Ratchet and Clank A Long Review Part 6

Welcome back. Swimming and lava. Maybe some explosions? I dunno.

They're making a movie based on this game.

PLANET 11: GASPAR

Looks like space hell.

Planet Gaspar is our standard fire/lava world of the game, and looks even more hellish than Umbris. If I remember correctly, I'll be hating this level A LOT. The music is very mechanical, and the overall feel reminds me of a level from a future R&C game.

So, after smashing some crates, I visit the nearby shop and find another new weapon, the Walloper, for 7500 bolts. I don't have enough to get it right now, so we'll just be moving on. After a short elevator ride, we encounter this level's small, annoying enemies, robot... things that look like the Mousers from Ninja Turtles. They constantly spawn out of a machine, so I destroy it, and then finish off a machine gun robot.

Defeating the robots lowers a turret, which can be used to "open" a large gate. Past the gate are the WORST ENEMIES EVER. They are small bomb shaped robots that home in on you and explode after a time. The only way to deal with them is to either run away, or hit them a few times with the wrench. They are really annoying, especially when you only have 4 hit points.

After sniping a few enemies with the Devastator, (I'll get to it in a bit.) I run across another gate, this one not having a turret near it. I have to platform a bit to get to it, and then ride an elevator up to some type of... robot spare parts warehouse? Something like that. I also die due to being swarmed by bomb robots, so I have to do that all again. Now would be a good time to talk about the Devastator.

Does not turn into multiple construction vehicles.

The Devastator is basically this game's missile launcher. It's ridiculously powerful, and has a large blast radius, but has a piddling ammo capacity, being only able to hold 20 shots before it's done. In simpler terms, it's like the Blaster, but has less ammo, isn't rapid fire, and can't lock on to enemies. It's not a bad weapon, but just so overshadowed by the Blaster, like many weapons in the game.

Anyway, back to where I died. After scrapping the bomb robots, I find myself in a room filled with tanks. Luckily, they aren't activated, but there is a platoon of machine gun robots hiding in between each tank. After just scraping by, I encounter ANOTHER large group of them, and die. Again.

This time, I take out the robots in the tank room by using my cunning and throwing mines instead of shooting. It helps, as I take zero damage. I also take out the second group of robots by using the devastator. After blasting open another gate, I find myself on the scene of the InfoBot that led us here. I also find the mind control helmet, which means we can get off this hell hole, right?

Wrong. It turns out I missed one of this game's famous split pathways. There's probably an InfoBot somewhere, so I guess we'll have to go find it. I also have enough money to purchase the Walloper, which is basically a space boxing glove. Ratchet also gets the stupidest grin on his face when he gets it.

After swingshotting, hopping across sinking platforms, and defeating some Mousers, I destroy what I guess is a refueling station, causing the ship connected to it to explode, opening the path. After more swingshotting, hopping across sinking platforms, and defeating Mousers, I find MORE Tesla Coils to swingshot from, then I defeat some more Mousers, and blow up another refueling station. I  feel like I'm running in circles.

After bowing up some more refueling stations, I find myself on a platform with four of them, so I have to destroy them all to get to... a Gold Bolt. I did that for an optional item. Christ, I could have left here awhile ago, but I just HAD to notice that pathway. UGH. Anyway, I hop in my ship and head off to planet Pokitaru

PLANET 12: POKITARU

Space Hawaii

I'm not kidding, Pokitaru is LITERALLY Space Hawaii. Surrounded by water? Check. Tropical music? check. Fat guy in Hawaiian shirt? Check. So, I check out the store, and find another new weapon, the Decoy Glove. If I remember correctly, it sucks, but I'm still going to buy it.

Walking down a path, we find the owner of the resort, who says that he's closing the place down due to the mutant wildlife created by the Blarg dumping their toxic waste in the water. However, he has one O2 mask, the thing we came here for, and is offering it to anyone who can escort him to the other side of the resort, and blow up the toxic dumpers with his fighter jet, which is why we went to Gaspar first. Also Ratchet is a dumb jerk again.

Not as cool as it looks.

The Walloper is, by all purposes, a more powerful wrench. Except it can't hit multiple times in a row, do a down smash, or be thrown. Basically, never use it. It's really bad. It takes awhile before you can use it again, so it's not good for taking out crowds, and it can only shoot forward, making it only useful for enemies directly in front of you.


We encounter some new enemies, like the pufferfish, our small, annoying enemies, and the giant brain... thing, that shoots brain blasts at you. I take them out by using a few well placed mines. Now we have to ride a small platform while fending off a bunch of pufferfish. Joy. The best thing to do here is to stand at the back of the platform, enter first person mode, and then just shoot with the blaster.

After that there's a small pool of the pufferfish, which negates my strategy of using the Mine Glove, because it just explodes when it hits the water, and the fish are too fast. I also run out of blaster ammo, so I resort to using the Suck Cannon, which works surprisingly well.

After defeating another group of the pufferfish, I hop aboard another platform, but this time without any Blaster ammo, so I'm pretty much screwed. Luckily, it spawns me right before the platform when I die, so that I can try again. The second time I make it through with a few preemptive mine placements, and good use of the Suck Cannon.

However, when I get off the platform I find myself in a type of town area, which is swarmed with fish. I die, and just barely manage to get by the second time. After activating a strange figure 8 shaped bridge, I encounter more of the fish, and use the Pyrociter to cook them.

The owner says that there's a bit of a problem, the fighter jet is locked in a garage, but the lock can't be opened normally, so we have to stop at Bob's Roboshack to get a new upgrade for Clank. Bob's selling the Thruster-pack for only 2000 bolts, so this is a steal! This upgrade gets rid of Clank's odd helicopter blades, and makes him look more like a jet. It also allows us to ground pound the lock we need to unlock.

Here we have our first spaceship shooting section. Our goal is to shoot down four of the toxic waste dumpers, while keeping our health above zero. It's pretty easy, and the best way to handle it is to stay behind them and shoot rapidly.

With that, we get the O2 mask, which will let us breathe underwater, in poisonous areas, and even in outer space. Another thing you might have noticed, we haven't gotten a single InfoBot, meaning we can't go to any new levels. That's because the next InfoBot is on a path I missed, so let's go do that now.

I take a teleporter and find myself in a weird factory area filled with water. You know what water means? More Hydrodisplacer puzzles! Yay! Except now I have to use the Trespasser to open some gates. There's a big group of Ameboids after the gate, which I defeat by spamming Blaster fire. After some more platforming, this time against tilting platforms, I encounter the most difficult Trespasser puzzle so far. Maybe it's because I'm doing this at 6 in the morning, but I just couldn't do it.

After finally solving it, I swim down a tunnel filled with explosives, and then end up in a room of Ameboids, which I just runaway from instead of fight. This leads to ANOTHER Trespasser puzzle, which is much easier than the last one. In the gate is a scuba diver, who says he's willing to trade his Persuader for Raritanium. The Persuader will give us a discount at stores, but we can't get any Raritanium until we can visit planet Hoven. It appears that I was wrong about there being an InfoBot. Phooey.

But we're done with those planets for now, next time we'll head back to planet Orxon to see if we can get a new InfoBot. See ya, hopefully not next year!