Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty
Review
Does X mark the spot?
by Chris Scott
reviewed on PS3
9th
If there is a go to developer for Sony, it would have to be Insomniac Games. Insomniac has hit it out of the park on two occasions, with Resistance: Fall of Man and Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, for the Playstation 3. They are generally regarded as one of the best developers in the industry. Their series, Ratchet & Clank is undeniably a big series for Sony. In the last six years, eight Ratchet & Clank games have been released (on a variety of platforms), with Quest for Booty being the 9th. It certainly isn’t surprising that a company would crank out game after game in a series that has become successful. What is surprising though is that the quality of the Ratchet & Clank games has generally stayed consistently high. So when it came time to experiment with the Playstation Network, Insomniac stepped up to the plate and brought their loveable Lombax’s next adventure to the table.
Quest for Booty is being positioned as an entry level title to the Ratchet & Clank universe. If you have never played a Ratchet & Clank game before now, Quest for Booty offers a cheap jumping on point… or at least that is the intention. Unfortunately in practice that’s not entirely the case.
Amusing but short
As a Ratchet fan who has played Tools of Destruction, I perfectly understood that Quest for Booty takes place a short time after the events of that game, with Ratchet looking for clues as to how he can rescue his robot buddy, Clank from the mysterious Zoni. However this just doesn’t get explained well to the audience and may leave many newcomers questioning what is going on. Furthermore, key characters to the series, such as Clank and Captain Quark either don’t play a part (Clank) or just are not in the game (Quark), so players never get a complete taste of Ratchet & Clank. This is certainly not to say that Quest for Booty doesn’t spin a good yarn though.
As stated previously Quest for Booty picks up shortly after the events of Tools of Destruction, with Ratchet searching for clues to help his lost buddy, Clank. While searching for Captain Darkwater, a robot pirate with a slight obsession with the Zoni, Ratchet ends up on the planet Merdegraw. This just happens to be a haven for scum, villainy and robot pirates. Ratchet will run into an old “friend” in Rusty Pete, who is having a hard time maintaining order on his ship after the unfortunate demise of Captain Slag. When he hears what Ratchet is looking for he offers his “help”. All in all, the story is very well told and oftentimes amusing. However it is a bit on the short side of things and that causes a few problems across the board.
When a game series gets to a certain point, normally a couple sequels in, fans expect certain things from it. Ratchet & Clank has reached this point. There was somewhat of an uproar when Insomniac changed things around with Ratchet: Deadlocked and ultimately went back to the formula with Tools of Destruction. From the large selection of over-the-top upgradeable weapons to the large arena battles to the collection of bolts (the game universe’s currency) there are a variety of things that make Ratchet & Clank what it is. Without them the series would be greatly changed. Quest for Booty has all these things but the short length of the game makes certain things just don’t work right.
7.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
