I like these videos too though and I can understand that he wants to review games he likes for a change. Playing shitty modern games all the time must really take it out of him. Looking forward to the car crash that will be saints row though 🙂
The ice planet in Ratchet And Clank 2 was actually developed from scratch by 1 guy who was only given 3 days to finish it. That’s why the yeti’s are so overpowered. They were hastily made and coded and weren’t properly tested, leading them to be much stronger and faster then they were meant to be and why so many spawn in the groups. This reason is why it’s probably my favourite planet in the game. It’s such a fun challenge 😈
you also cant damage the dragons with the wrench. they flash red but take no damage. I did a wrench only run and seen they flashed red. so i hit one for like an hour till i gave up and assumed its a glitch.
Not really, the first game was better in every category besides core mobility. The original had more identity as a platformer with shooter mechanics, all the sequels were third-person shooters with bare minimum platforming. 2 is like a dlc to the first one, even its story is a side-story to their characters' development. The third one is even worse.
Then it just depends which parts of RaC you like. I prefer less platforming elements and more gunfights, so I disagree that the first game is the best. This is a subjective matter.
@@ryno4ever433 You prefer a more generic style game that can be found everywhere, shooting with strafing takes no skill. I prefer a more original video game. Fact, not an opinion.
I mean at least the insomniac museum exists which gives you a lil bit of extra content like the 2 secret qwark vid comics and the cut florana racing area
i love the junky-future aesthetic these games had man, best soundtrack too really a product of its time though, video games are far too mainstream for this anime/comic inspired aesthetic nowadays everything has to be clean and cinematic (C a p e s h i t ruined everything)
Going Commando is truly peak, but my personal favorite is Deadlocked, since the atmosphere of that game is just something really special. The weapons are the best as well, no misses.
Those two are my favourites too. Rac2 has this amazing open, bleak aesthetic but Deadlocked/Gladiator has that more tense skin of your teeth feel. Amazing that they both slap while being so different
The weapons in Deadlocked (or Gladiator in my region) really are the most streamlined of the whole series. There may only be 10 of them, but they're so customisable with with the Omega mods. Rather than give you some weak dedicated acid gun or freeze bombs, they just let you put acid or freezing on a gun you actually like. The closest the series has come since is the underwhelming 3 constructo weapons in ACiT.
@@flips6155 deadlocked is awesome. it was one of my favorite games as a kid. im actually playing it again now through an emulator (i just finished going commando and up your arsenal) and im just having a great time. these games really hold up well 20 years later. its one of the rare instances where i can play for hours and never get bored
I do like that you bring up how every game after Going Commando pretty much follows in that games footsteps. Going Commando is easily my favorite Ratchet and Clank game but because of how every game tried to follow Going Commando I really, really like the first game as well. I feel that the first game has one of the most unique aesthetics/feel compared to all the other games.
@@antoniosadorra4961 Lmao true, god I remember being like 5 when the game came out and being just so fucking garbage that I'd have to use the guided missiles at every encounter possible.
Couldn't agree more. This game was simple and fun so no matter how many times I beat it, I had no issues playing more. Only reason I even bothered with NG+ in 2016 and Rift Apart was for the Platinum.
I always liked the contrast in world design between the first game in the second. In the first, it was mostly just peaceful worlds under attack by the Blarg. Gadgetron might be a multi trillion bolt corporation, but they weren't evil. When you go to their HQ on Kalebo III, it's basically a paradise. But when you get to Bogon, it's a completely different story. Orxon was the "worst" planet in Solana (lore wise, it's actually my favourite world game wise), but that was caused by Drek, not Gadgetron. But Megacorp's hyper capitalism and exploitation has left many worlds like Orxon behind, especially my favourite RaC2 world, Tabora. And when you finally get to _their_ HQ, Yeedil, it's a dark and foreboding fortress built on an umbral planet.
Oh my goodness someone finally understands me when it comes to Rivet! She's not a character! She's a marketing tool! I would dissagree with your placement of Rift Apart right under A Crack inTime, mostly because I think ACIT is the best game in the series and RA is on the faaaaaaar bottom, but unlike you I do like cutscenes and focus on story (and I am a lore nerd for this games, always placing gameplay second). Just, unlike in RA, I preffer it good or at least well written. But daaaaamn it feels good to finally find someone who sees it and doesn't just praise her. The problem with cutscenes in this game is that they TELL but they don't SHOW. Like the entire story. The treatment of Nrfarious by the writers is not so much an overuse as a misunderstanding. They make him way to INCOMPETENT. He started off as a goofy character, yes, but he was still a threat, a mad genius with a plan B for every occassion (like having 2 bioblitorators prepared) not an imbecill sabotaging his own plans. But I guess he has to be nerfed to make the NEW and COOLER Emperor look even more powerfull. Same went to Ratchet he got even MORE nerfed than before to make Rivet look not-so-much as just his copy. But the treatment of Dr Nefarious at the end was not annoying to me as it was just SAD. They stripped him of every inch of depth he used to have... and he is my favourite character! This game angers me so much it's ridiculous, I'm sorry.
I'd like rivet more if she wasn't the brainchild of a bunch of turbo whipped ex insomniac developers that kept harassing other people in the studio constantly over their original design just cause it was more blatantly feminine
Yeah, because saying that feminine traits are "problematic" is not sexist, and repeating that only strictly masculine traits are making you "a strong character" and "the only good rolemodel" is gonna be way better for little girls than teaching them to accept themselves. Female characters should be strong WHILE beeing female not DESPITE that. They think they are breaking stereotypes, while actually emphesizing them. In Mulan, they are the Chines army. Femininity is not something to be OVERCOME or only associated with spoiled rich villain-girls in rom-coms. But here we are I guess, where to write a game they don't use writers but activists. Rivet is also such a boring one-note clone of Ratchet it hurts so bad. I feel like playing a bad fanfiction with someone's self-insert in it. Crash 4 did all of what this game tried way better but - it was not showcasing beautiful PS5 graphics so who cares, am I right?
Man Going Commando might be my favorite game of all time. I am heavily biased, as GC was the first game I ever bought as a kid from Walmart. Recently started playing through them again after 20 or so years using an emulator, still fun!
I agree that it improved on pretty much all mechanical fronts, but I do feel that the visual style lost some bite compared to the first game (Metropolis and Blackwater City especially). just something a bit sharper and funkier about those R&C1 worlds
6:40 wait a sec. The upgrade feels worse than the original *ONLY IF* there's no Lock On modifier on it. Once you buy the Lock On upgrade for plat bolts, yeah it still feels like another weapon, but it's *insanely* powerful. You can pretty much solo the entire Tabora desert with it. UYA definitely got the error there and brought the Liquid nitrogen, a beautiful upgrade which preserved the original Lava Gun concept. just brilliant
Amazing game, one of if not the most solid experience on the entire system. I still prefer R&C1 for the atmosphere, more varied and better worlds, more platforms, the OST and main villain. I also just like more how he just uses very original weapons while in 2 everythinf just becomew your generic sniper rifle, shotgun, missile launcher, machine gun etc. I just feel the first title has overall more charm and attention to detail.
I agree except R&C2 didn’t have generic weapons. It had tons of unique weapons like spiderbot glove, bouncer, plasma coil, hoverbomb gun, hk seeker, zodiac, lava gun, disk glove, sythanoids, ryno 2 and even the clank zapper. The only ones that would be typical guns would be the lancer (machine gun) mini Nuke (grenade launcher), blitz gun (shotgun) and the sniper but that’s only 4 guns out of 24
I personally really enjoyed the crystal collecting in the desert and snow. Going Commando was such a well balanced game with so much variety. Awesome video
The Insomniac devs documentary explains that they removed the flying section from the second game in Up your Arsenal because they got feedback from players not liking the flying section, also later games did add some new things that sadly not fully used in the games(like the hover boots), and and improved some things like the Clank sections(which made it really hard to play the him in the ps2 game), and the collectathon levels which they made a full explorable levels instead of empty desert and ice area or the annoying Sewer area.
Gotta add this to my watch later. For the record you may be pleased to know this was the first video of yours that UA-cam recommended to me. Enjoying the stuff! Somehow I've become so used to heavily scripted videos that your much more off-the-cuff talking style is much more refreshing and down to Earth than what I'm used to. Good work. 👍
Ratchet and Clank a crack in time holds a special place in my heart that was my first ratchet and clank game and its my favorite. Hopefully we can play these older ratchet and clank games on the ps5
One thing you missed was that the NG+ cycle is just like dark souls where every time you beat NG+ it goes to NG+2 etc with the enemies having more hp and dealing more damage. Really cool feature that adds even more replay value.
That desert farming section was one of my favorites first time i saw it, that ice planet sucks though, though enemies just spawn around you and rip you a new one, lol.
Fun fact! Even Insomniac thought the yetis were terrible, and it gave birth to the "Snowbeast Award", which is given every so often to an employee with a really bad game design idea. -From the developer playthrough of RaC2.
@@Her_Imperious_Condescension yh, i saw this video already. That he had to code this level in 3 days is unbelievable. The quality of this planet is still really good for the time he had. In rac uya the rocket launchers earned the award. How can you escape the rockets and their big explosion if you get near them? It is really unfair.
Personal favs are Deadlocked, because it perfects the gunplay, and 3, because it has the best combination of gunplay (i.e. with strafing) and story. Honorable mention for the first one, because it has the best atmosphere, the best story and tries to have a gameplay with more depth: some enemies are best defeated by certain weapons and it's up to you to find out (e.g. the boxing glove for the "kamikaze spheres" enemies; the flamethrower for the enemies that attack in hoards; etc. ). Plus it has a stronger focus on platforming which I like.
Hands down my fav review of this game so far. What I really liked was that you've talked about the expectation that the game has towards you with upgrading your weapons and armor. I've just finished a new playthrough yesterday while challenging myself to not upgrade my armor at all until NG+. Going against the racketeer boss and the protopet with the standard green armor spices things up a lot, and going for skill points like wrench ninja II on Joba is basically impossible. I'm in love with RC2 since I've first played it as a kid back in 2003, and it's still my favourite title out of the franchise, with Deadlocked following closely behind. So if you'd be interested in a real challenge, start a new savefile and go for no armor upgrades, or even wrench "only" (for most enemies that aren't hover tanks or bosses) on top of that, and ofc glitchless.
Maybe later this year. It's a great movie, but it will be hard to talk about it while remaining "youtube-friendly". It would make for a good video when I don't feel like talking about games.
Growing up with Sly Cooper I feel like in terms of development and improvement from the original games both Sly 2 and Ratchet 2 are very similar, except I'd argue that the story for Sly 2 is better judging from I've seen, but if I can I'll check out this Ratchet game
having played both series, I feel like Sly 2 is a massive improvement story wise (Murray and Bentely get to be more than glorified cameos) whereas Ratchet and clank have far less character development in the R&C 2 when compared to the first R&C. R&C 2's story isn't bad, but it honestly isn't as much of a focus as sly 2's. Both are really good games though regardless.
@@EresirThe1st i played jak 2 1st and was suprised when i got jak 1 and it is a completely other game. I Like both, but this change of a series should not happen
Never played these for some reason despite being alive and gaming when they released. Was too busy playing Halo and Vice City I guess. They look like everything I liked about games of that time period so one day I’ll play em.
I agree that Silver City on planet Boldan is amazing. The soundtrack bangs, the encounters are tight and challenging, the grind rail part is cool, the jetpack is cool, and a cool plot twist.
I never played Ratchet and Clank before, I got Jak 1 as a kid and thought Ratchet and Clank was just basically the same game but with different characters. Since I loved Jak 1 and 2 so much I never cared to try Ratchet and Clank. Now that I'm looking for old PS2 and Gamecube games to buy I will definitely add this game to the list, thanks Synthetic!
Ratchet 2 is well written in that it's efficient. It gets across the jokes and story beats quickly. If you like it, it's there. If you don't, it's not that long.
I may have said this on the rachet and clank review you did last year, but my first game was rachet in clank back when my mom bought a PS2 for me and my siblings that came boxed in with up your arsenal and Jak 3. Outside of a couple other games my siblings and I would play up your arsenal to death. Despite not playing really any other R&C game besides the four player one that was on the PS3, we all loved it. The humor, story, weapons was just so much fun. Again one of the few games we actually ran to death to where when in single player we would get to a certain planet and would have a infinite "load screen" where rachet would just be flying forever without getting to the next location. Really need to get to playing the rest.
For good reason lmao, a huge empty city with nothing to do, totally broken difficulty and turning a previously normal character into a cringelord isn’t to be emulated.
@@EresirThe1st it is a ps2 era game, i rather have a unique city where every corner is well designed, than a world full of meanigless things to do. The gameplay is fantastic and jak have now a better dinamic with daxter. Makes no sense call jak2 cringworthy since he don't even talk in the first game. And i dont use this argument, but jak 2 is better aclaimed as well. And we have a jetboard.
@@nosferatu9561 He didn't talk in the first game but he still had character. Jak in the second game is peak 2000s edge without the style of a game like Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, which just makes it silly. Much like Shadow the Hedgehog. You say you want a well designed city with meaningful things to do. Jak 2 has a large city with nothing to do, meaningful or otherwise. It's just going through the streets to get to the next mission. Fair enough if you like the jetboard movement but it barely shows up in normal play.
I enjoyed this video, and glad to see you branching out. Also while I think you fell a small touch into a sort of list-off of the video games content (Something I see in a lot of reviewers), you really cleaned that aspect up compared to your Postal 4 review. Don't have much experience with Rachet and Clank but found this to be one of your better recent videos.
As a kid, the foreshadowed twist was exiting because you were in a safe learning environment and could focus on developing ingame skills and knowledge and experience creativity
The lack of default strafing and automatic aiming is one of the biggest charms of the first game. Enemies are simple and sparse enough mostly that fighting them is easy anyway since they will just patrol a small area unless disturbed, and the few times you get swarmed it tests your skills to keep them off making those incidents memorable, like riding the hovercraft on Pokitaru with the spikey fishes jumping on board. The first game was a platformer with some shooting elements, sequels were, to an increasing degree shooters with platforming elements. They even went from including arena modes in the sequels to the last ps2 game (the last one I played) being entirely a series of arena battles.
YO I ACTUALLY DOWNLOADED THIS ON MY PC A COUPLE MONTHS AGO!!! I love this game so much growing up and I would never change it for the world. Everyday now I ask friends or anybody in general if they remember the game majority say they don't and I want to cry.
I gotta go back to this game. I stopped one night at that tundra planet with the yetis and sea serpents, didn't want to deal with autistically collecting all of the crystals. The following night played something else and haven't been back to it in years. Great video, reminded me why video games could even be considered art in the first place.
I remember Platinuming all the original Ratchet games back in 2020. I had previously played the games so I platted on NG+. I remember Going Commando taking a long ass time because I thought you had to upgrade every gun, so I wastwd a ton of time doing that when you actually didn't need to
Ratchet and Clank has got to be pretty much my most favourite franchise out of the Playstation, even Doom 2 has a RnC mod (both games are fun, have that weapon synergy thing where you gotta switch to different weapons), and A Crack In Time does include the old lock-on feature which was great anyways, glad to see a channel that has Ratchet and Clank content, keep up the good work
This has got me truly excited to play going commando. In an era where sequels are about appeasing the masses it will be nice to play one where its a true evolution of what the games roots were. After playing sly and 2 ratchets (and mafia 3) I was genuinely happy with playing some simple classic games that I missed out on, but I was a bit drained after doing it in a week. IMO here is a random list of clean sequels(or series) Dawn Of War 2, Burnout Paradise, Total War (up to Napoleon), Battlefield(up to 1), Men Of War AS2, Anno 1800, State Of Decay 2, Project Cars 2, Mafia 2. In case you were looking for some good sequels to play from random genres.
@Zoomer Stasi dawn of war. I agree in part, but your description more accurately defines DOW3. DOW2 was more of a change to what the devs had learned from Company Of Heroes. Its more of a disagreement in direction. state of decay. Sales has almost nothing to due with quality. Nor were any of my recommendations driven by sales. They purely comparative to its predecessors. Battlefield. That's just silly. Mafia 3 was actually okay, but i will agree that its not a good sequel so i'll edit that. What are some sequels that you would recommend on the basis of evolution?
I feel sorry for the kids that will never know the feeling of playing ratchet and clank 1, 2 and 3 when they came out, I remember every kid going crazy in my school and we were talking constantly about how a weapon would upgrade and what we would find in late game planets. During the summer we played pokemon ruby and sapphire to death constantly battling eachother with the cable. Golden era of both series if you ask me
Such a great game and series. It's nice to hear you give positive reviews once in a while, though I admit your angry negative reviews are far more entertaining, lol
My childhood and still the best of the three og ps game franchises rip jak and daxter and sly cooper (which I also loved there games also but they aren’t around anymore)
Ratchet & Clank 20th year Anniversary is November 4, 2022. I hope Insomniac games does something special to commemorate 20 Full years of Ratchet and Clank.
The problem emulating RC2 is that shadows on the original version where designed for the ps2 resolution, so if you upscale it past 1.5 it shows parts of the shadow you wern't supposed to see, other than that, it's great to play it on widescreen with remapable controlls so you can shoot with r1 instead of circle. If you feel like 1.5 resolution is still too low, even with post processing and antialiasing, you can just tinker with the settings and disable the shadows so you don't see the artifacts.
I honestly think the story of the second game is just as good as the first one. It's just way more original than most games. It's not just bad guy does something, you have to stop bad guy kind of game. Instead, it's based on the subtleness of corporate greed. You start off thinking this is gonna be another bad guy does something bad kind of game but you instead find out you were betrayed all along by the company you were trusting. The real enemy isn't a boss fight but rather excessive capitalism, which, even as a Libertarian, I really really enjoyed. It's just incredibly original and a lot more of a mature topic than most other games
The desert planet was always one of my favorites, especially once you get the hovercar, the tundra one was bad, but there's a reason for it, it was basically made in 1 or 2 days, it's basically a miracle it turned out as good as it did (plus I will say, everyone misunderstood the meteor gun, it looks like a bad weapon, if you just use it normally it never hits, but if you use the lock on mod it basically acts as a better version of the Lancer, it is cooler as a basic lava gun, but the meteor gun is very strong and everyone hates because they don't understand it)
To this day, Locked and Loaded, as it's known in my region, is still my favourite game in the original trilogy. I love the improved gameplay with strafing, upgrading, and gladiator arenas. I love the bouncer, plasma coil, and minirocket tube. I love the improved characterisations and the game's story. My only complaint is the ending twist, where it's revealed that Qwark was the villain all along, which was really unnecessary. Even so, this was the perfect sequel, one that I still play to this day
Great game. However, the boss on Snivelak is probably the worst boss in gaming history and if you skip the side content you will struggle on the difficulty spikes.
I've been keeping up with Ratchet & Clank for about 15 to 20 years and in all that time I've just been patiently waiting for one other game to scratch the same itch as one of the first three but it has not happened yet.
Still to this day absolutely no one talks about deadlocked. It was the only ratchet and clank to get your weapons to lvl 99. The mods that you could put on the weapons were fantastic. The whole death arena were my favorite parts about ratchet and clank because I got to use the weapons for that purpose.
R&C:GC is my favorite one. Challenge Mode improved the endgame/replay, better versions of every weapon gives you a reason to use every weapon, and bigger wider levels like Grelbin and Tabora, space ship levels, hover bike races, arena challenges, revamped movement controls so you can strafe.... I could go on, but it did everything that was good in R&C, and then made all those improvements. Also the soundtrack bangs.
Unfortunately I had to choose between this saga and jak and daxter back in the day, I chose Jak which i Loved but it made me missed out on this games, a fews month ago I finally played this game, I couldn´t agree more with your review, excellent games all of them. The PS2-GC-Xbox era really was the golden age of gaming.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the tractor beam was litteraly only used on Mactar once. Never again through out the game was it required to progress. I thought that was wierd.
Those desert levels could have been great, especially nowadays. And why not including a race inside these desert levels instead of barlow and joba? As for the gliding mechanic, barlow with the heavy emphasis on the swinger would have made a nice candidat during a part of the level where the gliding would have been necessary.
i did once find a glitch in the ps3 trilogy that by spamming the rocket boots and side strafe jumping it would somehow make ratchet invulnerable on Grelbin (AKA ICE HELL). probs the only time i managed to get all the crystals in less that 3 hours of suffering.
Nah it's similar cause...it has I frames. Its pretty much a 1 to 1 I'll even explain: where in dk it was a tool strictly for dodging,and that was literally it. RC:RA uses it as a ground and air dodge JUST like the classic dk roll, I remember air rolling all over the place. area traversal(just like in dk) and puzzle solving (just like dk) it's pretty obvious right? All jokes aside that isn't the only bizzar completely uninformed take or comparison this guy has.
hey i dont know if you already knew (Probably you do), but in newer ratchet and clank (atleast future ones i think) you can toggle the strafe from going commando in the camera settings if im not mistaken
As for why the Yeti enemies were unbalanced, as Golden Bolt said in his Retrospective, the Ice planet was horrendously behind schedule and had to be developed in 3 days by someone who was doing someone else work because the other guy was busy with something else. I do recommend checking out Golden Bolt Retrospective, he does talk about the behind-the-scenes and rough development process of the Ratchet and Clank series. And you Synthetic Man, look like a person who would enjoy playing Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal.
I'm split between this and up your arsenal as my favorite, the ship battles were great, and I really liked the galaxy ranger(?) Segments from Arsenal, wish they would've had both in one game. You're dead-on about the crystal planets though. Great video
This dude just comes and goes as he pleases, and you never know what his next video will be. I like the crazy rant videos the most.
I like these videos too though and I can understand that he wants to review games he likes for a change. Playing shitty modern games all the time must really take it out of him. Looking forward to the car crash that will be saints row though 🙂
@@Andrew-qo5qc oh, that Saint's Row review will be spicy for sure😂
Yeah he's one entertaining schizo
@@ZiRxRageALoT It is very spicty
I wonder if he will review the Future trilogy games
The ice planet in Ratchet And Clank 2 was actually developed from scratch by 1 guy who was only given 3 days to finish it. That’s why the yeti’s are so overpowered. They were hastily made and coded and weren’t properly tested, leading them to be much stronger and faster then they were meant to be and why so many spawn in the groups.
This reason is why it’s probably my favourite planet in the game. It’s such a fun challenge 😈
Also they made an inside joke trophy out of it in the office like similar to the razzies which is fucking hilarious
you also cant damage the dragons with the wrench. they flash red but take no damage. I did a wrench only run and seen they flashed red. so i hit one for like an hour till i gave up and assumed its a glitch.
Up your arsenal is still my favorite but Going Commando is a very close second. It was such a huge improvement over the first game.
Huge improvement indeed.
One of the best.
😍
Not really, the first game was better in every category besides core mobility. The original had more identity as a platformer with shooter mechanics, all the sequels were third-person shooters with bare minimum platforming. 2 is like a dlc to the first one, even its story is a side-story to their characters' development. The third one is even worse.
Then it just depends which parts of RaC you like. I prefer less platforming elements and more gunfights, so I disagree that the first game is the best. This is a subjective matter.
@@Doctor00X
No.
@@ryno4ever433 You prefer a more generic style game that can be found everywhere, shooting with strafing takes no skill. I prefer a more original video game. Fact, not an opinion.
I would have love to see a remaster of Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal that has the cut content
My dream would be that every game gets the Rift Apart treatment and stuck in one game like what they did with Mass Effect.
Probably not entirely possible due to the cut content being unfinished.
I mean at least the insomniac museum exists which gives you a lil bit of extra content like the 2 secret qwark vid comics and the cut florana racing area
Insane timing, just finished replaying the trilogy after over a decade and I was looking for content
i love the junky-future aesthetic these games had man, best soundtrack too
really a product of its time though, video games are far too mainstream for this anime/comic inspired aesthetic nowadays
everything has to be clean and cinematic (C a p e s h i t ruined everything)
another dude ruined by conservative identity politics lmfao
@kurt
>someone doesn't like capeshit
>REEEEEEEE /POL!!!!11!!!/
Going Commando is truly peak, but my personal favorite is Deadlocked, since the atmosphere of that game is just something really special. The weapons are the best as well, no misses.
I share the same opinion as you bro but the music man....THE MUSIC FUCKING SLAPS!!!
love the commentators too, “if ratchet were a cookie… what kinda cookie would he be”
Those two are my favourites too. Rac2 has this amazing open, bleak aesthetic but Deadlocked/Gladiator has that more tense skin of your teeth feel. Amazing that they both slap while being so different
The weapons in Deadlocked (or Gladiator in my region) really are the most streamlined of the whole series. There may only be 10 of them, but they're so customisable with with the Omega mods. Rather than give you some weak dedicated acid gun or freeze bombs, they just let you put acid or freezing on a gun you actually like.
The closest the series has come since is the underwhelming 3 constructo weapons in ACiT.
Dude Ratchet: Deadlocked was AWESOME
This was a franchise I missed out on back in the day, I bought the Trilogy for PS3 last year and played all 3 back to back and had a Blast doing so.
def recommend deadlocked too!
yes deadlocked is the shit
@@MonstrMash123458943 only seen reviews for Deadlocked and it looks like fucking GOLD.
Deadlocked is tied with going commando for the best game in the series imo I maxed the bolt count to 99mil and 100% completion lol.
@@flips6155 deadlocked is awesome. it was one of my favorite games as a kid. im actually playing it again now through an emulator (i just finished going commando and up your arsenal) and im just having a great time. these games really hold up well 20 years later. its one of the rare instances where i can play for hours and never get bored
Going commando and up your arsenal are so under appreciated. They have such a special place in my heart
I do like that you bring up how every game after Going Commando pretty much follows in that games footsteps. Going Commando is easily my favorite Ratchet and Clank game but because of how every game tried to follow Going Commando I really, really like the first game as well. I feel that the first game has one of the most unique aesthetics/feel compared to all the other games.
agreed, and i enjoy the difficulty of not having a strafe, makes you more strategic with how you use your weapons and move
@@antoniosadorra4961 Lmao true, god I remember being like 5 when the game came out and being just so fucking garbage that I'd have to use the guided missiles at every encounter possible.
Best game let you grind to 100 million bolts , no replay value in new ones ...
Couldn't agree more. This game was simple and fun so no matter how many times I beat it, I had no issues playing more. Only reason I even bothered with NG+ in 2016 and Rift Apart was for the Platinum.
I always liked the contrast in world design between the first game in the second. In the first, it was mostly just peaceful worlds under attack by the Blarg. Gadgetron might be a multi trillion bolt corporation, but they weren't evil. When you go to their HQ on Kalebo III, it's basically a paradise. But when you get to Bogon, it's a completely different story. Orxon was the "worst" planet in Solana (lore wise, it's actually my favourite world game wise), but that was caused by Drek, not Gadgetron. But Megacorp's hyper capitalism and exploitation has left many worlds like Orxon behind, especially my favourite RaC2 world, Tabora. And when you finally get to _their_ HQ, Yeedil, it's a dark and foreboding fortress built on an umbral planet.
Oh my goodness someone finally understands me when it comes to Rivet!
She's not a character! She's a marketing tool!
I would dissagree with your placement of Rift Apart right under A Crack inTime, mostly because I think ACIT is the best game in the series and RA is on the faaaaaaar bottom, but unlike you I do like cutscenes and focus on story (and I am a lore nerd for this games, always placing gameplay second). Just, unlike in RA, I preffer it good or at least well written. But daaaaamn it feels good to finally find someone who sees it and doesn't just praise her.
The problem with cutscenes in this game is that they TELL but they don't SHOW. Like the entire story.
The treatment of Nrfarious by the writers is not so much an overuse as a misunderstanding. They make him way to INCOMPETENT. He started off as a goofy character, yes, but he was still a threat, a mad genius with a plan B for every occassion (like having 2 bioblitorators prepared) not an imbecill sabotaging his own plans. But I guess he has to be nerfed to make the NEW and COOLER Emperor look even more powerfull. Same went to Ratchet he got even MORE nerfed than before to make Rivet look not-so-much as just his copy. But the treatment of Dr Nefarious at the end was not annoying to me as it was just SAD. They stripped him of every inch of depth he used to have... and he is my favourite character!
This game angers me so much it's ridiculous, I'm sorry.
I'd like rivet more if she wasn't the brainchild of a bunch of turbo whipped ex insomniac developers that kept harassing other people in the studio constantly over their original design just cause it was more blatantly feminine
Yeah, because saying that feminine traits are "problematic" is not sexist, and repeating that only strictly masculine traits are making you "a strong character" and "the only good rolemodel" is gonna be way better for little girls than teaching them to accept themselves.
Female characters should be strong WHILE beeing female not DESPITE that. They think they are breaking stereotypes, while actually emphesizing them. In Mulan, they are the Chines army.
Femininity is not something to be OVERCOME or only associated with spoiled rich villain-girls in rom-coms. But here we are I guess, where to write a game they don't use writers but activists.
Rivet is also such a boring one-note clone of Ratchet it hurts so bad. I feel like playing a bad fanfiction with someone's self-insert in it. Crash 4 did all of what this game tried way better but - it was not showcasing beautiful PS5 graphics so who cares, am I right?
Nah
Deadlocked>>>ACIT
Man Going Commando might be my favorite game of all time. I am heavily biased, as GC was the first game I ever bought as a kid from Walmart. Recently started playing through them again after 20 or so years using an emulator, still fun!
I agree that it improved on pretty much all mechanical fronts, but I do feel that the visual style lost some bite compared to the first game (Metropolis and Blackwater City especially). just something a bit sharper and funkier about those R&C1 worlds
Going commando and Deadlocked were always my favourite. The core gameplay with levelling up guns is where R&C Games shine imo
6:40 wait a sec. The upgrade feels worse than the original *ONLY IF* there's no Lock On modifier on it. Once you buy the Lock On upgrade for plat bolts, yeah it still feels like another weapon, but it's *insanely* powerful. You can pretty much solo the entire Tabora desert with it.
UYA definitely got the error there and brought the Liquid nitrogen, a beautiful upgrade which preserved the original Lava Gun concept. just brilliant
It's basically the reverse HK22 gun, which is way worse with the lock on mod.
Amazing game, one of if not the most solid experience on the entire system. I still prefer R&C1 for the atmosphere, more varied and better worlds, more platforms, the OST and main villain. I also just like more how he just uses very original weapons while in 2 everythinf just becomew your generic sniper rifle, shotgun, missile launcher, machine gun etc. I just feel the first title has overall more charm and attention to detail.
Ye the first game is the best! My favourite part of it was finding the next info bot and getting an idea of what the next planet will be like!
I agree except R&C2 didn’t have generic weapons. It had tons of unique weapons like spiderbot glove, bouncer, plasma coil, hoverbomb gun, hk seeker, zodiac, lava gun, disk glove, sythanoids, ryno 2 and even the clank zapper. The only ones that would be typical guns would be the lancer (machine gun) mini Nuke (grenade launcher), blitz gun (shotgun) and the sniper but that’s only 4 guns out of 24
the level design and environments are what I remember most about this game, pure soul
I personally really enjoyed the crystal collecting in the desert and snow. Going Commando was such a well balanced game with so much variety. Awesome video
In Tubora yes, forget Grelbin though. I hated Grelbin with a passion.
The Insomniac devs documentary explains that they removed the flying section from the second game in Up your Arsenal because they got feedback from players not liking the flying section, also later games did add some new things that sadly not fully used in the games(like the hover boots), and and improved some things like the Clank sections(which made it really hard to play the him in the ps2 game), and the collectathon levels which they made a full explorable levels instead of empty desert and ice area or the annoying Sewer area.
Thank you for the amazing content, found you today and I'm enjoying all of the content I've seen so far, love that all you speak is facts
Gotta add this to my watch later. For the record you may be pleased to know this was the first video of yours that UA-cam recommended to me. Enjoying the stuff!
Somehow I've become so used to heavily scripted videos that your much more off-the-cuff talking style is much more refreshing and down to Earth than what I'm used to. Good work. 👍
Ratchet and Clank a crack in time holds a special place in my heart that was my first ratchet and clank game and its my favorite. Hopefully we can play these older ratchet and clank games on the ps5
One thing you missed was that the NG+ cycle is just like dark souls where every time you beat NG+ it goes to NG+2 etc with the enemies having more hp and dealing more damage. Really cool feature that adds even more replay value.
Synthetic man: You can only make the same game so many times.
Ubisoft didn't get the memo.
That desert farming section was one of my favorites first time i saw it, that ice planet sucks though, though enemies just spawn around you and rip you a new one, lol.
The Yetis appeared near me and i got so many direct hits without a chance. I hate them
Fun fact! Even Insomniac thought the yetis were terrible, and it gave birth to the "Snowbeast Award", which is given every so often to an employee with a really bad game design idea.
-From the developer playthrough of RaC2.
@@Her_Imperious_Condescension yh, i saw this video already. That he had to code this level in 3 days is unbelievable. The quality of this planet is still really good for the time he had. In rac uya the rocket launchers earned the award. How can you escape the rockets and their big explosion if you get near them? It is really unfair.
Personal favs are Deadlocked, because it perfects the gunplay, and 3, because it has the best combination of gunplay (i.e. with strafing) and story. Honorable mention for the first one, because it has the best atmosphere, the best story and tries to have a gameplay with more depth: some enemies are best defeated by certain weapons and it's up to you to find out (e.g. the boxing glove for the "kamikaze spheres" enemies; the flamethrower for the enemies that attack in hoards; etc. ). Plus it has a stronger focus on platforming which I like.
Awesome review. Been trying to add to my PS2 collection lately so I'll have to pick this one up.
Hands down my fav review of this game so far. What I really liked was that you've talked about the expectation that the game has towards you with upgrading your weapons and armor. I've just finished a new playthrough yesterday while challenging myself to not upgrade my armor at all until NG+. Going against the racketeer boss and the protopet with the standard green armor spices things up a lot, and going for skill points like wrench ninja II on Joba is basically impossible. I'm in love with RC2 since I've first played it as a kid back in 2003, and it's still my favourite title out of the franchise, with Deadlocked following closely behind.
So if you'd be interested in a real challenge, start a new savefile and go for no armor upgrades, or even wrench "only" (for most enemies that aren't hover tanks or bosses) on top of that, and ofc glitchless.
Hello, Synthetic Man. When will we see the analysis video of the film Drive (2011) starring Ryan Gosling?
Wassup Cobain
@@vadariousb whats good man
Maybe later this year. It's a great movie, but it will be hard to talk about it while remaining "youtube-friendly". It would make for a good video when I don't feel like talking about games.
@@SyntheticMan awesome 👌
He's literally me
Glad to have you back Synth!
Growing up with Sly Cooper I feel like in terms of development and improvement from the original games both Sly 2 and Ratchet 2 are very similar, except I'd argue that the story for Sly 2 is better judging from I've seen, but if I can I'll check out this Ratchet game
having played both series, I feel like Sly 2 is a massive improvement story wise (Murray and Bentely get to be more than glorified cameos) whereas Ratchet and clank have far less character development in the R&C 2 when compared to the first R&C. R&C 2's story isn't bad, but it honestly isn't as much of a focus as sly 2's. Both are really good games though regardless.
They are both great games!
Sly 2 and Rac2 are both some of the best sequels ever. Meanwhile jak2 was a horrid sequel to a great first game.
@@EresirThe1st i played jak 2 1st and was suprised when i got jak 1 and it is a completely other game. I Like both, but this change of a series should not happen
Going Commando is a top 10 game of all time for me. Insomniac devs signed my copy and it's one of my most prized possessions
Never played these for some reason despite being alive and gaming when they released. Was too busy playing Halo and Vice City I guess. They look like everything I liked about games of that time period so one day I’ll play em.
Halo trembles in its boots when it heard RaC
Babe wake up new synthetic man just dropped
I agree that Silver City on planet Boldan is amazing. The soundtrack bangs, the encounters are tight and challenging, the grind rail part is cool, the jetpack is cool, and a cool plot twist.
Been looking forward to this video. So excited.
I never played Ratchet and Clank before, I got Jak 1 as a kid and thought Ratchet and Clank was just basically the same game but with different characters. Since I loved Jak 1 and 2 so much I never cared to try Ratchet and Clank. Now that I'm looking for old PS2 and Gamecube games to buy I will definitely add this game to the list, thanks Synthetic!
Try Sly Cooper if you haven't already the games are great to play especially the Sly 2
@@elharvey5032 Thanks for the recommendation. I never played Sly Cooper either so I'll check it out!
Ohhhh you're right, the camera is way closer to Ratchet nowadays. No wonder I always feel like I'm getting blindsided in the arena.
Ratchet 2 is well written in that it's efficient. It gets across the jokes and story beats quickly. If you like it, it's there. If you don't, it's not that long.
I may have said this on the rachet and clank review you did last year, but my first game was rachet in clank back when my mom bought a PS2 for me and my siblings that came boxed in with up your arsenal and Jak 3. Outside of a couple other games my siblings and I would play up your arsenal to death. Despite not playing really any other R&C game besides the four player one that was on the PS3, we all loved it. The humor, story, weapons was just so much fun. Again one of the few games we actually ran to death to where when in single player we would get to a certain planet and would have a infinite "load screen" where rachet would just be flying forever without getting to the next location. Really need to get to playing the rest.
i only ever played tools of destruction but i loved it.
ToD was pretty good. Had a lot of fun with it myself. You can't beat the original 4 though. GC or UYA ar tied for "best ratchet and clank game" for me
This games been on the backlog for a while and from what i played i loved it. I went from rac1 to gladiator
My favorite ps2 era game was Jak 2. To this day there isn't a game like that.
For good reason lmao, a huge empty city with nothing to do, totally broken difficulty and turning a previously normal character into a cringelord isn’t to be emulated.
@@EresirThe1st it is a ps2 era game, i rather have a unique city where every corner is well designed, than a world full of meanigless things to do. The gameplay is fantastic and jak have now a better dinamic with daxter. Makes no sense call jak2 cringworthy since he don't even talk in the first game. And i dont use this argument, but jak 2 is better aclaimed as well.
And we have a jetboard.
@@nosferatu9561 He didn't talk in the first game but he still had character. Jak in the second game is peak 2000s edge without the style of a game like Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, which just makes it silly. Much like Shadow the Hedgehog.
You say you want a well designed city with meaningful things to do. Jak 2 has a large city with nothing to do, meaningful or otherwise. It's just going through the streets to get to the next mission.
Fair enough if you like the jetboard movement but it barely shows up in normal play.
I enjoyed this video, and glad to see you branching out. Also while I think you fell a small touch into a sort of list-off of the video games content (Something I see in a lot of reviewers), you really cleaned that aspect up compared to your Postal 4 review. Don't have much experience with Rachet and Clank but found this to be one of your better recent videos.
As a kid, the foreshadowed twist was exiting because you were in a safe learning environment and could focus on developing ingame skills and knowledge and experience creativity
love the content brother
The lack of default strafing and automatic aiming is one of the biggest charms of the first game. Enemies are simple and sparse enough mostly that fighting them is easy anyway since they will just patrol a small area unless disturbed, and the few times you get swarmed it tests your skills to keep them off making those incidents memorable, like riding the hovercraft on Pokitaru with the spikey fishes jumping on board.
The first game was a platformer with some shooting elements, sequels were, to an increasing degree shooters with platforming elements.
They even went from including arena modes in the sequels to the last ps2 game (the last one I played) being entirely a series of arena battles.
Are you ever gonna make a Jack and dexter video?
The Ratchet and Clank series is my childhood. Picked up my PS2 recently and can’t stop playing
YO I ACTUALLY DOWNLOADED THIS ON MY PC A COUPLE MONTHS AGO!!! I love this game so much growing up and I would never change it for the world. Everyday now I ask friends or anybody in general if they remember the game majority say they don't and I want to cry.
My favourite game of all time, an absolute gem. I've been playing it since the demo came out in fall 2003 :).
I gotta go back to this game. I stopped one night at that tundra planet with the yetis and sea serpents, didn't want to deal with autistically collecting all of the crystals. The following night played something else and haven't been back to it in years. Great video, reminded me why video games could even be considered art in the first place.
Get the ryno2, it can one shot the yetis
Every time i see you somewhere it's saying something fantastic. I need to dive deeper through content.
The ost is a good reason to come back to this game. I ran through that game so many times on ps2.
One of my absolute favorite games of all time, and in my opinion it's the greatest video game sequel of all time.
top 3 childhood games thanks for the review you hit every note beautifully
I still own this game in mint condition, Commando & Deadlocked were revolutionary games to me
My 2 favorites
as for 37:27 its also on PS vita
I remember Platinuming all the original Ratchet games back in 2020. I had previously played the games so I platted on NG+. I remember Going Commando taking a long ass time because I thought you had to upgrade every gun, so I wastwd a ton of time doing that when you actually didn't need to
Ratchet and Clank has got to be pretty much my most favourite franchise out of the Playstation, even Doom 2 has a RnC mod (both games are fun, have that weapon synergy thing where you gotta switch to different weapons), and A Crack In Time does include the old lock-on feature which was great
anyways, glad to see a channel that has Ratchet and Clank content, keep up the good work
This has got me truly excited to play going commando. In an era where sequels are about appeasing the masses it will be nice to play one where its a true evolution of what the games roots were.
After playing sly and 2 ratchets (and mafia 3) I was genuinely happy with playing some simple classic games that I missed out on, but I was a bit drained after doing it in a week.
IMO here is a random list of clean sequels(or series) Dawn Of War 2, Burnout Paradise, Total War (up to Napoleon), Battlefield(up to 1), Men Of War AS2, Anno 1800, State Of Decay 2, Project Cars 2, Mafia 2. In case you were looking for some good sequels to play from random genres.
@Zoomer Stasi dawn of war. I agree in part, but your description more accurately defines DOW3. DOW2 was more of a change to what the devs had learned from Company Of Heroes. Its more of a disagreement in direction. state of decay. Sales has almost nothing to due with quality. Nor were any of my recommendations driven by sales. They purely comparative to its predecessors. Battlefield. That's just silly. Mafia 3 was actually okay, but i will agree that its not a good sequel so i'll edit that.
What are some sequels that you would recommend on the basis of evolution?
i enjoy your retrospective videos the most, love them
This is a fantastic review!!! Love it
I feel sorry for the kids that will never know the feeling of playing ratchet and clank 1, 2 and 3 when they came out, I remember every kid going crazy in my school and we were talking constantly about how a weapon would upgrade and what we would find in late game planets.
During the summer we played pokemon ruby and sapphire to death constantly battling eachother with the cable.
Golden era of both series if you ask me
Such a great game and series. It's nice to hear you give positive reviews once in a while, though I admit your angry negative reviews are far more entertaining, lol
My childhood and still the best of the three og ps game franchises rip jak and daxter and sly cooper (which I also loved there games also but they aren’t around anymore)
Ratchet & Clank 20th year Anniversary is November 4, 2022. I hope Insomniac games does something special to commemorate 20 Full years of Ratchet and Clank.
The problem emulating RC2 is that shadows on the original version where designed for the ps2 resolution, so if you upscale it past 1.5 it shows parts of the shadow you wern't supposed to see, other than that, it's great to play it on widescreen with remapable controlls so you can shoot with r1 instead of circle. If you feel like 1.5 resolution is still too low, even with post processing and antialiasing, you can just tinker with the settings and disable the shadows so you don't see the artifacts.
I can't believe the hate for the meteor gun it's literally one of the strongest weapons even at the second level (orange)
I honestly think the story of the second game is just as good as the first one. It's just way more original than most games. It's not just bad guy does something, you have to stop bad guy kind of game. Instead, it's based on the subtleness of corporate greed. You start off thinking this is gonna be another bad guy does something bad kind of game but you instead find out you were betrayed all along by the company you were trusting. The real enemy isn't a boss fight but rather excessive capitalism, which, even as a Libertarian, I really really enjoyed. It's just incredibly original and a lot more of a mature topic than most other games
The desert planet was always one of my favorites, especially once you get the hovercar, the tundra one was bad, but there's a reason for it, it was basically made in 1 or 2 days, it's basically a miracle it turned out as good as it did (plus I will say, everyone misunderstood the meteor gun, it looks like a bad weapon, if you just use it normally it never hits, but if you use the lock on mod it basically acts as a better version of the Lancer, it is cooler as a basic lava gun, but the meteor gun is very strong and everyone hates because they don't understand it)
To this day, Locked and Loaded, as it's known in my region, is still my favourite game in the original trilogy. I love the improved gameplay with strafing, upgrading, and gladiator arenas. I love the bouncer, plasma coil, and minirocket tube. I love the improved characterisations and the game's story. My only complaint is the ending twist, where it's revealed that Qwark was the villain all along, which was really unnecessary. Even so, this was the perfect sequel, one that I still play to this day
Great game. However, the boss on Snivelak is probably the worst boss in gaming history and if you skip the side content you will struggle on the difficulty spikes.
As well as the level where 6 sentry robots healing themselves unless you have a powerful gun on your ship so you could kill them quickly
I've been keeping up with Ratchet & Clank for about 15 to 20 years and in all that time I've just been patiently waiting for one other game to scratch the same itch as one of the first three but it has not happened yet.
I highly recommend playing through both going commando and up your arsenal without ever buying armor.
Still to this day absolutely no one talks about deadlocked. It was the only ratchet and clank to get your weapons to lvl 99. The mods that you could put on the weapons were fantastic. The whole death arena were my favorite parts about ratchet and clank because I got to use the weapons for that purpose.
RAC 2 and 3 were so fucking good, I love these games to the bone
I've been jamming all three games on the ps vita and once you get a hang for the controls its actually pretty solid
Have you played DmC 5? I would say that's a modern game with good pacing
R&C:GC is my favorite one.
Challenge Mode improved the endgame/replay, better versions of every weapon gives you a reason to use every weapon, and bigger wider levels like Grelbin and Tabora, space ship levels, hover bike races, arena challenges, revamped movement controls so you can strafe.... I could go on, but it did everything that was good in R&C, and then made all those improvements.
Also the soundtrack bangs.
The rule 34 screenshot killed me XD
Unfortunately I had to choose between this saga and jak and daxter back in the day, I chose Jak which i Loved but it made me missed out on this games, a fews month ago I finally played this game, I couldn´t agree more with your review, excellent games all of them. The PS2-GC-Xbox era really was the golden age of gaming.
Out of all the games Going Commando hit just right with everything, platforming, ship battles, and my favorite arsenal of the franchise.
The plasma coil is my personal favourite. It is so insanely good to do aoe damage with in a hallway once upgraded
Up your arsenal will always be my personal favorite those sewer levels used to scare me it was so confusing
Have completely gone back to old gaming and i have been loving every minute of it. Will have to set up my old PS2 and grab this one as well.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the tractor beam was litteraly only used on Mactar once. Never again through out the game was it required to progress. I thought that was wierd.
Megacorp resting planet used the tractor beam
Going Commando absolutely slaps. Plasma coil/plasma storm are probably my favorite weapons from the whole series
This was my first Rachet and Clank game and my first PS2 game. I have no regrets.
This was a childhood classic. Never beat it but remember my brother going hard on it.
Those desert levels could have been great, especially nowadays.
And why not including a race inside these desert levels instead of barlow and joba?
As for the gliding mechanic, barlow with the heavy emphasis on the swinger would have made a nice candidat during a part of the level where the gliding would have been necessary.
i did once find a glitch in the ps3 trilogy that by spamming the rocket boots and side strafe jumping it would somehow make ratchet invulnerable on Grelbin (AKA ICE HELL). probs the only time i managed to get all the crystals in less that 3 hours of suffering.
36:30 Rift Apart's dodge isn't even remotely similar to dodging in Dark Souls, what?
Nah it's similar cause...it has I frames.
Its pretty much a 1 to 1
I'll even explain: where in dk it was a tool strictly for dodging,and that was literally it.
RC:RA uses it as a ground and air dodge JUST like the classic dk roll, I remember air rolling all over the place. area traversal(just like in dk) and puzzle solving (just like dk) it's pretty obvious right?
All jokes aside that isn't the only bizzar completely uninformed take or comparison this guy has.
hey i dont know if you already knew (Probably you do), but in newer ratchet and clank (atleast future ones i think) you can toggle the strafe from going commando in the camera settings if im not mistaken
As for why the Yeti enemies were unbalanced, as Golden Bolt said in his Retrospective, the Ice planet was horrendously behind schedule and had to be developed in 3 days by someone who was doing someone else work because the other guy was busy with something else. I do recommend checking out Golden Bolt Retrospective, he does talk about the behind-the-scenes and rough development process of the Ratchet and Clank series.
And you Synthetic Man, look like a person who would enjoy playing Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal.
The original trilogy of R&C also got HD ports on the PSVita
I'm split between this and up your arsenal as my favorite, the ship battles were great, and I really liked the galaxy ranger(?) Segments from Arsenal, wish they would've had both in one game. You're dead-on about the crystal planets though. Great video
Hey Synthetic man, could you review the sonic adventure games?