Why Going Commando Is My Favorite
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- Опубліковано 14 жов 2022
- In this video I go into some detail about Ratchet and Clank which was originally back on the PS2 on November 4th, 2002. My goal is to provide some retrospective to games I use to play in the past to see how they hold up today.
#retro #ratchetandclank #insomniacgames - Ігри
I do like the implied lore reasons Insomaic made to justify the weapon and nanotech upgrade systems in this game. My making it since these are megacorp weapons and armor, they have the ability to do that. The old Gadgetron weapons you can get in this game cannot do that until challenge mode. And even then, it is just the mega versions. Also Ratchet being able to strafe is clearly from his advanced Megacorp Commando training. I do like it when improved game mechanics have a lore reason to exist.
Then in the third game, Gadgetron clearly knew it had to improve its catalogue of weapons to avoid Megacorp taking over their home galaxy. Just like how Megacorp did in the Bogon Galaxy. But the smuggled Megacorp weapons Slim has are still very useful. Showing that Gadgetron are not that far ahead in this arms race.
You hit the nail right on the head man! Great insight! :)
My favorite part of Going Commando is that you can break out of the map with the fps mode.
I did not know that!
Back when devs handed dope games frequently 👑
Bro you are spot on. I recently decided to play the series back from the beginning ... The jump from game 1 to 2 was incredible for just one year .... I was 2 minutes into the 2nd game fighting thru that ship and just thinking damn they really popped off on the sequel! Great takes on a great game, thanks man!
It's crazy how much improvement happened in that time frame. Would be impossible nowadays.
Going commando was my first PS2 game when I was a kid. I completed it that year at least 40 times, it was perfect.
GC is my favorite R&C by far, I really appreciate the love in this video!
It's not perfect and I can see why people prefer UYA but the energy in GC is just too powerful!
I was 7 when I got this game and I’ll never forget the drive home, me and my brother being so excited staring and studying the entire game case. Getting home and instantly blown away at how much better it was to me then the first game. All the explosions, different guns, upgrades, health , and bolts. Just the little things made this game simplistic , but better then the first. The story has such a big role too and they absolutely killed it being the sequel.
Dang even got the memories to go with it!
I was about 7 or 8 as well. My grandma bought it for me from a shopko and I remember studying the whole case and looking at the booklet and being so excited to start it. I liked it was more than the first immediately, all the guns and upgrades were awesome. Not to mention the soundtrack
You know what I liked more in the first game? The HUD. Both RC2 AND 3 have worse HUDs than the first one, simpler and worse aging.
This is a great retrospective! 2 was my favorite too. It was one of the PS2 games that had a good NG+ (challenge mode), and so much replayability, probably the only third-person action game that was so much fun to keep replaying since you kept getting more money and upgrading your weaponry. I played through the developer commentary and they confirmed it was their intention to make NG+ like leveling up in a JRPG, where you become magnitudes stronger than enemies if you level up the NG+ weapons enough. This game also predicted achievements and trophies in-game, you complete optional tasks and use the points you get to unlock cheats and easter eggs. The levels had many collectibles too, and the levels had branching paths making exploration really fun. No DLC like modern games too. The Insomniac Museum was really amazing with both cut content its developer commentary, it really showed me how stressful game development was and how there were actually humans behind the game who worked hard....
All of the mini-games were so much fun too, I enjoyed racing, space and the arena fights so much. The only criticism with 2 I agree with you on - is how 2 doesn't really have a grandiose overarching story, but I still really liked it the jokes in the cutscenes still make me laugh to this day and I like how they make fun of commercialization. Some was weird, the game seemed rushed, the Thugs 4 Less Leader randomly disappears after the giant robot fight and you never hear from him again but man was he funny, they really portrayed him as a mid-level manager well. I didn't like 3 as much because the multiplayer cut into the main story's development, there's barely any mini-games and they even put multiplayer maps into the story campaign which felt boring, there's a lot of tower defenses style missions in the story. My internet was not good when it came out so I didn't like the multiplayer. As for the newer games, I like the gameplay and graphics (and the clank puzzles are amazing in the newer games) but I just don't really enjoy the story or characters or jokes anymore.
Hey man thanks for your insight into the game! I did fail to mention the cost of bolts the game forced upon you. It's nice hearing your insight on the game as I didn't know that JRPG part of the NG+.
Personally for me, Ratchet and Clank 1 will always be my favorite of the series, of course the other games have better mechanics but something about the first games visuals, sound track, story is just incredible, and I see it as the best game of the series.
I can definitely see that. It's crazy how much of the original stuck with the following games as well.
Same it was simple
It’s a crime this video doesn’t have more views, it’s incredibly well made and also brings up some good points 💯🔥. Keep it up 👍🏻. Saw that some other videos on your channel are in the same genre so I’m definitely checking them out as well 🙌🏻
Thanks for stopping by! Don't worry I got more on the way but I like to play other games to kind of reset my thoughts on each game before I replay them.
awesome video ! :) it's so nostalgic to see gameplay of my childhood favorite game !
Thanks for the visit! :)
For me 2 and deadlocked are the bests , 2 is a good shooter with good exploration at his best , deadlocked only focus on the shooter part but does it without « lie » like in ratchet 3 , in ratchet 3 it’s a fake adventure game it’s a shooter disguised, the 4 is not disguised
Been playing the series from the beginning lately... had never played deadlocked before. Halfway thru and man, they don't even care to lay out a story, huh? just shooting away!
@Lechaat R1 What an unfortunate take, dude! When analyzing Ratchet 3 objectively, you can see all of its improvements over the previous game. E.g. it's criminal that 2, the game with the highest number of weapons, still has only 1 quick selection ring, and weapons can only level up once and usually become obsolete a few levels after buying them. Not even talking about the lacking plot, that was actually rushed at the end when they realized Qwark hardly appeared (original villain was the real Fizzwidget) and the most pathetic final boss in the series, which comes after the most annoying one, the thug's Giant Mech. And Deadlock is a shallow repetitive game with no plot, no character development, and even Clank is irrelevant.
@@feder373 and up your arsenal is a game with shallow weapon pool that you end up almost always using the first weapon you ever get because vastly outclasses everything else when fully upgraded even the game’s fully upgraded super weapon environments that are glorified battle arenas which shun exploration and humor that while initially funny because they keep going too hard on it gets old. Deadlocked knows how to be serious when it needs to be while mixing in a bit of humor to break tension ( aka the commercial cutscenes as opposed to plot related stuff) pretty much all of its weapons are useful as they focus on specific roles rather then oh everything is for multi target damage output of up your arsenal and of course the very first weapon in the game with its hit the entire arena level of aoe on its charged shots and pretty damage invalidates anything that isn’t the pulse rifle or maybe the deployables of up your arsenal. You just don’t really have enough good things to spend money on in up your arsenal.
@@zoruafox7512 It's the player's choice to go cheap and not have fun by abusing the upgraded shock cannon, though. We could say the same about the other games. You can perfectly go through Ratchet 1 with just buying the Blaster and Devastator, but it's not fun. And GC by just spamming Mini-nukes, rockets and turrets or lava gun, and the most basic armor. Heck, I beat the Impossible Challenge without any armor, and I'm not especially skilled.
Commercial humor was already exploited in the first game, in the second was already repetitive by the end, and then they come up again with it in Deadlock... But you say a single game parodying and making criticism on media behaviour and the ethic limits of technology gets too old. You also don't say anything about re-using grind rails, which were already overdone in GC and add nothing to Deadlock. That's why I say bashing on UYA is only possible through cherry-picking, from people who don't care about plot or multiplayer.
And I already explained why exploration is just an illusion in these games, that it would make no difference gameplay-wise if they put the paths one after another. But in UYA it was inappropriate to divide paths in most places due to the nature of the plot, that involves leading troops and doing emergency missions. You can't make Ratchet go play boy scout when he's got to save the President, your under assault ship, countless lives that are getting annihilated in a few minutes, or get info on how to stop the villain from doing it. They sacrificed most (not all) of that in exchange for better pacing and a decent plot, which GC or Deadlock don't have, and that was a good trade as far as most people, even at Insomniac, acknowledge.
@James Furey I'm not, but it's not my opinion, just watch the 15th anniversary conference where Insomniac workers themselves expose Deadlock as a flawed game and explain why UYA deservely became the reference for almost every later game of the series. Out of a small internet circle, the wide consensus is still the same as Insomniac's exposition, and comments like "UYA is a shooter in disguise" are seen as untrue and laughable. It's okay that people like GC (as I do), but many of the latest reviews ignore most of its flaws, while many UYA reviews underrate it based on what it doesn't have instead of valuing what it does add, which is somehow dishonest, and I'm just calling it off. Because an increasing number of people are being fed up of seeing an excellent game getting such undeserved bashes like the one from Lechaat.
I remember saying RC2 is my least favourite of the trilogy, but after replaying it, years later, I fell in love with it. I remember criticizing the story for being a bit messy (you don't know who's really the bad guy, etc.), but now I appreciate this approach full of plot twists and mystery. Maybe it lacks a little bit seriousness, but I don't mind, since the dark comedy in this game is so great and builds the atmosphere of this galaxy amazingly. The dark, depressing tone, attention to detail, inflation and corruption everywhere, corporation ruling the whole galaxy and destroying it. Ah, it's so great! As I said, RC2 used to be my least favourite, while RC3 was my favourite. Now, I can't really say which one of the trilogy I like the most. Each game has its strong points and I can gladly call all of them great.
RC1 has the best level design
RC2 has the best atmosphere
RC3 has the best story and characters
Great summary of Going Commando there! Also, the brilliance in all 3 games is that they exist, and we can all enjoy them for their individual strengths and weaknesses.
2:21 It's interesting that you, and even The Golden Bolt, have said that strafing was introduced in the later games. Strafing was in the first game too. When you get the thruster pack, the game tells you about double-tapping R1 to enter hover mode and then holding L2 or R2 to strafe. I agree that the game should have had strafing from the beginning, and that it's weird to lock it in with the thruster pack, but it remains that strafing was in fact in the first game. (I guess the frustration of not having strafing from the beginning really leaves a first impression on us gamers, lol.) Anyway, it's always good seeing the second game hailed as the great sequel that it is. It truly is the best.
Yeah, I could have been a bit clearer in that clarification and thank you for pointing that out!
the strafing with the thruster pack is also floaty, involves thruster pack movement, and doesn't work with aiming properly the way that it's integrated in Ratchet 2. That's why nobody remembers it.
Another great watch, my favorite game
That Flying Fox quote at 2:30 is brilliant. You’re a man of culture my friend. Amazing video 👍
🙌
Excellent commentaryy friend! I enjoyed it and it was on point
Much appreciated!
insomniac is just so good at sequels 😅 always blow the first in a series out of the water
This game still has one of my all time favourite weapons in any game I’ve played- the incredible visobomb gun it let you shoot missiles which you could actually steer into enemies and items even from a long way away it was also great for exploring the level from a standing position. Also being able to explore the insomniac museum in one of the levels using a teleport pad or glitching through a certain area of the level 😉 which had loads of things the devs decided to either change or not include in the final game was really interesting you could also try out some of the gadgets, drive some vehicles around the museum
I 100% agree. For some reason Going Commando is the one game out of the whole series that I never want to stop playing each time I start it. Everything just flows so perfectly.
Great video!
Thanks for checking it out!
I'm right there with you!
Going Commando is my favorite because of how fucking funny it is, solid mechanics, and Angela Cross.
Sucks that Insomniac wrote themselves into a corner with Angela, like idk wtf the plan was to have her be a Lombax.
Still hoping she comes back in the next game!
I agree. Ratchet and Clank 2 is the best game ever
It's not perfect but man does it hit different even after all this time.
For me, R&C 3 Up Your Arsenal is the best.
I played all of R&C games, but R&C3 is my number one.
The best RaC game for sure
It seems the most polished(even tho they rushed two last levels)
The best level design,gameplay from now on,so many weapons(even tho some of them were unnecessary-looking at clank zapper)ost is very good
However the story is really draging
But still the best game in franchise for sure
And this story was definitely better by a long shot.
first taste of little big planet
its mine too !! its 50 50 in the community. Some sy UYA or GC. its always between those two. its never "oh people like this one better"
I don’t agree that the story drops off after Angela is revealed because the twist with Quark was pretty good, but I do think the final boss should have been Quark and not the giant protopet we got, I also somewhat agree that after Angela’s reveal we never got a main villain to focus on (which was a shame) but I didn’t mind that too much because I still felt that the story was running smoothly enough regardless, Angela’s arc was compelling to follow once you knew who she was.
All in all this is my favourite Ratchet and Clank game and is nigh perfect for me. The only gripe being the final boss.
Cool video.
Nothing is perfect but even with that I still love GC to death. It's just a great paced ride to the very end. The protopet was just a lackluster experience to wrap things up.
Best is 1-3 and Tools of destruction;Crack in Time and version at PS4.
Will you ever cover Sly Cooper and Jak & Daxter?
Jak & Daxter I do have planned. I have not tried Sly Cooper so if I do like it I will certainly get to them! (I'll take note of this).
@@Natquerx Awesome can't wait to see that. I didn't grow up with Sly I played it when I was in High School but its pretty good in my opinion especially Sly 2. Hope you enjoy the series.
Going Commando is still the best game in the series. Definitely of a PERFECT sequel! UYA and Deadlocked were still great, just not that same elite level as GC
I agree. I just played through UYA and DL again (video on that soon) and for whatever reason GC every time I play it I just can't stop.
That's not the consensus though, most people even at Insomniac still consider UYA the best one, to the point that they have been using it as the reference for all of the later games. They explain it in the Ratchet & Clank 15th anniversary conference.
@@feder373 Yupp! Sometimes you have to disregard public opinion and believe in what you believe 🙂
R&C 3 has to be the weakest in the PS2 quadrilogy to me, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game. The other games are just that good and they've managed to make masterpieces time and time again that the you end up comparing diamonds to gold! Love the PS2 series so much!
10/10 agree with this comment!
I like Going Commando because I beat it without having Clank on Ratchets back 😂
hey man, how can i play in 2022???
I got ps premium because it's on sale for some reason and I now have access to all the ratchet games along with a long list of others. It's a good way of doing it unless you want to play on ps3 and ps2.
I play this game using the ps2 emulator works really well and of course as it’s an emulator you can change certain things in the game and also increase the resolution of the game
My favorite is going commando 2nd is deadlocked 3rd is future crack in time.
What about the 4th?
Hmmm lets see.. number 3 for sure that was a very solid entry.
The thugs 4 less leader should have been the final boss the protopet should have been a boss fight half way through the game.
That would have been intriguing for sure!
I'm glad you didn't shit on the ship levels, seriously they're not hard if you actually buy the upgrades, if you still suck then get good.
I definitely enjoyed the ship levels. Is that something people complain about often?
@@Natquerx all the time, seriously they have a massive hate-boner for them, I enjoyed them since it was good for farming some bolts
Algorithm
Up your arsenal is worse. The crunch and 100 hour work weeks and workplace abuse the workers faced when having to make the third game in 9 months hurts its quality and artwork. Ratchet 2 atleast has the art and world building intact
Where did you get that development information? (Would love to incorporate that into future videos)
@@Natquerx Check golden bolt's retrospective series on ratchet, he has compiled many interviews and behind the scene stuff to explain the development process of the game.
Basically sony forced them to make the game in less than a year to release alongside jak 3 and the multiplayer mode was the main focus in order to compete with halo, its why half of the singleplayer is recycled multiplayer maps and content
@@wile123456 Fun fact: EVERY game in the series except the original, All 4 One and Rift Apart had almost invariably the same amount of crunch. It's just that some youtuber gave attention only to UYA's. Most developments lasted around 9 months, e.g. A Crack in Time, usually acclaimed as one of the best, started in January 2009 and was released in October. The PS4 reboot started in June 2015 and was released in April 2016. In the channel "useless podcasts", a developer tells how he was forced to make the entire Grelbin level for Ratchet 2 in just 3 literal days, when the normal is around 5 weeks.
You may not care about multiplayer, but it was necessary and historic, becoming the 3rd console game with online coop, which was a hit at the time. And "half the single game being recycled maps" is a huge overstatement, it's literally just 4 missions, which amount to about an hour of gameplay in total. Also, a game is rated based on the final result, not on what was discarded during development.
@@wile123456 You also say UYA's main focus was multiplayer (not true, because they made a small team apart for that, and it remained quite small until the last stages of development), but if it was true, it would only increase its merits, because it still managed to implement a more refined gameplay and a miles better plot than Ratchet 2.
@@feder373 Yes, all the crunch is terrible and insomniac woudl have made bette games without it. Abusing workers leads to less quality. Insomniac is just very talented overall so the games came out somewhat polished, but you see now with spiderman and rift apart that when they take their proper time the quality also goes wayyyy up. 2016 was the wakeup call because they cruunched to release it in 2015 wiht the movie but then the movie got delayed and they had nothing much to do but add polish and they realized how important avoiding cunch was
The non-multiplayer levels in the singleplayer are all some of the worst the orignal trilogy has to offer, visuall bland with poor colour choice and bad layouts. The first 2 games had worlds that felt lived in, but 3's levels are just corridors meant for the player with no attention payed to how to make a city realistic etc. Just like the multiplayer maps are all open spaces/arena (like the return to blackwater being a huge letdown)
Nice, though you still left out some of the bad things, like placing annoying paywalls where you have to get poor just to progress, which forces you to skip several weapons and armors until they're irrelevant. Or that the weapons from the 1st game are useless. Almost everything that 2 does better than 1 is done even better in 3, especially bolt and weapon progression. 4:27 Nope, ammo isn't free in the arenas, that's a thing that was fixed in UYA.
That's a good point to include next time too. Still learning with this type of thing but it's definitely true. While UYA improved the series GC still is my favorite as every time I play, I have to force myself to stop because I just want to keep going even with its flaws.
Visibomb is still very much overpowered because of its ability to not even have to try to avoid enemies the decoys are still very useful and the Tesla coil is still nice for dealing with swarms of weak enemies. Like yeah the bomb glove kinda sucks but of course it does it doesn’t really do anything unique and it’s obtained early so it’s naturally gonna suck. I’d certainly be more likely to use some of the ratchet 1 weapons then most the other weapons obtained that early. Also the paywalls are tied into the humor of the game and are rarely ever something you need to grind money for.
@@zoruafox7512 You need 6 or 7 visibomb shots just to take down a tank in Dobbo, which is mid-game. That's impractical and boring. The Decoy is not that useful thanks to the introduction of strafing. And it's kind of a waste using any of them because they do not level up, so you're wasting valuable experience for the new ones. And doesn't matter if paywalls are based on the lore, they are irritating due to the amounts. Either you make weapons and armor expensive or you put paywalls, but not both. It's usual that when you just managed to collect the bolts for the next thing you want, a NPC demands you most of that quantity. I've watched gameplays where the player has to leave to grind because they spent almost everything at the beginning of the level and didn't know there was a paywall later on. It's not game-breaking, but it's unnecessary.
@@feder373 let’s be honest not everyone can avoid every single attack. Decoy helps you avoid damage in more chaotic situations ( or go for the wrench only chainblade skill point) and it’s obtained way before the bubble shield which still gives it a significant period of time to use it. And please it’s not like it takes that long to upgrade your weapons. You’d generally upgrade at least 1 a planet ( sometimes more in cases like the open world planets or arenas if you are hunting for bolts ) even with a bit of using non upgraded weapons be it stuff like visibomb or something like using weapons you’ve already upgraded that are good in that situation like turrets which are always a solid choice . Also this is without even mentioning the lava gun which arguably doesn’t even wanna be upgraded
@@zoruafox7512 Only the early weapons upgrade with less exp, and only if you use just that weapon through the entire level, which is not fun or even appropriate most of the time. The rocket tube, for example, takes half the game to upgrade. But even if you do so early, then it's a waste to use it anymore since exp should not be wasted unless there's no choice. And that's another thing: the exp distribution is unbalanced. You can make a lot more exp in a few minutes from the small protopets at the end of the game than from all the challenges in the arena combined, which take hours. And finally, the Slim Cognito's upgrades; some of them are useless. Why do I need, for example, a lock-on mod for the nuke, an area-effect weapon? Or even the acid mod in the same gun? They should've put increased area or save the spot for something actually useful.
Ratchet and clank one still the best one going commando is ruined by that terrible final boss 🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️
I love this game but holy shit the races and crystal levels are just awful