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Review: Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One

After a two-year absence, heroic duo Ratchet and Clank are back in All 4 One – and this time, they’ve made some friends. This time around, the boys are doing the usual save-the-galaxy thing with the assistance of two of their long-standing supporting characters rounding the roster up to 4 to give us all a multiplayer free-for-all!

After deciding to retire form the hero business, Ratchet and Clank are reluctantly drawn in after a giant monster attack on their home planet. Along the way they somehow manage to recruit Captain Qwark, inept galactic president and musclebound ex-‘superhero’, and their former nemesis Doctor Nefarious, most recently seen as the major villain of previous game A Crack in Time. The team are snagged by the “Creature Collector” and dumped on the mysterious planet Magnus. What follows is a romp through varied locales to the heart of the Collector’s floating home base to hit the bad guys in the face and find a way home.

The major feature of All 4 One is the introduction of 4-player co-op gameplay, possible both locally and over the Internet. Players are required to work in tandem to solve puzzles, navigate the obstacles in each level and execute strategies against enemies. The game can also be played single-player, with a computer-controlled second player introduced to make the above gameplay elements possible.

It needs to be said right off the bat that if you’re not playing this with other humans, your computer-controlled buddy is STUPID, STUPID, STUPID. While playing through the game as Ratchet, NPC Clank would regularly jump off platforms for no good reason, wander off to fight baddies I wasn’t focused on, and in cases where I’d slipped up and died (via pitfall, for example), rather than reviving me or simply staying put HE WOULD JUMP DOWN THE BOTTOMLESS PIT AFTER ME. Now I’m all for camaraderie and all that, but I’d much rather Clank hung out solo for a few second to give me time to be revived rather than committing seppuku and forcing me to return to the last checkpoint. If it’s AT ALL possible, hook up with some other players. It’s for the best.

Bot AI aside, the game is a fun extension of the tried-and-true formula that Ratchet & Clank fans love. Platforming elements mixed with gadgets and a vastly varied arsenal  of weaponry is just as much fun with four people as it is by your lonesome in prior games. Little additions like needing to launch a teammate to the next platform then ziplining after them helps ensure that players are on the same page, and there’s enough variety in the environment and enemies for you to switch up between the 15-odd weapons you’ll earn over the course of the game. Co-operative play is reinforced by the fact that weapons will fire faster and do more damage if 2 or more players focus on the same enemy, which comes in especially handy during multi-wave enemy onslaughts.

Each character also gets one unique weapon suited to their overall personality. Ratchet has the Doppelbanger, a decoy that pulls enemy aggro; Clank has the Zoni Ray to slow dow enemies; Qwark has the Quantum Deflector Shield which is pretty self-explanatory, and Nefarious has the Cloaker for invisible sneak attacks. Inevitably I did default to the first-issued gun, the standard pew-pew laser. After upgrades it was more than enough to see me through the game, with really only the required amount of switching to others. The one other gun that did catch my eye however was the Critter Strike, allowing you to transform enemies into pigs after a few seconds of concentrated fire. Once upgraded, the pigs become fire-bretahing devil pigs who will attack enemies to assist you. Surprisingly this will work on miniboss-level enemies as well as standard enemies, simply producing a more epic-scale critter. Boss battles are strategic to a point, but are mostly just a case of ‘shoot until you run out of ammo, switch to another weapon until ammo recharge plate turns back on’.

The visuals and music direction in All 4 One are just as crisp and gorgeous as the previous PS3 titles, and the dialogue is snappy and carries the same brand of goofy humour the series is known for. The only visual issue with the game is that with four players running around shooting and blowing enemies up, the screen can quickly fill with explosions and special effects making it hard to track your character or opponents. It’s a small issue however, as the camera usually angles wide enough to make it a non-issue.

The retro-animation styled cutscenes make a return, in the form of advertisements about new weapons as they become available.  There’s also plenty of little callbacks to previous events and characters in the series for those in the know, but they’re not critical in a way that would negatively affect a first-timer. My favourite recurring character, the Space Plumber also makes a cameo (as he has in every game to date) but it wasn’t until late in the game, which did have me worried.

Against my initial judgement of the game, Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One retains the same overall feel as the series to date. Gameplay obviously received a lot of polish to ensure this could be felt as an evolution of the original gameplay rather than a departure. I look forward to seeing whether the series continues in this vein, or if Insomniac Games will treat it as a one-off experiment that went extremely well.


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About the author

Matt Gosper

aka Ponk – a Melburnian gay gamer who works with snail mail. Enthusiastically keeping a finger in every pie of the games industry. I'll beat you at Mario Kart, and lose to you in any shooter you can name.