Ratchet and Clank, a Playstation 2 video game released on Oct. 26, 2000, involves platforming, shooting, melee combat, and a story with overly cartoonish graphics taking place in a faraway galaxy.
In its heyday, the series consisted of witty jokes with crude humour. But with the explosion of remakes and reboots, Sony, makers of the Playstation 2, decided to reboot the series while still continuing the previous story.
This failed horribly.
The original trilogy was interesting because of the witty and sometimes crude humour. In the third game of the original trilogy, there is a not-so-subtle joke about one of the main characters running around in the forest without any clothes on and holding his you know what.
In Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart, released this past June, iInstead of using witty humour and clever jokes, characters thank each other every chance they get. The writers even used sappy and calculated inoffensive dialogue like in kids’ films.
This is disappointing.
Not only did the writers disregard what made the series great, they replaced it with a bland and uninteresting substitute. At the beginning of the game, a celebration happens at the Hall of Heroes to celebrate Ratchet and Clank.
In Ratchet & Clank 3, the intro is short, only a few minutes, with the two characters playing video games when one of them changes the channel after getting frustrated only to discover a planet is in need of saving.
To make matters worse, the main selling point of Rift Apart, released on the Playstation 5, was its graphics and so-called, “visual spectacle.” That was from an Engadget review.
Ratchet & Clank was always about witty humour and clever dialogue but now it is not.
Insomniac, the developers of the series, took a different approach when it came time to reboot the series. Have the developers not heard the saying of if it’s not broke, don’t fix it?
Making matters worse, Insomniac and production company Mainframe Studios along with Sony made a movie about the first game in the series then spliced in random clips of the movie into the game that was a remake of the first game which was released on the Playstation 4 when the original was released all the way back in 2002.
Confused yet?
The developers began their quest to make the series into a technical showcase when there was already enough of that on the Playstation 4.
Back to the internet, several Youtube personalities and game critics praised the new direction for the series without playing the originals. However, the new games do look good. It’s nice to see these childhood series being introduced to a new generation of players.
Video games are all about variety so it’s nice to see Sony embrace that concept, specifically rebooting a series that wasn’t as popular as Nintendo’s mascots Mario and Kirby.
But the internet has completely forgotten what made the originals great, which was the writing and how it appealed to younger audiences without treating them like dumb little kids.
It gets even worse with game critics. IGN’s review of Rift Apart celebrated its storytelling. The most longtime fans can say about the game is that Insomniac somehow managed to make it as inoffensive as possible. Again, play the originals.
With the original trilogy, kids born in the 2000s became fans. With Rift Apart, those fans were disappointed and disgusted as to what remakes and reboots have become. When Rift Apart goes on sale in the near future, remember the only positive this current trend accomplishes is fattening the wallets of those who clearly didn’t deserve it.