game of my favourite console, though, and neither at release nor now have I ever thought that Going Commando was a particularly satisfying follow-up to that, let alone "better in every way" as some have bizarrely called it. It's worth playing by any reasonable standard, but no matter how you slice it, I think it's quite a downgrade all the same.
4 Comments
Thanks @coralqueenkanans! Glad you enjoyed reading it. I like the idea behind levelling up weapons in theory since (as you said) it might incentivise people to use weapons they might otherwise not touch, but it had the opposite effect on me personally. Base weapons are so much weaker than levelled up ones both in terms of damage and visuals that I'd more often than not end up avoiding them, sometimes because of nothing more than surface level things like how much less cathartic they felt. Going Commando's addition of strafe jumping & aiming blurs the lines between the weapons so much anyhow that I imagine people probably would've used what they liked even if weapons couldn't be upgraded. It feels like fluff to me, essentially.
I never have to worry about this sort of stuff whenever I replay the first Ratchet since every gun is as good as it's meant to be as soon as I buy it, and its more limited movement options & aiming coupled with generally more complex level design enhances the differences between them to the point where I'm gonna want to use them all naturally over the course of the game. It's really "pure," for lack of a better word, just really well-considered and totally undiluted by any unnecessary features.
I never have to worry about this sort of stuff whenever I replay the first Ratchet since every gun is as good as it's meant to be as soon as I buy it, and its more limited movement options & aiming coupled with generally more complex level design enhances the differences between them to the point where I'm gonna want to use them all naturally over the course of the game. It's really "pure," for lack of a better word, just really well-considered and totally undiluted by any unnecessary features.
This is a pretty unique opinion to have on the game but the more I think about it the more I side with you. At the very least, Going Commando certainly lost a lot of the character that the original had.
Thanks @JetSetSet, hope it was an interesting read! Character's a good word for what I think it lost, or cohesion if you prefer. I still find myself smiling a lot whenever I go back to play Going Commando, but the humour and David Bergeaud's music do a ton of the heavy lifting in terms of why I like it, whereas I still would've enjoyed the first game a lot even if it wasn't as funny as it is and even if its soundtrack wasn't an all-timer.
coralqueenkanans
2 years ago