Trigger Cut Game Reviews

Ratchet and Clank is a franchise that means a lot to me, I played all of the games (even the shitty spin-offs) growing up.  It pains me to say that this is one of the weaker entries in the franchise and mostly serves more as a technical showpiece for the PS5 than a fully featured entry in the series. The story is similar to the 2016 remake where it is less a charming, funny, and witty playable cartoon and more like a safe pixar movie.  The humor here is almost entirely absent.  My favorite part of the series are the guns.  This set of weapons is unfortunately one of the weaker ones of the franchise.  There are some highlights like the topiary gun that freezes enemies by covering them in plants and leaves and the pixelator which acts as a shotgun that pixelates enemies and shatters them. Most are either uninteresting additions, guns from the older games or some legitimate reskins such as a mushroom man that is functionally the same as Mr. Zurkon, just not funny or interesting. The marketing of this game focused strongly on the portal technology and how it would utilize the SSD of the PS5 to seamlessly transport you through worlds.  This portion of the game is the most disappointing and underutilized aspect of the game.  Outside of the intro to the game, you are not seamlessly transitioning between worlds at all.  There are portals everywhere in each battle arena but they function as a grapple point to zip you around the battlefield. Another disappointing part of this game is the introduction of a new playable protagonist, Rivet. As a character, she is bland and uninteresting and I find it baffling that Insomniac didn’t provide her with a different playstyle than Ratchet. She plays exactly like Ratchet and this is a huge missed opportunity.  The Clank sections are annoying puzzle sections that completely screw with the pacing of the game and I couldn’t wait until these sections were over.  Overall, this is an incredibly disappointing entry in the franchise however, it still is at its core a fun albeit shallow playthrough that ends far too quickly.  It certainly is a graphical showcase but I personally don’t care about that much.  I want my quirky and wacky Ratchet and Clank back.