Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction

Can Insomniac hit the mark twice in 12 months?

	Version PS3	Developer Insomniac	Publisher SCE	Genre Action platformer

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Holding this all together is a storyline that disguises genocide in humour. Ratchet's nemesis in Tools is Emperor Tachyon, a giant-jawed freak of a being with a serious jones for wiping the Lombax race from the face of the galaxy. As the last Lombax, Ratchet is public enemy No. 1, and it's up to him to dig to the bottom of what's going on. The story presentation is excellent and I wish that there was more of it.

But it's not all about Ratchet. Clank is playable now and again, too, changing the pace from all-out action to something more similar to Pikmin. Through Clank you can control Zoni, sentient mini-bots only Clank can see that help him when he's in a bind. These stages are all about the puzzles, with multiple-switch gates and fatal gaps to navigate. They're fun but they're only used sporadically. Also interspersed in the main action are a few other gameplay types. There are flying sections with odd controls and skydiving ones where you used the Sixaxis to guide yourself to safety, gliding sections also with tilt-controls and even others that play like Super Monkey Ball.

Tools is, however, not without its problems. The camera is automatic with full user-control thrown in for when you need it, and I found myself having to use it a lot. The strafe and first-person modes you can use are helpful but I would have traded them both for a real lock-on feature that worked as you'd expect. Instead there's a make-shift auto-lock-on that's engaged when you use your weapons but that has a habit of leaving you in the lurch when you need it most.

Insomniac has put huge effort into the range and quality of enemies.

Still, those are relatively minor points. The core gameplay is fun and functional and there is more than enough there to keep you playing in each location after you've done the necessary missions. Each of the stages comes with extra challenges that earn you skill points and gold bolts and these in turn can be used to unlock extras such as alternate costumes and cheats. It's not quite Achievements, but it's about as close as we're going to get.

Tools came along at just the right time for me. I've been playing quite a few PlayStation 3 games lately and some of them have been good. What's been missing is something genuinely fun (and funny). That's a gap that Ratchet and Clank fill easily.

Expect to see many more environments in the game as beautiful as this.

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