Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time

Every new entry in the Ratchet and Clank series has consciously “ratcheted” up the kinetic energy of play… the weapons become more destructive, the treasures (i.e. bolts) vomit forth from every corner of the screen, and the action sequences appear in faster, shorter and louder combinations than ever before. This crazed acceleration may be intended to keep pace with today’s sugar-coated ADD culture, but it can’t last forever… there has to come a point when the noise and blur gathers so much energy as to form a single snarling entropic singularity. The very clever and metaphorically aware creators of Ratchet and Clank seem to realize this, and have appropriately dubbed their newest venture as “A Crack in Time.” Unfortunately, the game’s title took on an additional meaning during play that makes it impossible for me to recommend this game to anyone in this timeline.

Plotting Points by Tan(x)
Video Game Reviews by a Very Busy Math Teacher

If you are a previous fan of Ratchet and Clank, there shouldn’t be a reason to believe you won’t enjoy this new and purportedly final entry in the series. By now you know what to expect from the game. You’ll acquire new and ridiculous weapons and use them to blow through hordes of comic alien menaces. You can level up your abilities in the arena or follow the main plot, all while wincing at the comic stylings of Captain Quark (who continues to be so adamantly cliché and un-funny that you’ll be sort of embarrased those one or two times he does manage to make you smile). There’s side missions to master, and secret hidden golden bolts to find, and plans for the devastating Rhino gun (we’re up to version VI) to collect.

Unlike in previous games, you begin with Lombax and robot pal separated by vast distances and enjoying their own unique adventures. The game alternates between the two main characters, allowing you to explore the different mechanics and look forward to each new and different segment of play. Without giving away too many details, Clank has been whisked away to an enormous clock at the center of the universe (hinting at open defiance of Einstein… there will be no relativity for you here!) where he learns about his origins, and Ratchet spends his time searching for Clank and finding out about his own past as well.

Ratchet spends most of his time on one planet surface or another as usual, but Crack in Time also adds segments in which he flies around a planetary system raiding small moons for bolts, towing broken down spaceships and getting into shooting matches with minions of the ever-popular villain Dr. Nefarious. The planetoids were amusing, each one allowing a run around the surface in a Super Mario Galaxy kind of way. They certainly hammer home just how big the surface area of a sphere is compared to the radius. Those moons don’t look so big until you land and actually try to explore every bit of them.

While Ratchet’s weapon choices were as entertaining as ever (with the exception of the six-axis controlled ones… with the number of monsters gunning for Ratchet’s hide there is generally no safe way to stand still and concentrate on tilting your controller this way and that), I found his battles to be far too noisy and explosive. The screen regularly fills with a maelstrom of explosions, bolts, alien blaster fire and other special effects. While the camera is easy to control and to move left and right, it obstinately refuses to allow you to look up… is this some unknown facet of Lombax thick-necked physiology we are seeing here? Or maybe Ratchet just doesn’t want to appear the tourist. But this restriction coupled with the constant bright kabooms in front of your eyes makes for a rather beautiful world that you often can’t see.

In addition, local non-combatant aliens babble lame humorous remarks while Ratchet and his companion offer their own not-so-witty clichés. It is often hard to figure out what anyone is saying, as there are so many critters chittering at the same time. It feels like you’re always trying to play while stuck commuting on the subway, listening to twenty people have inane conversations over their cell phones about who slighted who and why this or that TV show is so great and should vampires sparkle or not and that sort of thing.

So thank goodness for the Clank levels, which exist in sharp contrast to all the noise and stupidity that is Ratchet. While the Great Clock certainly has its share of explosions, there is a lot less noise and more focus on problem solving and puzzles. Particularly refreshing are the training segments within Clank’s mind… a clean, orderly environment with the best floating platforms I’ve seen in a long time. In one of the most genius moves of the entire Ratchet & Clank Series, Clank is granted the Zoni ability to turn time in reverse and actually fix broken things rather than smash them. After at least five previous games of swinging that damn wrench around and breaking everything in sight, Clank’s chrono scepter is an anti-entropic delight. Swing it at a patch of glass on the ground and it reforms into a functional vid screen. Whack a pipe and gas stops hissing out of it, and when you swing at those ubiquitous crates full of bolts… well, no, they still break apart.

Clank also performs a series of time-related puzzles by recording past selves of himself and then running around a room pushing buttons while his past selves do their thing at the same time. This was a neat idea, although it does have some logical inconsistency… it is established that when Clank stops recording he always teleports back to the chrono pad where he began… except if he left the room, in which case he can go forward and the puzzle is solved. It isn’t too logical, but once you get the hang of recording it makes for a nice series of thinking challenges. I found the chrono-rift mini-games less compelling but easy enough to complete without frustration.

So we’ve got new inventions, some nifty game play and a nice space-time theme… what could be so wrong that this game should get such a low review. Well, sadly, it happened as I got about halfway into the adventure: the game crashed. But it didn’t just crash, you see. Understand that I am completely obsessive compulsive regarding saves. Never content with an autosave feature, I always save my game extra times in extra slots at every opportunity. There have been, on occasion, times that, say, Neverwinter Nights 2 has lost a save file (ask Scum-McPhil for confirmation on that one…) But never in the last twenty years of playing video games has a game ever corrupted and erased all of my save files at once. That, you see, is the true Crack in Time... a temporal disaster of the highest magnitude. And checking on various internet forums confirms that I was not alone in this affair.

When the problem occurred my wife and I quickly crafted an email to Insomniac in hopes of receiving guidance or support for the issue, and they sent us back a very nice form letter saying they would probably read our email and respond. That, however, was a week ago, and we have had no response.

Either the fine people at Insomniac are working around the clock to fix this untimely error, or they are hoping that one day in the future we can return to this age and change history. In either case, I find it impossible to motivate myself to return to a game that could, without provocation, erase all of my progress at the drop of a hat. Unless you are planning on playing the game all in one marathon sitting (and even then you have the constant danger of a crash… and not of the bandicoot kind) it isn’t worth it to risk investing your hours, minutes and seconds in this kind of Russian Roulette. I don’t trust the stability of the game any longer, and that’s pretty much the death knell for a piece of software. If you are still tempted to buy this game, take my advice and wait a year. It will be a lot cheaper at that point, and hopefully by then a magic chrono patch will have it fixed up and ready to play.