Ratchet: Deadlocked

"Lock and Load, you ready for another adventure?"

Lock and Load, are you ready for another adventure?
Ratchet is back and there is a new twist to the game. Unlike his predecessors he comes on a game show, with new challenges, new enemies, and more importantly, a new motivation.

Insomniac never impressed me with their skill to make a person hate their game. The difficulty in Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal is so difficult. Many players like to play through the game once without having to go back to other places to level up and other tedious things. Up Your Arsenal makes you go back, do what needs to be done, get more bolts to actually get better weapons, then come back to fight unbeatable foes. This game is a lot different. You don't need to spend time running back and forth between planets and leveling up your health or your weapons. It is easy to play through it once on an easy level then go back and beat it on a harder level each time. Insomniac impressed me very well with this new game. They proved they can make a great comeback and give the console and their very name a great boost.

The return of some characters is what I love fondly about this game. Any game that has a comeback of a character, even if they are evil, makes me feel they remember the person well enough to bring them back. A few people that made it back were Al, Clank, and the previous villains from Up Your Arsenal. Al comes back to help Ratchet in his journey to free them from the dreaded place called Dreadzone. He makes repairs to your battle bots and he has a lot of fun things to teach you. He teaches you how to dance to a Courtney Gears song and he teaches you how to get shot in an unwanted place. Clank comes back, not to jump on your back and tell you what to do though! He is the coordinator for Ratchet and he helps devise ways to get off Dreadzone. There is no game play with Clank, sorry to those who really wanted to play as a robot again.

You start off on the starship from Up Your Arsenal then you get a weird transmission from a friend. She tells you about heroes and heroines being captured all across the galaxy and that you should watch out. At that time though, you are captured and the crew that was inside was captured also. You wake up, your mind is fuzzy and your tail is in an awkward place. You find out you are on a game show called Dreadzone. Dreadzone is a place where heroes fight heroes to the death. During the storyline though you go across planets to face various challenges then you are able to enter a tournament that allows you to fight many Dreadzone specialists. Your main foe though is Ace Hardlight. He is the guy who is being controlled by Vox and kills all the heroes on the show. Vox is the creator and runner of the Dreadzone show. He is also your target, but you really just want to find a way off until you realize you have to get passed this guy just to accomplish your goal. You start off with a simple goal, get yourself off of this dreaded place and move on with your life, but then it unfolds into something more deep. You now decide to free all the heroes and destroy Dreadzone while you are at it. This is just another job Ratchet needs to pull off, but doesn't want to pull off. What do you expect when you are a great hero of the galaxy? Come on you saved the galaxy three times, you can do it another time right?

Since Dreadzone allows you to have Battle Bots you get two new Battle Bots. In the beginnings they aren't really good, but then they become great fighters and help you out even in the toughest of situations. The D-Pad controls these bots. The Up Button tells them to regroup. The Down Button tells them to revive if they are dead. Also another feature that came back to the Ratchet series was the nano-tech feature. The more enemies you kill the more experience you get and the more experience you get the higher your nano-tech bar goes. Make sure you get that bar very high, or you won't be lasting long in the world of Dreadzone. The game has a system called Dreadpoints. This just determines where you are on the scale of heroes and heroines. If you have enough you can beat everyone at the beginning of the game without doing any more challenges. The challenges go from fighting off enemies to driving a hover bike. A new feature that they added was a difficulty selection. Now people don't have to go through madness the first play through and they can either go easy on themselves or go hard. There are four difficulties in this game each of them go from easy to hard. The multiplayer in this game is great. You may have to share weapons with your friend, but it seems very fair. You have the ability to actually plan something instead of you two running around with Scorpion Flails and hitting anything that moves. This adds a sense of strategy into the game and not many people tend to use strategy in a game like this. Once you pass a certain amount of worlds you get to go to a tournament and fight a boss. The boss is usually a Dreadzone star. People adore the star and they hate you even more for killing their star. It is a lose-lose situation for Ratchet. You can still buy upgrades and reload ammo at your local vending store, just like in past Ratchet and Clank games.

The graphics are great in this game. It is one of the best. There is no arguing about whether or not the graphics are bad. Everything looks amazing, the enemies, the fish looking bad guy, the robots, and the suit that Ratchet wears. The sounds in this game are the best also. The clattering of the bullets hitting the floor. The disintegrating enemies when you burn them to shreds. Then the Land Stalker walking and jumping to reach its prey. Insomniac did a good job of keeping you awake just to hear the sounds, play the game, and see the graphics. The only bad graphic that I saw was the space ship. It was a really horrible looking ship, they could've made it better. They made it realistic though, you don't expect to get a luxury ride from the people that are keeping you hostage.

Replay Value (x)
I put an (x) there because there is no limit. I have played this game so many times that I can't even count them. This game doesn't have a definition of "stop." You can play this game on and on without getting bored.

Rent or Buy (BUY)
Buy this game. If you are a Ratchet and Clank fan then this game is a must buy. If you are not then I suggest you rent it, since people think this isn't a great sequel to the series.

Pros
+ Great Game Play
+ Great Graphics
+ Great Storyline
+ Great Combat System
+ Great Free Roam System
+ Great Sounds

Cons
- Bad Online

Originally Posted On: Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/06/07