Now Playing: Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time
My history with the Ratchet and Clank Franchise has been solid. Although I wasn’t mad keen on the 2002 original, which I thought was a bit overlong and difficult, it did come out in a year with a lot of really solid platformer games and acquitted itself well. A year later R&C2 came out and was much better and to this day is still my favourite of the series. Another year, another installment, perhaps not as great as R&C2 with its focus of multiplayer action over the single player campaign, but still good. I skipped the arena-based Gladiator game and the Clank only game but did give the PSP version of Size Matters a go and enjoyed the first PS3 effort, Tools of Destruction. But for some reason, I have found, despite the obvious quality and ingenuity you find in a Ratchet game (I won’t say Insomniac games because I found the Resistance games a let down), this one hasn’t grabbed me at all.
It’s very likely that it’s just a bad time for me to be playing a R&C game or that I’ve outgrown the series and genre (I also haven’t gotten much further in Super Mario Bros Wii, either). It’s also that the R&C games, whilst tinkering with the edges, are basically exactly the same as the 2002 original in terms of structure. Oh sure you upgrade your weapons slightly differently, but it really is the same game. Maybe the sub-Futurama setting has just gotten stale for me. The gameplay itself is still good but there’s something about the grind in this game that I’m not able to look forward to. Now I’d just finished Assassin’s Creed II (which I loved), am playing MW2- which I mostly love and moving on to Borderlands next, which I have no idea about and is a lot more grindey than a R&C game. But I just can’t do A Crack in Time at this time. The quality is there but spirit is just not willing in this case. Maybe when there’s a lull in new releases mid year I can come back and try again.
So with the disappointment with this R&C game, and Mass Effect 2 another week away and a 4 day break off work (with a public holiday on Tuesday, why the fuck wouldn’t I use a leave day?), I needed something to play in the interim. I did have Borderlands ordered a few weeks back but that fucker looked like it was never going to ship so I canned the order despite the low price. But four days with only MP MW2 would drive me mad. The last two 2009 games I had any interest in playing were Borderlands and The Saboteur. Both original IP’s, both from sorta respected developers. Borderlands was an unexpected hit and Saboteur an unexpected failure that still hasn’t triggered much discounting. I was more keen on Saboteur, seeing as how I enjoyed most of the open world games I played in 2009 other than the first GTA expansion (Funny how the only GTA style game I didn’t like in 09 was GTA). But Borderlands was on special and Saboteur wasn’t. Borderlands was in the store last night and Saboteur wasn’t. Saboteur will just have to wait until the inevitable 2010 lull (everyone goes on about how Q1 2010 will be huge, but not all that much is scheduled for Q2 and Q3) and a nice discount.
I’m still somewhat iffy on Borderlands. It’s a coop game and I have no intention of playing it coop. It’s an RPG with grinding etc, and I normally hate those. But I have found RPG’s with more SF backdrops can appeal to me. I didn’t click with Oblivion but loved Fallout 3. I never played Neverwinter Nights but loved Knights of the Old Republic and the original Mass Effect. With ME2 out, I’m stoked for it. But all the time i was playing Fallout 3, I was thinking how dated this made a lot of what was in Mass Effect. Let’s see how Bioware has responded. Let you know in a week or two.
One last bit of website news. We’ve moved into a new studio for recording The Podcats. It’s less echoey that the room we’ve recorded in for the last six months (and yes it is a functioning, if poorly located audio studio). It is apparently a temp location so we might be moving again in 6 months or we may not. Management inertia is like that. It’s a better space for our purposes but it has a caveat, it’s not set up to focus test games (other than PC titles, or handhelds for obvious reasons) so expect fewer Focus Test-style shows and more chat.
