Having now played a fair share of Ratchet & Clank and hearing praise about up your arsenal, I’m glad to report that it is all that with some chips. While I can’t say for sure, Up Your Arsenal may be the best Ratchet & Clank game out there. They finally got the mix of combat and platforming well enough that it produces great results. The game truly felt like Isonomic learned from their mistakes and just made everything better. While Going Commando was a huge improvement on the first game, Up Your Arsenal is a great improvement on Going Commando.
Simply starting out this game just feels great and it really does get quite addicting. All the levels have atmosphere to them, and feel different enough that you never really get bored going to another planet. The weapons this time around are all pretty much useful in some way and are just really interesting. The characters finally play off each other well with already established relationships and great delivery. The story is far more interesting this time around too as it introduces Dr. Nefarious, a great humorous antagonist. All the RPG elements introduce in Going Commando also come back with a huge improvement with the ability to upgrade weapons more throughout the game. They even added a couple of neat little power up boxes that make you invincible or double the amount of bolts you get. Frankly, it’s all the little changes that truly make Up Your Arsenal worthwhile.
Some may not like Up Your Arsenals new features like the tower defense style play, but I personally think it’s a wonderful addition to the series. It just makes Ratchet & Clank more focused on combat rather than platforming and with some of the missions you can still explore the area which makes it all the more fun. It really just feels more like a battlefield then some sort of platforming game, and I think that’s where the other two games failed to deliver. Up Your Arsenal just offers more combat goodness then the other Ratchet and Clank games and really that’s where it has always excellence at. Sure this makes the game a far more linear experience compared to the previous two, but I really don’t think Ratchet and Clank works well in that regard. And aside from one or two levels that have some bad checkpoint placing, the majority of Up Your Arsenal is very forgiving.
Final Thoughts:
Up Your Arsenal is, perhaps, the defining Ratchet & Clank game. It focuses far more on combat, weapons, and humor then any of the past games did while still having enough platforming to spread it out and that’s what makes it better. With multiplayer to deal with and challenge mode being double the fun as the first run was, makes this great game greater.