Ratchet and Clank has been a staple series in the Sony ecosystem for almost ten years now providing the now rare platforming action to Playstation fans. The original Ratchet and Clank filled a void left by Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot when they went from being Sony exclusives to having versions on every other platform. The series has always been a great one but one thing that it’s not been known for was being a fun game to play when you’ve got a couple of friends over. Enter All 4 One, the first Ratchet and Clank game built from the ground up to played with up to three of your friends. There had to be some changes from the typical Ratchet and Clank for this to actually work and that begs the question can you turn a great single player into a multiplayer game? Find out when Gametactics reviews Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One for the PlayStation 3.

Normally how a Ratchet & Clank game would work is you’d play as the big hero Ratchet with your buddy Crank strapped onto your back. Clank would just sit there letting you use him to hover from platform to platform. Ratchet would have his arsenal full of fun guns bought from shops to unleash on your unsuspecting enemies or melee attacking when they happen to be close by. Now most of that still true in this game course there has to be some changes. For starters Clank is no longer on your back, if you’ve played the last two Ratchet and Clank Future games you would have gotten used this already. In fact Clank is now a playable character throughout the entire game while not an entirely new idea given portions of A Crack in Time had Crank playable as well as the fact he stared in the PSP game Secret Agent Crank. Where you start heading into uncharted territory is that both are on the screen at the same time along with two formally non-playable characters in the series, the goofy Captain Quark and the evil villain Nefarious. None of the characters play all that differently from each other unless you count Captain Quark’s hilarious martial arts ‘expertise’ shown off if the character’s animation. They all have voice acting with Quark and Nefarious being the most funny.

The basic mechanics are same as any Ratchet and Clank game without multiplayer. A big difference between the other games in the series is you have a zip-line that let’s you instantly fly towards any of the players, you can use it to hook onto grapples which becomes a cooperative effort because the other players have to grapple onto you after while you’re still hooked to the grapple. The levels are formatted differently as well; you tackle level in bite sized portions, defeat all the enemies in an area and then moving on to the next area with the group when everybody is ready. You’ve got a lot less freedom than in a single player Ratchet and Clank which probably because it’d be way too chaotic without such a structured path. Nobody has any camera controls instead the camera will follow around player one and the right analog instead being delegated to selecting weapons. This can make it a little tricky at times when the camera doesn’t do what you want and you can’t really do anything about it. I can see why it’d be like this for the local co-op but I’m disappointed the camera control wasn’t restored in the single player or online multiplayer.

The game can be played alone, online or locally all the modes you could want in a co-op game. The local co-op is definitely the most fun option as you the benefit of playing with people you know and the easiest to communicate what you want to do. You compete for kills and bolts (the currency in Ratchet and Clank games) with each portion of the level completed having a results screen that rewards bolts to the best players. It’s definitely fun trying to get kills and bolts away from other players though sometimes it takes the focus away from being cooperative and instead being plain competitive. This is all fine and dandy but it hurts when you want to be making progress through the game if everyone is out for himself or herself. That said it’s a fun experience, which is sure to be a blast when you have a bunch of friends over. The net code for the online works well enough though given it’s a co-op game unless you have specific PSN friends to play with in mind you’re at the mercy to be placed with players who may or may not be looking to play the game properly. That said it’s definitely better than playing the game alone offline. While playing alone, Clank is taken up by an AI to do the cooperative portions that would be with human players. While the AI player is serviceable but since it’s not a human being its quite impossible to communicate your intensions and what the computer has in mind might not be compatible with the way you’re trying to do the puzzles and tasks. You level up your characters by playing which gives them new weapons and more powerful attacks which is a little odd when playing online when one player is way ahead of somebody who’s barely played and just jumped in a random game that’s in progress. Overall it’s a good but not great translation of the Ratchet and Clank formula to a multiplayer setting.

The graphics seem to be a notch below what I’m grown used to with the older Ratchet and Clank games. The textures look lower in quality and what was crisp in A Crack in Time look a little blurry here. I’d like to think the graphics are worse because of the technical limitations set by the multiplayer but I have no way of knowing. The game still has the same quirky humor as the rest of the series with hilarious lines brought to you by the great writing team over at Insomniac. The music is your standard Ratchet and Clank fare, which means it’s good though it’s not breaking any new ground by any means.

Ratchet and Clank: All for One is a fun multiplayer that gives you your first chance of experiencing the series with some of your friends. While it has a few stumbles here and there it’s overall a pretty fun coop game. If you’re looking for some 3d platforming and you want to bring some friends along for the ride then this is one of the few options out on the market.

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