June 15, 2006 - The people at Insomniac haven't strayed too far from the winning game play formula that has made past Ratchet and Clank games so addictive, and really; why should they? I've always felt that a good measure of a well put together game is in the ease with which novice or veteran players alike can get into the game play without too much of a learning curve. This game excels in that respect. My only other experience with this franchise was playing Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal, which although really entertaining, was short lived on my part, as I was playing it at a friend's house. So when I picked up Ratchet: Deadlocked, I recalled how easily I was able to pick up the other games in the series, and hoped this would be more of the same. Sure enough, this game doesn't disappoint. Within minutes I was blowing everything on screen to smithereens with impunity.

The core action is pure free formed shooting and melee, with a bit of platforming, and some vehicular sections as well. Take the core gameplay of Devil May Cry, add a little bit of Jak and Daxter with just a pinch of Contra and players can get a sense of what to expect in Deadlocked. Fast, frantic, over-the-top action is really at the root of why this game is so much fun. There is a distinct methodical feel to the action in Deadlocked. There is nothing quite like the experience of having Ratchet launch a round of heat seeking missiles at four distant targets while entering a well fortified area, switching to close range weapons, dispatching hordes of approaching foes, only to observe your original targets explode upon being tagged by the missiles you launched. Once players get into this groove of balancing close and long range attacks to keep all of the on screen enemies at bay, they'll feel almost invincible, that is until the AI takes it up a notch. Even at one difficulty up from the lowest setting, this game presents quite a challenge.

One would think that with the sheer amount of on screen action that the controls for the game would boil down to simple button mashing until all foes are eliminated, but that simply isn't the case, as I found out early into playing the game when doing so resulted in several retries. You really have to be strategic about how you plan your entry into certain arenas in the game, choosing your weapons and how you time your attacks both short and long range; which is a nice touch because one gets the sense that every weapon counts. It is the skill with which one uses their weapons and melee attacks, and not how quickly a player can push the X button that determines the ultimate outcome. As with all the other entries in the franchise, the designers have kept the controls very tight and responsive, which adds to the enjoyment of the action. It feels as if the controls are a little tighter than the last entry in the series, but I'm sure most will say the difference is negligible. Players even get a chance to pilot an array of vehicles including crab like tanks, and hover boards to name a couple, which adds a healthy bit of variety to the overall package (more on that later), all of which control very well.

Early in the game players are given two robots, which they can battle along side, which seems cool on paper, but ends up being a pretty innocuous feature. You probably won't even notice they are there for the most part. I certainly didn't end up finishing a fierce boss battle only to thank my lucky stars that I had two robots with me. You are supposed to be able to issue strategic commands to these knuckleheads via the directional pad, which ends up not having much strategy to it only because half the time the commands can only be issued at specific points in the game, making them more context sensitive than anything else. If they had never included these guys, it wouldn't have affected the game in my opinion; in fact that reminds me of Crank. Okay, there are specific areas where you will actually need these guys, but to me it just seems like the game creators' time would have been better spent giving Ratchet the means to get to where he needs to go on his own.