Clank Tanks
Secret Agent Clank was supposed to give Ratchet's pal his own game. So why isn't he in it more?
Published: June 21, 2008
Count me as one of the many, many people who rode the wave of disbelief at what Insomniac Games spin-off developer High Impact Games was able to do with the PSP for Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters. That they were able to get a PS2-level Ratchet experience and shove it into the PSPs guts to take it on the go says plenty about the talent of the studio. It's precisely why I was so excited about seeing their treatment of giving Clank, Ratchet's infinitely cooler and more lovable sidekick, his own game (a la Daxter). It's also why I'm absolutely crushed that the game turned out like it did.
Secret Agent Clank's issues are numerous, but the biggest problem I had with the game was the title itself. You'd think, from both the name and the first level of the game, that it would be an adventure starring a suave robotic Bondian agent. In truth, Clank's levels make up at most about a fourth of the actual experience. The other parts are divvied up almost evenly between arena battles with Ratchet, puzzle-like stints controlling Clank's little Gadgebots and re-enactments of Captain Qwark's tall tales (easily the most creative and interesting of the entire game).
I can understand why High Impact threw so many different characters in the mix, as it was meant to break up what probably would have been a rather boring and repetitive game if it were just Clank, but that comes down to the fact that every single concept in the game is milked absolutely dry. By the time you spend the seven or eight hours it takes to get through the game, you'll have long since exhausted all the entertainment value in a bunch of rhythm action segments, a ton of utterly boring arena battles, a few sneaking missions where you'll impersonate guards and will have used the same few gadgets to clear obstacles. There's honestly about an hour and half of actual game, just cut and pasted over and over again until you're sick of the whole lot.
There are moments of genuine enjoyment to be had in the game; I dig rhythm action games, but there are at least four or five of them, same with basic platforming levels where you'll hide from guards or dodge laser beams. Using a holo-monocle to disguise yourself as other robots to sneak around is great stuff, but again, it's recycled a bit too much. Even Qwark's storyline bits start out great but toward the end peter out into repetition (take, for example, the otherwise brilliant opera segment he participates in). Only the light thinking involved in the Gadgebot puzzles really felt solid from beginning to end, and even they fell into repetition amidst a rhythm action poker game. Every time the game feels like it's falling into a groove, it dips back into the same teeny bag of tricks or jumps out of things to put you in the shoes of another character.
There's almost no cohesive feel to things, just a loose collection of game ideas tied together with some lame mission briefings with voiceovers. They're so simplistic and uncharacteristically lacking oomph that when I saw them in preview versions of the game, I actually thought they were placeholders for the full, more dynamic parts that would be introduced later. A bunch of black and white stills with boxes of color lend zero personality to a series that's normally rife with the stuff. It's fairly obvious that familiarity with the franchise has bred contempt among the High Impact staff because they just don't seem to love Ratchet & Clank anymore, which is a shame because this was a prime opportunity to finally give Clank a chance to shine.
By far the biggest offender in the game was the jailhouse arena battles with Ratchet. Not only did they quite literally take one battle and recycle it ad nauseum, but the sheer reliance on weapons highlighted a couple of glaring flaws in both weapon design and even the selection window to pick them. I had some weird moments where I'd try to select something mid-battle and ended up either not switching at all or picking the wrong weapon. Some of them, like Ratchet's Walloper, show a complete lack of proper design. It's a melee weapon that actually puts him in harm's way by being too weak to take out enemies in one hit and thus leaves him open to getting pounded -- even when powered up all the way because late-game enemies can take and dish out so much damage.
It means that even with gears constantly switching, no one part of the game stays enjoyable for very long, be it because they're over too soon, recycled too often or simply aren't fun to begin with from the outset (read: Ratchet's fights for the most part). It really is a shame and feels like a ton of wasted potential, right down to the normally solid presentation. The visuals, particularly in parts like Neo-Tokyo, look great on the PSP (the shooting elements from the last game return and look even more impressive), but here too there was a bunch of recycling. Clank's stealth kills are hardly varied, leading to constant re-watching of the same move being used on the same enemy types over and over again.
The only truly franchise-worthy part of the game is the audio. Clank still sounds fantastic (especially when wooing the robo-ladies), the music is still plucky and interesting, and the rest of the voice cast is typically fantastic. It's a game that you'll probably want to throw on headphones for, but it's not absolutely crucial. Actually, scratch that, you'll want to have 'em on for Qwark's butchering of Carmen.
That is, if you even get that far. Secret Agent Clank will likely long since worn out its welcome by that point, and while it's by no means a terrible game in the grand scheme of things, it is a terrible Ratchet game, and that's what's most important here. Clank should have been the star. Instead, he's one part of a larger, more disjointed and ultimately very, very disappointing game that just happens to have his name on the box. Skip this one unless you absolutely adore the series, in which case you may have your heart broken a little by the time the credits/space shooter sequence pops up.
Secret Agent Clank's issues are numerous, but the biggest problem I had with the game was the title itself. You'd think, from both the name and the first level of the game, that it would be an adventure starring a suave robotic Bondian agent. In truth, Clank's levels make up at most about a fourth of the actual experience. The other parts are divvied up almost evenly between arena battles with Ratchet, puzzle-like stints controlling Clank's little Gadgebots and re-enactments of Captain Qwark's tall tales (easily the most creative and interesting of the entire game).
I can understand why High Impact threw so many different characters in the mix, as it was meant to break up what probably would have been a rather boring and repetitive game if it were just Clank, but that comes down to the fact that every single concept in the game is milked absolutely dry. By the time you spend the seven or eight hours it takes to get through the game, you'll have long since exhausted all the entertainment value in a bunch of rhythm action segments, a ton of utterly boring arena battles, a few sneaking missions where you'll impersonate guards and will have used the same few gadgets to clear obstacles. There's honestly about an hour and half of actual game, just cut and pasted over and over again until you're sick of the whole lot.
There are moments of genuine enjoyment to be had in the game; I dig rhythm action games, but there are at least four or five of them, same with basic platforming levels where you'll hide from guards or dodge laser beams. Using a holo-monocle to disguise yourself as other robots to sneak around is great stuff, but again, it's recycled a bit too much. Even Qwark's storyline bits start out great but toward the end peter out into repetition (take, for example, the otherwise brilliant opera segment he participates in). Only the light thinking involved in the Gadgebot puzzles really felt solid from beginning to end, and even they fell into repetition amidst a rhythm action poker game. Every time the game feels like it's falling into a groove, it dips back into the same teeny bag of tricks or jumps out of things to put you in the shoes of another character.
There's almost no cohesive feel to things, just a loose collection of game ideas tied together with some lame mission briefings with voiceovers. They're so simplistic and uncharacteristically lacking oomph that when I saw them in preview versions of the game, I actually thought they were placeholders for the full, more dynamic parts that would be introduced later. A bunch of black and white stills with boxes of color lend zero personality to a series that's normally rife with the stuff. It's fairly obvious that familiarity with the franchise has bred contempt among the High Impact staff because they just don't seem to love Ratchet & Clank anymore, which is a shame because this was a prime opportunity to finally give Clank a chance to shine.
By far the biggest offender in the game was the jailhouse arena battles with Ratchet. Not only did they quite literally take one battle and recycle it ad nauseum, but the sheer reliance on weapons highlighted a couple of glaring flaws in both weapon design and even the selection window to pick them. I had some weird moments where I'd try to select something mid-battle and ended up either not switching at all or picking the wrong weapon. Some of them, like Ratchet's Walloper, show a complete lack of proper design. It's a melee weapon that actually puts him in harm's way by being too weak to take out enemies in one hit and thus leaves him open to getting pounded -- even when powered up all the way because late-game enemies can take and dish out so much damage.
It means that even with gears constantly switching, no one part of the game stays enjoyable for very long, be it because they're over too soon, recycled too often or simply aren't fun to begin with from the outset (read: Ratchet's fights for the most part). It really is a shame and feels like a ton of wasted potential, right down to the normally solid presentation. The visuals, particularly in parts like Neo-Tokyo, look great on the PSP (the shooting elements from the last game return and look even more impressive), but here too there was a bunch of recycling. Clank's stealth kills are hardly varied, leading to constant re-watching of the same move being used on the same enemy types over and over again.
The only truly franchise-worthy part of the game is the audio. Clank still sounds fantastic (especially when wooing the robo-ladies), the music is still plucky and interesting, and the rest of the voice cast is typically fantastic. It's a game that you'll probably want to throw on headphones for, but it's not absolutely crucial. Actually, scratch that, you'll want to have 'em on for Qwark's butchering of Carmen.
That is, if you even get that far. Secret Agent Clank will likely long since worn out its welcome by that point, and while it's by no means a terrible game in the grand scheme of things, it is a terrible Ratchet game, and that's what's most important here. Clank should have been the star. Instead, he's one part of a larger, more disjointed and ultimately very, very disappointing game that just happens to have his name on the box. Skip this one unless you absolutely adore the series, in which case you may have your heart broken a little by the time the credits/space shooter sequence pops up.
