Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty

This Review Contains Spoilers for R&C: Tools of Destruction

If you decide to buy Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty, realize that it's only $15, thus the game doesn't need to be extremely long, extremely exciting, or extremely complex. The game is much simpler than 2007's Tools of Destruction, taking away much of the mechanics introduced in Ratchet's last adventure, taking away many of the weapons, and probably most importantly, taking away Clank.

If your not all up to snuff on the latest Ratchet storyline, you should either keep reading or go play Tools of Destruction, either or. Well, at the end of Tools of Destruction Clank, Ratchet's close counterpart, was kid napped by a mysterious race that call themselves the Zoni. Ratchet is convinced that he must find his partner in crime, and he won't stop until he does. One day he learns that if he travels to Holefar Island he may find some clues about Clank's whereabouts.  So, undoubtedly he does. But it won't be easy. On the way he's going to have to fight many groups of undead pirates if he really wants to know where Clank is.

The game starts out on a pirate ship, with Ratchet and Talwyn, his other partner. Soon as you jump in you'll immediately get the Ratchet feel to the game. If you didn't know any better it'd feel like a full game. From there on you'll experience some more new platforming ideas, fun combat, and learn the main new mechanics of the game.  One of those being the wrench tether, allowing you to push, pull, twist, and turn platforms and other things to allow you to access other places that you couldn't reach before. The other mechanic is, I don't know what to call it. Let's just say you grab a glowing thing with your wrench to scare away bugs. These two things (mixed with a few of the old ones, such as rail grinding) will be used mostly throughout the whole game. It can get a bit tedious after about 4 hours just doing those few things, but the game ends just when it should. Too much longer with just 7 or 8 guns, a wrench, and glowy things I would've exploded.

Graphically, the game is just as impressive as the full $60 game was. The lighting and shadows are incredible, they even implemented a mini game to show how great those two things are. You probably won't get the same chaotic amount of enemies on screen as in Tools of Destruction, so framerate is hardly an issue here.

That may have seemed brief, but there isn't a whole lot you need to know about this game. It's good old Ratchet (minus Clank) that you've always known, just in a much shorter dose.

Final Decision
Ratchet probably isn't the greatest game is the world to make for a PSN title, considering when you have 20+ weapons and hours of platforming it can be so much more fun, but if you can live with the lack of variety here, you'll should enjoy the short but fun three to four game.