[#] Ratchet and Clank (Sony, 2002)

Kick alien ass.

The Holy Ghost of the trinity of Sony sixth-gen platformers, Ratchet and Clank devs Insomniac Games took their previous Spyro's lush and varied 3D worlds, turned them into planets, and made you an alien cat with a lot of really cool big guns. Ratchet is joined by an exacting and slightly socially clueless robotic operating buddy named Clank as they galavant around the galaxy to stop a greaseball alien executive from making a superplanet out of the resources of the others. For the first game of each trilogy, I think Ratchet makes the best impression, being briskly paced, easy to explore, the controls feeling nimble, the guns satisfying, and the graphics excellent. It ain't perfect, but few things are.

Ratchet starts out with a piddly bomb-throwing glove and his OmniWrench (a legitimately useful melee weapon and multi-tool), but his arsenal soon grows to include flamethrowers, automatic handguns, lightning weapons, uh, more explosives of various types. There's a sheep gun! As in, it makes enemies into sheep. There's also the Suck Cannon for those lonely nights on the Blarg station. The locales prove similarly varied, with Pokitaru's lush tropics, Aridia's nighttime scrublands, Kerwan's foggy skyscrapers, even a planet or two you can only visit as Clank initially! (Yes, Clank is playable, but nothing about his brief segments where you command an army of smaller robots proves very combustible, sadly.)

Where people tend to have issue with the first Ratchet is in the writing. Ratchet is a quick-to-anger moody teenager, and Clank surprisingly not much more mature. I didn't mind, though like Spyro, you're playing this more for the mechanical satisfaction than the story anyway. Similarly, people gripe about the lack of strafing, which I'm used to, but coming from the later games, you might miss it terribly. I'd also like to say, without spoiling anything, that the final boss is nuts cheap and I'm glad you get to murder him horribly. Those minor gripes aside, with lots to unlock, weapons to upgrade to cause an even greater barrage of chaos, a New Game Plus mode, Ratchet and Clank is as explosive as a Visibomb rocket and just as spectacular.