PixlBit

Neal laments missing Ratchet & Clank up until now and cries over the lack of quality 3D platformers.

"Games I..." is a series of articles where we look at games we missed, love, hate, or more.

I am extremely late to the party with Ratchet & Clank. As a late PlayStation 2 owner, I ignored the Sony franchise while playing games from the Sly Cooper and Jak and Daxter series. While I had always heard great things about the Ratchet & Clank series, I never was interested enough to take the plunge and try one of the games.

That all I changed when I got a PlayStation 3 and decided to take a chance on the Lombax and his robot companion. Before I get into that, I'm sure you'll notice that the three editorials I have written for PixlBit have all revolved around my recently purchased PS3. Trust me, this will change. I might even go out of my way to talk about my salad days when I hated the hell out of everything Sony in the early PSX era.

But back to Ratchet & Clank. While I can't speak for the quality of the whole series, although I hear the other games are very good, I can speak for the outstanding quality of the duo's first PS3 entry, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. The gorgeous game, which still isn't quite a Pixar movie but is close, takes you all throughout space as you use tons of different colorful weapons and journey through great varied gameplay.

The levels, at least thus far, are bite-sized and fast-paced. The controls are fantastic, although I find the jumping to be a little finicky at times. Overall, I find myself playing this game and being taken back to a different era. The long-ago era of the Nintendo 64, when 3D platformers were king and first-person shooters were impossible on consoles.

I find it deliciously ironic that Nintendo paved the way for console first-person shooters with Goldeneye 64, because I would say that the rise of the shooter is what sunk the GameCube, or at least made it fall behind the Xbox in sales. The Xbox had Halo, the GameCube had a crappy controller for first-person shooters, and the rest is hiistory (maybe I should say wiistory if you think that double-i is a typo).

Going back to the game, Tools of Destruction reminds me of a different time when Super Mario 64 was king and everyone cowered under the might of Nintendo's 3D revolution. You had crappy mascot characters going to 3D, you had almost all of Rare's Nintendo output, you had Ocarina of Time spawn out of Mario 64, and you had some gems that deliberately went against Mario 64 and turned out great (Klonoa). Much like the Super Nintendo days where you could throw a rock and kill Aero the Acrobat and Bubsy, you could throw a rock in the N64 era and hit Gex and Banjo.

That's part of the reason I was intrigued by Sly Cooper and Jak and Daxter. They seemed to be reminiscent of the quality games that emerged in the 3D revolution. I don't know why I got it in my head that I didn't want to try Ratchet & Clank, but I did. And now it's almost too late.

Platformers are apparently illegal to make, at least according to Psychonauts developer Double Fine's Tim Schafer. It's a sad day. Throw a rock right now and you'll only hit Mario and Ratchet & Clank. I guess you can also graze Wario, Sackboy, and a slew of downloadable titles. The only bold new take to the formula has been Mirror's Edge, which was a first-person platformer (kind of).

So yea, I guess I wish I missed Ratchet & Clank because I'm all sad at the dearth of console platformers.

Even more depressing is the fact that some stalwart 3D platformer developers have moved away from the genre. Rare's making Natal games, and Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter developer Naughty Dog have slowly moved away as the Jak games became less like platformers and they're now too busy making games that are like Indiana Jones movies (but flipping awesome games that are like Indiana Jones movies). Hell, there is a good argument out there that Ratchet & Clank games are more like third-person shooters than anything else.

And now it is embarrassing confession time (and a tease of what will be a future "Games I Missed" article), I've never played Psychonauts, which is heralded as one of the greatest modern platformers. I guess I should just shut the hell up, go play that, and then properly complain.

If you'll all hear me bitch again, that's what I'll gladly do.

Until then, any 3D platformers I missed that are excellent? Any genres that you're sad to see die? If you reply to this, why don't you write into the podcast (pixltalk AT pixlbit DOT com) and send us some damn listener mail. Did you know you can win a signed Scribblenauts poster? Keep in mind, the rules are that you have to not know me, although if no one writes in soon, that might be negotiable.

Let me know how you liked this. If the random asides piss you off, yell at me and I'll stop.