Tycho said he hasn't been playing Ratchet and Clank, but I sure as hell have. I've been putting a few hours into it every night this week and I love it.
Obviously at this point in the series the platforming and combat mechanics have been polished to perfection. The character designs and animation are still inspirational. Once again the story is fun as well as funny. My favorite part of the game though, is the new time puzzles they've introduced with clank. If you've played the demo then you'll know what I'm talking about. Basically these challenges have you creating temporal recordings of yourself to manage the various parts of a puzzle. You might record yourself running over to a switch that triggers an elevator. Then you play back that recording while the real you runs over to the elevator. These puzzles get really insane as you end up having to work alongside multiple copies of yourself to solve them. Trying to wrap my head around some of these puzzles gives me a real Portal vibe, and that's a good thing.
It's also really nice to play a game with my son that isn't a "kid's game". I enjoy playing games like Monsters vs. Aliens and Up with him but that's because we're playing them together, not because they are great games. Ratchet and Clank is game that I actually keep playing for hours after he goes to bed. Also when your five year old son tells you that the yellow temporal copy of yourself needs to trigger the switch on the left and then go with the red temporal copy of yourself up the elevator you can not help but think he is the kwisatz haderach.
-Gabe out
