Insomniac Games has announced a new title for the next Ratchet & Clank title in the series.
The game will be entitled, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. Brian Allgeier, design director said, "The name Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction works on many levels. It signals a new era for the franchise, ties into the game's story, and includes one of our signature subtitle double entendres."
This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.
Ratchet: Deadlocked is the latest installment in the famed Ratchet & Clank platformer series from developer Insomniac Games, and while it's got most of the bells and whistles that fans are accustomed to, it has also abandoned a lot of the platformer gameplay that defines the series. Preferring a sharply focused, third-person shooter to round out the PlayStation 2's last year, Insomniac has opted to strengthen the combat, foes, and weaponry to better suit the action, but while the mechanics were born for it and the weaponry just demands it, the presentation suffers because of it. The question really is: how much of the traditional Ratchet & Clank experience are you willing to give up for a funny, but slightly cut-and-pasted shooter?
Ratchet: Deadlocked utilizes a humorous storyline consistent with the series, though it is simplified: Ratchet, Clank, and his scientist buddy, Al, have been kidnapped by the “Vox Network” to appear on a holovision show called Dreadzone, which pits heroes from across the galaxy against menacing foes in gladiatorial combat. To keep Ratchet and his friends from trying anything “funny”, Gleeman Vox, the network’s president, has installed a collar on his contestants’ armor. If Ratchet should try to escape (or worse – become boring), the collar electrifies him or otherwise explodes, ending his Dreadzone career. It’s up to Ratchet’s “Team Darkstar” to raise ratings, destroy the holovision show, rescue the other captured heroes, and defeat Vox. And this time they do it without Clank.
Insomniac Games immediately makes up for that, however, by providing ten powerful weapons available through the vendors, including a vulcan cannon, scorpion flail, fusion rifle, and a mini-turret launcher. As fans would expect, the weapons gain experience from kills and level up from 1-10 rather quickly, becoming much more lethal in the process. As a bonus, Insomniac added alpha and omega gun modifications; alpha mods can increase a gun’s intensity/rounds or even add special effects, like health regeneration or more bolts rewarded upon an opponent’s death. Omega mods, which are much more useful and fun, are purchased from the vendors and attach to weapons, though you can’t have two omega mods on a single weapon at once. The omega mods are mostly elemental: you have the ice mod, which temporarily freezes enemies; the lava mod, which burns them; the electrical mod, which hops from enemy to enemy, shocking all foes on the field; and so on. The mods don’t make up for the less amount of weaponry, but they do add some variety to the killing.
This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.
Insomniac Games is bringing back Ratchet and Clank in the title Ratchet: Deadlocked. We got our hands on a six-level demo of the game and from our experience it was pretty impressive; there’s much of the same wonderful platforming experience, but with some unique additions.
In this version of the game, Ratchet and Clank find themselves on a television series called Dreadlock. Our two heroes have been captured by Gleeman Vox, the media emperor who has captured them for ratings and holds their lives on the line with collars on their necks a la the movie Running Man. Ratchet and Clank must battle their way through various environments to get themselves out.
From our experience with Deadlocked the gameplay is still very much intact which is obviously a good thing because the previous versions are some of the best platformers on the market. In the game, players can either use your usual wrench or one of a handful of guns which are all upgradeable as you use them throughout the game. Unique to this year’s game is that you can not only purchase other weapons, but also add upgrades, for example freeze, to very different types of guns which in turn makes each of them unique and different. Combat and weaponry is particularly more important in this version as you’re now battling it out in arenas and not doing much of the running, jumping except in battle sequences.
Besides new weapons, Deadlocked features a handful of vehicles for players to cruise around in too. We were able to get our hands on just one of the vehicles in the game, the Landstalker which is a mechwarrior that can jump, move and shoot tremendous firepower in a short period of time. The vehicle does take a good bit of damage as well.
This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Sean Kearney.
Ratchet: Deadlocked, the latest installment to the Ratchet and Clank series, is an excitingly different title that is sure to stand out from the rest of the games in the franchise. The way in which this game differs from the other Ratchet and Clank titles extends to almost all areas of the game, from level design to gameplay. Despite all of the differences, the game’s action elements are still present, as well as the humor associated with the series.
The story of the game begins when Ratchet and Clank are kidnapped by a media mogul named Gleeman Vox, who has decided to place Ratchet in an underground combat sport reality show “Dreadzone”, where he must fight robot gladiators called “Exterminators” in tournaments in order to protect his friends.
The level design in Ratchet: Deadlocked has been altered to reflect the more serious tone of the game. Gone are the rounded, cartoon- looking levels of the previous Ratchet and Clank titles. In this game, the world has a little more of a hard edge.
In keeping with the combat sport storyline, the levels in Ratchet: Deadlocked are designed more like the outdoor arenas that you would expect from a first person multi-player game. Instead of moving straight ahead to a goal, you are now sent all over the map in search of multiple goals, in an open arena. As well, instead of enemies coming at you from straight ahead, enemies now come from all sides to attack you, some even jumping at you from cliffs overhead.
With enemies approaching from every angle, the creators of Ratchet: Deadlocked have deemed it necessary to make the “lock-strafe” control setting from previous Ratchet and Clank games the default control setting. This setting resembles that of Halo and other FPS games, and is extremely useful in the wide open settings of the game.
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