Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

Ratchet and Clank was a surprisingly fun game. It's your typical 3-D third person shooter, like Destroy All Humans

Story
It follows the humorous story of Ratchet, a cute cat-like alien wielding a big gun, and Clank, his little robot sidekick.

For the most part, it's not gut busting comedy, but there's enough dry wit to keep you smiling, and sometimes laughing through the cut scenes, and sometimes during the game play as well.

The game is also chalk full of references to other games and movies. There's enough that I'm certain to have missed a lot of them, and those I caught I really enjoyed. A few examples: One of the cowardly troops in the game exclaims "We're all gonna die! Game over, man!" borrowing from the movie Alien. Also there are a number of mini-games that are very similar to some old-school Atari games.

Weapons
Unlike many shooter games, you don't start off with a lame weapon that becomes increasingly useless as the game progresses. Instead, you start off with a wrench (melee weapon) that can 1-shot groups of small enemies both in the beginning and end of the game.

The first ranged weapon you get in the 1st level is a shot-gun, a weapon powerful enough to be reserved for mid-game in similar games. The remaining weapons only get more powerful from there.

To keep the weapons useful as the game progresses, they each become more powerful, the more you use them. At level 5 (max) the shot gun gets a charge up ray effect with the power of the BFG in Doom (no joke, it can level the playing field quite easily)

There are also a series of unique and very fun weapons, such as the Suck Cannon, as well as one of my favorites, the Duck Gun. A gun that just turns your enemies into harmless ducks!

Play Time
Ratchet and Crank is a quick game. With out any prior experience with the game or others in the series, I was able to beat it in about 20 hours of game play. An experienced player could likely beat it with in 10 hours.