Well, two more games, and it's about time for my commentary on them. Let's just cut the foreplay and get right into it:

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time

First things first, the one major thing that makes Ratchet & Clank stand out from other games: it's weapons. Once again throughout the game, you purchase and collect an assortment of weapons with which to blow the hell out of enemies with. There's a nice typical variety available, and the pistol, shotgun, and bomb glove of CiT are semi customizable. Those three weapons have small mods that can be found throughout the game that alter the properties of their attacks like making the pistol fire either small blasts or a beam that can penetrate multiple enemies, or altering the shotgun's spread/range/firepower.

As someone who's played every Insomniac Games' R&C game, I unfortunately find most of the weapons in this latest game a bit stale. Don't get me wrong they're still fun to use and such, but there's only one or two weapons that really feel new and unique while the rest are very small variants of stuff seen throughout the series proper. I will say this though for anyone who's going to play this game: keep Mr. Zurkon out as often as you can. Not only does he cover your ass in some of the bigger firefights of the game, but his commentary varies on whether you're currently fighting and who you're fighting. Some of the things he says are some of the funniest parts of the game. "Mr. Zurkon does not need nanotech to survive. Mr. Zurkon lives on fear."

Speaking of humor, the series' trademark humor is still here, but unfortunately it's a bit on the light side this time around. A Crack in Time has more of an actual story to tell this time, and is generally more serious. Honestly, the main times I only found myself laughing while playing through the game were at some of the secondary dialouge in each of the worlds like from the aforementioned Mr. Zurkon and various NPCs. Note to anyone playing the game: smack the Terachnoids in Axiom City around with the wrench a few times for a good laugh at their dialouge.

Back onto gameplay, most of the series has been a mixture of action/shooting with platforming and puzzles. A Crack in Time certainly does not disappoint with balancing these elements. Ratchet's sections are primarily action focused, and there are a lot of great set-piece battles to be played. Meanwhile Clank's sections are more platform and puzzle based. Again, Clank's puzzles are based around the time recording mechanic that I mentioned in the previous blog on the Prometheus mod. For anyone who's not familiar with using it, it's kind of tricky. Once you get the hang of how it works, almost all of the puzzles in Crack in Time are pretty easy to figure out.

Visually, Crack in Time is still pretty impressive. Each world is fairly unique and feels alive with all of the details put into them. Cars or flying animals can be seen moving about in both the backgrounds and in the skies right above you head; in the more mechanical /technological worlds (like Clank's levels) there's all sorts of moving machinery. The details put into each world make them feel quite lively. Even more impressive is how despite how much is happening on screen, the framerate almost never dips down; and there are times where things get incredibly crazy with all sorts of things exploding everywhere.

Aside from what I've mentioned above, I only have a few other small gripes with the game. The space flight sections as you travel between planets are mostly boring as hell. The loading screen is now just a plain loading screenw with some text and "loading..." at the bottom; not the fancy ship flying loading screens of previous games. The latest minigame is a robotron/smash TV clone, but isn't as enjoyable as previous games' minigames. The spherical worlds in space can be a bit glitchy (I've already glitched into the center of one and got stuck, forcing me to reload my save).

One thing to mention that'll interest R&C veterans, I think the RYNO V (the latest superweapon) is incredibly lame. Despite it's power, it's accuracy is absolutely terrible unless you're basically right next to an enemy. It's only redeeming value is the fact that it plays the 1812 Overture as you hold down the trigger.

Overall, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time is still a great fun game to play. Though some aspects may be a bit stale for series vets and lacking a bit of it's typical humor, there's still a lot of fun to be had with the latest game. It's not the best game in the series, but it's certainly not the worst.

Tekken 6

There's not a whole lot I can really say about Tekken 6. If you liked previous Tekken games for their core fighting, then you'll enjoy T6. If you didn't like previous games, there's nothing really here that will change your mind on the series. I'm just going to bullet point some of the notable things regarding the game.

-There's still a large cast of characters this time around (40 or so), and just about everyone got some tweaking in their movesets. A lot got new moves, and had older moves properties tweaked. Typical of most fighting games and newer revisions. I haven't come across anyone yet who's been neutered to hell.

-The new-ish "bound" moves that slam airborne opponents into the ground for an extended stun make the combo/juggling game even more ridiculous than ever. Whether it's a good thing or bad I can't really say at this point.

-Namco has basically made the offline 'Arcade Mode' worthless to play through. All of the character openings and endings are only gotten through playing a mini-arcade mode within the Scenario Campaign.

-Speaking of the Scenario Campaign, it's just simply terrible. It's mainly a brawler trying to use Tekken's regular fighting controls, and it just doesn't work. The camera is awkward and targeting when fighting multiple enemies at once just doesn't work well. It's a shame how Namco tried making this mode the BIG focus for singleplayer offline modes.

-Ghost Mode is back again from T5ark Resurrection, and it's still fun to play. It pits you against ghost data of various players in an effort to replicate fighting real people of various skill. Even better is how you can download ghost data of other people online and try your hand against that, and you can upload your own data for others to try.

-Yet again, Tekken resorts to making the offline player fight against a terrible and cheesy final boss in the form of Azazel. I'll touch more about him (and other fighting game bosses) in another blog, but thank *insert chosen deity here* you don't need to fight this bastard over and over again just to unlock characters. The game would have been better off leaving the final fight against Jin in permanent rage mode (the fight before Azazel) instead.

-Online gameplay is hit or miss. Sometimes the netcode holds up and you get decently solid matches; other times it's just terrible. Not quite King of Fighters XII terrible, but still bad enough to really affect gameplay strategies. Good luck trying to tech out of King's chain grabs online if there's any lag whatsoever.

-Minor gripe, but when playing VS there are a few stages that can only be picked/played through random select. There's really no good reason to do this; people like playing the level with sheep everywhere, but can't because it's restricted to random select.

-For anyone playing the PS3 version, I highly suggest doing the optional 4GB install. It really decreases load times from 30 seconds down to 5-10 seconds at most.

So yea, the game is worthwhile to Tekken fans who play for actual solid fighting. It's familiar enough for anyone who's played even one to jump into and enjoy.

So that's about it for today. Until next time...

--JT