It’s quite clear that Ratchet & Clank was never intended to save the PlayStation 3. Insomniac has somehow managed to create two PS3 games in the time it takes most developers to do one, and this, being an enhanced replication of what has come before, in a familiar series, is inferior to Resistance: Fall Of Man. It suffers from the same sickness as Resistance, however, in that the ideas, design and use of the technology is all in the range of the PS2, with only an adequate amount of visual flair that justifies the use of the PS3.

Ratchet & Clank: Tools Of Destruction is an often fun platformer that does exactly as the series has done before. But the combination of generic, dull levels and an uninteresting script makes this a fl awed debut on the PS3. On the other hand, however, Ratchet & Clank is loaded with the sort of mainstream simplicity that could sell the PS3 to a younger market, and we won’t deny that we were, on occasion, having the sort of childish fun that the PS3 has lacked thus far. More titles need to capture the same tone as Ratchet & Clank, but so much more work needs to go into reworking the fundamentals of the platform genre. This is far too familiar.

At first, we felt that we were going to come at this review with a completely different angle to the one we’re using now, but this is down to the way that the game pans out. It starts beautifully, you see, with the broad cityscape of Metropolis looking as neat as it did in the Pixar-trumping press shots. Hundreds of vehicles were speeding overhead, there was no draw distance, whatsoever, with the detail, and at the end of the level, we were buzzing. Here was the kind of platform game that just didn’t exist any more. It was exciting because it made the most out of the genre staples and clichés, but it also maintained a well-produced and funny set of cut-scenes to back it up.

This first level sees you taking part in all of the old Ratchet & Clank frolics – run, gun and collect – but the obvious graphical sheen adds credibility to it. On top of this, Insomniac had clearly put good planning into this level. There were set pieces everywhere, including a quite sinister collapsing bridge and an apocalyptic landscape of buildings being felled (by the enemies, called Cragmite) in the background.

After the expected dose of platforming normality, the game will indulge you in some rather fun rail-grinding sections, which see you dodging trains and leaping over explosions. At this point, we were enjoying it. Nothing about it was innovative at all, but the frame rate is impressively stable in Ratchet & Clank, while the detail on the character models is lovely – squint hard enough, and you’ll make out some of the individual fur on Ratchet’s ears. The animation was also quite nice, with your basic repertoire of jumps and double jumps suggesting that nothing is out of the ordinary.

… continued