FASTER, MORE INTENSE
We live in an age of remakes, and as far as unnecessary ones go, Ratchet & Clank is a surprisingly jolly affair. Taking full advantage of the PS4’s hardware, it reimagines the old cartoony sci-fi adventure as something closer to a modern animated family movie, complete with ironic wit, brisk pacing, and a colorful overload of visual gags. The new, highly detailed environments are often breathtaking—at least during the brief interludes when the frantic gameplay allows you to stop and take them in.
This version doubles as a tie-in with the feature film released the same year. Which one exists to justify the other is unclear, but critically there’s no contest: the game outshines the movie by a landslide (Metacritic currently sits at 85 versus the film’s rather catastrophic 29).
I like this remake a lot, though I wouldn’t call it essential if you’ve already played the original. That said, for newcomers this is absolutely the place to start. It’s a tighter, smoother, and more refined way to experience the same story, with responsive third-person controls and well-balanced combat challenges. Having played four Ratchet titles by now, I’m clearly beginning to sense a formula that makes them largely interchangeable—but if I ever feel the urge to revisit the series, this might be the one I’d gladly replay.
At its core, this is a good, tight gameplay experience full of spirit and goofy sci-fi flair. I honestly struggle to recall exactly what remains intact and what’s been changed from the original. The levels feel eerily familiar beneath the modern sheen, but many of the weapons seem new, inventive, and joyously excessive. The remake is also noticeably shorter, easier, and more condensed, which makes it an excellent weekend game to power through.
The varied levels fly by at a brisk pace, but they still reward players who want to dig deeper, hunting for secrets and grinding upgrade materials for their ever-expanding arsenal. Bolts and screws function as the game’s slapstick currency, and by smashing literally everything in sight you’ll accumulate them by the boatload. The collectible card system—granting passive bonuses once you complete a set of three—and the weapon upgrade trees are smart, unobtrusive additions that complement the core loop nicely.
Many of the game’s best jokes are delivered through its weaponry. The Pixelator, a makeshift shotgun, temporarily transforms enemies into pixelated 2D sprites of their former polygonal selves. The Groovitron summons a disco ball that forces all nearby enemies—bosses included—to stop fighting and start dancing. It’s such a playful spin on what is essentially a paralysis effect that you might briefly believe Insomniac invented something entirely new.
Crucially, the game avoids tedium through constant variation. Lockpicking puzzles, underwater exploration, ship-to-ship combat, twin-stick shooting sections, and Clank’s smaller puzzle-focused segments are all woven into the standard running, gunning, and platforming. The story itself revolves around classic megalomaniacal villains attempting to destroy planets and reassemble them into an ultimate super-planet. It looks like something Pixar might produce on an off day, but registers firmly as lower-tier storytelling—intentionally dumb, breezy entertainment that knows exactly what it is.
I have few major complaints, apart from the occasional glitch that wedged me between fixed, non-interactable objects. My surprisingly modest score is mostly justified by familiarity: having played the original, this remake inevitably feels a bit superfluous. You only really need to play one version—once you have, the other will feel like a replay with prettier/worse lighting.
Still, if you’re entirely new to the series, this remake is easy to recommend. It’s shorter, cleaner, packed with quality-of-life improvements, and—perhaps most importantly—the hoverboard races don’t totally suck anymore.
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