For this year’s E3, Insomniac gave Ratchet fans a closer look at just what its series reboot is going to look like, and what it looks like is a true return to form for the Ratchet series! After making the like of All 4 One and Full Frontal Assault, it looked like Insomniac was determined to find a new direction to take Ratchet and Clank in. However, with the release of Into the Nexus in 2013 and now this reboot in 2016, it looks like our favorite Lombax/robot duo is back doing what they do best: platforming their way across the galaxy and blowing stuff up in new and creative ways! Continue reading Ratchet and Clank: Return To Glory→
With E3 at a close, I must make a confession. While I have certainly heard of this important gaming event, I admit that I don’t typically pay it much heed, and any news I do hear comes from random people or articles on the Internet. Nevertheless, I have a short list for you all in celebration of E3 and our June community post, and I’m keeping it simple. My favorite gaming news is whatever involves the release of interesting games, so I shall list (and briefly describe) the five games I look forward to most (whether they were mentioned at E3 or not). In no particular order. Continue reading Top Anticipated Games: #gamersonwatch→
This month’s community challenge is a most fitting one for the month that is home to April Fools, revolving around the many secrets found in video games, from the ridiculous to the outright fake. I have encountered a good number of these secrets and have managed to unlock many of them, to feelings of great glee all around, while on the other end of the spectrum, I have experienced frustration and befuddlement as I attempted to unlock a secret I later found was all false. I’m sure we’ve all had this happen to us, so I decided to create a little quiz to see how good you are at distinguishing between hoaxes and the real thing. Whether or not you’ve heard of the game or the secret involved, try and guess which ones sound legitimate and which are merely pranks designed to trick the gullible gamer (myself included). Continue reading Gaming Secrets and Hoaxes: Can You Tell the Difference?→
April Fool’s Day may have already come and gone, but that’s not going to stop me from writing a post for this rather silly holiday, and it’s not going to stop me from asking a question. Who is your favorite video game fool? You know, an idiotic character that you can’t help but love. The character I have in mind is the bumbling, idiotic, and suspiciously muscular fake superhero, Captain Copernicus Leslie Qwark from the Ratchet and Clank series. His birthday, as stated in the 2010 calendar, is April Fool’s Day, making this a great month to commemorate this lovable fool.
To be honest, I wasn’t a fan of the guy at first because he actually played a more villainous role in the first two games from the original trilogy on the PlayStation 2, and I still firmly believe that Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal is the best game of the series, partly because it is the game where Qwark turned hero again. Nevertheless, he is a pretty cruddy hero. Qwark may not be lacking in muscles, but he is sorely missing anything and everything related to, well, intelligence, or humility, or really any desire to risk himself for others. And so it is no surprise that Ratchet doesn’t have the fondest feelings for him, when Qwark takes credit for victories he played no part in or runs away from danger, even going so far as to fake his own death. Continue reading My Favorite (April) Fools→
I went on a bit of a spending spree around Christmas time. When I was stocking up on supplies for this year’s masquerade, I decided, while I was at it, I might as well buy a whole bunch of Ratchet and Clank figurines. As if that wasn’t enough, I also decided this was a great time to catch up on some of the games I had missed from the series, as well, so I went ahead and bought Quest for Booty and Into the Nexus (the latter was just $10, which was a pretty good deal, I think, and I am well aware of the fact that Nexus is supposed to come with a downloadable copy of Quest for Booty, but I like hard copies, darn it!).
Now, the reason I didn’t bother buying these games at first was because I heard they were short. I mean, it’s great that Insomniac has been making so many R&C games, but any joy this might bring is greatly lessened when many of their games lately are so absurdly tiny. I don’t want to spend all that money on a game that’s 5 hours long. I know they are priced cheaper than typical games, but I’d much rather pay full price for a full-length game myself. And yet, the pain of feeling left out spurred me to buy these games to see what I had been missing because I am weak like that. Continue reading Into the Nexus, I Hardly Knew Thee→
This year I resolved to finally dig into those games that I’ve been meaning to revisit over the years. The goal is simple: successfully complete one game on the list a month. Will they all be just as enjoyable as they always were, or will the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia get knocked-off in the process? Well, it’s that question which inspired this venture, so I’m looking forward to finding out!
To kick off this challenge of mine, I decided that for the month of January I would revisit Ratchet: Deadlocked. It’s a game that I remembered enjoying, but also one that’s mysteriously mostly absent from the steel trap that is my memory (usually no game can escape it!). Oddly enough, it seems like I’m not the only Ratchet fan that tends to forget that this game exists. Is it really that terrible an entry in the series? Well, I’m happy to report that I achieved success this month by not only completing the game, but I believe I’ve also got an answer for that question!
Seeing as my fellow admins wrote their own Thanksgiving-themed posts (a long time ago…) on games they were thankful for, I thought I better get my tail into gear and write one of my own. I intended on publishing this quite some time ago, but Listmas came up, and I wasn’t able to get to it until now. Well, I better not put it off any longer.
Ahem. And so, in celebration of (a super late) Thanksgiving, I shall make a list of a few of the games that have a particularly special meaning to me. Continue reading So Many Games to be Thankful For→
