This game takes the Going Commando approach of throwing a bunch of things at the wall to see what sticks in hopes of giving the franchise a good revamp for the new PS3 hardware, only some of the things it throws at the wall use the Sixaxis motion controls and the lot of the stuff sticking to the wall is melodramatic "Ratchet is the last of his race and also most of his personality traits are racial traits now" storytelling that just feels awkwardly crammed in there and has the same aura as Archie Sonic's echidna race storylines. Gonna say it - I really dislike that Ratchet turned from "just a funny little rat guy that found a robot in the desert" to "the last of a special, smart, mysterious race literally called "Saviors of the Galaxy" at one point" in this game.

As for the actual gameplay, it rules. Gameplay's solid, taking advantage of the new hardware to great effect, and the new weapon upgrade system was a major improvement that the franchise still uses to this day. It's a shame that, in return, this game is kind of an actual mess from a pacing standpoint, the storyline is still grappling with the plot points that were introduced here, and Tachyon is so uninteresting of a villain that he gets upstaged by the robot pirates about halfway through the game.

In a way, Tachyon is a perfect representation of Tools of Destruction because, like the rest of the game, the writing is unsure what tone to go for him so instead Tachyon ends up an awkward mix of comedic and dramatic and he just fails at being either. But at least he's fun to fight and his boss battle is tuned to gameplay perfection. Come for the gameplay, ignore the story, but don't ignore the story too much because the sequels are going to pick up the slack and be better written than this.