I really like adventure games in which you collect stuff, find hidden collectibles and buy upgrades. Combine this with some decent combat mechanics and some platforming and I am hooked up for hours. Ratchet and Clank is a game that does just that.

I was always fan of the Ratchet and Clank series, so when this remaster for the PS4 came out, I immediately bought it.

The story of the game is a little blend and cliché but not terrible. It gives clear directions on where to go next and you can backtrack and go on sideway paths whenever you like. The open world levels, that you can visit in every order you want, makes the game fun to play. You are not bound to a specific path and if you are like me, you complete all the side quests first and then continue with the main story.

The graphics are fairly decent and a good upgrade from the original game. The framerate is good and keeps stable throughout the game, even with a lot of action on the screen.

The sounds and music are quite nice and when playing in the background gives a calming feeling while you are exploring.

The ton of collectible items like bolts, gold nuts and trading cards made me search every inch of the game. Combine this with some PlayStation trophies you can earn for collecting everything and there is nothing in the game that I haven’t seen or experienced.

The upgrade mechanics are really cool and although Ratchet and Clank is not an RPG, it feels this way when you upgrade your weapons with specific upgrades that let you earn more bolts, cards or Raritanium.

The combat mechanics and weapon selection are well done and switching to one of your other ridiculous weapons is made easy to understand. Combat feels fluent and fair, except for some homing attacks some enemies have, but this adds to the challenge. The weapons are all over the place like the “Groovitron” and the “Pixelator”. Ever want to see an enemy in 8 bits in a fully 3D environment or see a tank dance? In this game you can.

The New Game + feature let’s you collect and upgrade everything you didn’t get around to the first time so you can complete the game anytime.

There are some minor complaints from my end about the game like the unskippable cutscenes when interacting with some NPC’s and the Clank levels which I found really boring, but this is my personal experience.

Overall, I really liked this game and would complete it again anytime. Definitely worthy for giving it a try.

So this might just be my own hangup, but I hated nearly every boss fight in this game. See, the weapons that are great for mowing down mobs—Pyrocitor, Groovitron/Proton Drum combo, Buzz Blades, Pixelator, Sheepinator (objectively the best weapon in the game)—are various degrees of useless against bosses, due to either low damage or low range (or just boss immunity in the case of the sheepinator). So in order to make the boss fights not excruciatingly painful to get through (I'm looking at you, Mrs. Zerkon), you have to spend upgrade points on weapons you don't use 90% of the time, like the Warmonger and the Plasma Striker, and hold back on using the few weapons that are great for both, like the Predator Launcher and...well that's basically it, so that you have as much ammo as possible for the boss fight, which will usually give you ammo drops but make it almost impossible to survive long enough to scrounge around for it. It makes upgrading a choice between getting something that's actually exciting and will immediately affect your experience or getting something that will be useful in an hour but completely pointless right now, which is kind of boring (not to mention those weapons won't be as high level because you're not using them all the time). I shouldn't have to have less fun during the bulk of the game just to make the boss fights doable.

Also I might just be bad at the game, I don't know. I'm just saying turning robot dogs into goats is a lot more fun than desperately firing the last of my Pixelator ammo at Nefarious hoping that I can kill him before he gets off another AOE blast that I'm only vulnerable to because the Pixelator is a goddamn shotgun and doesn't have the range I need even when I've got over half of the range upgrades for it.

Also, respawning me past the point where a died is a little condescending and I don't appreciate it.