Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters Member Review for the PSP

Anyone who is interested in this game has probably played, or at least heard about, Daxter. The game not the character. You may remember the blissful 3-D graphics, the excellent frame rate, and the controls that coped with the lack of a right analog stick.

Well now all that's back, and more, with Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters. Since I found so much of the game similar to Daxter I'll first compare the two.

Most people should know about the Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank franchises for the PS2. Each featuring a demolition dou of some wierd guy with pointy ears and midget sidekick buddy. And while the Jak & Daxter game for the PSP only featured Daxter as a playable character, Ratchet & Clank features... well, Ratchet AND Clank as playable characters. Whether this means Ready At Dawn wanted to be more original remains to be seen.

As you can guess, Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters is as 3-D as it's PS2 prequels. As far as camera rotation that has been mapped to the Left and Right shoulder buttons. Pressing both at the same time resets the camera behind Ratchet and makes him crouch down. Square is used to attack with Ratchet's Omiwrench, which resembles Daxter's electric fly swatter, and Circle fires Ratchet's currently equipped weapon, which resembles Daxter's spray gun. X jumps, pressing it again in the air double jumps, and holding it down after that does the ever useful helicopter move. Traingle however lets you quick select a total of eight weapons using the analog nub. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the analog nub or D-PAD are used for movement.

Fire fights are a lot easier in Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters as the game will automatically lock-on to the nearest target. Then you can strafe around it and fire without getting hurt. The guy who wrote the original review here must have not noticed that you can toggle the strafing controls from the D-PAD to the analog nub, which is a lot easier than flicking you ever so tired thumb to the D-PAD.

While the gameplay is similar to any other Ratchet & Clank game and the arsenal consists of a fair amount of old and new weapons and gadgets with explosive, and bee swarming effects, you can now collect up to a total of five armor sets. Each different set of armor has it's own attributes. But you don't have to stick to one armor set. You can mix and match the different pieces to create your own custom armors, which adds a bit more depth as you'll spend most of the game gathering each set of armor.

The story pretty much speaks for itself, I won't let out much, but it has it's fair share of plot twists.

So with a final note, this game has fairly easy to master controls, a decent plot, and all the cool extra's you could hope for. Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters would make a great addition to anyone's line up of PSP games.