I live in a Ratchet household. Some folks live in Mario households, or Pokémon households, or even Master Chief households. But the mascot of choice for our family is the frisky, big-eared lombax. The sense of humor, the amazing graphics, and the outlandish weapons of the Ratchet & Clank games have always struck just the right chord for my daughters and me. Throughout the PS3’s lifecycle that’s meant that one person plays while the others merely watch the adventure unfold. You can well imagine the excitement at my place, then, when the girls learned we’d be able to tackle the next Ratchet & Clank game together.
Only, this isn’t exactly a Ratchet & Clank game — at least not like the ones we’ve come to love in this console generation. People (myself included) often refer to Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time as, “the closest thing to a Pixar movie in video games.” If that’s true, then Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One is more or less the licensed game you’d expect to be made based on that property. That is to say, it retains a fair measure of the charm and the spirit of the source material, but there’s no denying that it’s a watered-down version of the real thing. That discovery raised a number of questions; not just from me, but from my young couch co-op partners.
