The environments are lush and detailed. The characters are simply beautiful and retain the distinctive look they had from the first game. The best part about the graphics is that there is no slowdown in the frame rate; the game consistently runs at 60 fps.
For those of you not familiar which the Ratchet and Clank games, they have your basic platformer elements (jumping, simple puzzle solving, killing enemies) with a twist. In both games you have a large arsenal of weapons at your disposal. R&C 2 vastly improves on the original. In the original, your basic weapon, the wrench, was strong enough to kill most enemies. Several of the weapons in the original were pretty much worthless, you would but them, use for a few minutes and then never touch them again. As a result, I felt as if the arsenal of weapons was nothing more than a gimmick. R&C 2 does much a better job with the weapon system. First, they are simply more. Second, they maintain their usefulness throughout the game. Upgrades and mods can be purchased for the weaker guns, giving them a new life. And certain enemies are weaker to some guns.
The most innovative feature of R&C 2 is its incorporation of RPG elements into platformer gameplay. The most notable is the ability to upgrade your weapons. There is a damage meter on each weapon, once you do enough damage with that weapon to fill the meter the weapon upgrades. These are not simple upgrades in the power of the weapon, but a change in the how the weapon fires, the rate of fire, its power and how many ammo it can carry. In several cases, the upgrade is pretty much an entirely new weapon. Also going along with the RPG elements is Nanotech’s. Nanotech’s increase the amount of life you have. There are 12 nanotech’s scattered throughout the game, but you can increase your life by killing a lot of enemies. I along with pretty much else greatly enjoyed the incorporations of RPG elements in R&C 2.
There are several minigames in R&C 2. Space combat was the most enjoyable and was than many space combat games I have played. The battle arena was nearly equally as amazing and much more challenging. In the battle arena you fight in an arena in various challenges. The challenges vary greatly from kill a certain amount of enemies in a limited time, boss battles, limited ammo challenges and more. The only drawback is that your weapons game not gain experience in the battle arena. The third minigame is hover bike racing. Personally, I never found this to be more frustrating than enjoyable and I wished that had retained the hover-boarding from the original.
One last praise of R&C 2 is that like the original it does away with the notion of lives of continues. I think that this system is old, dated and cumbersome and I was very pleased the R&C 2 did not revert back to it.
R&C 2 is a very long game for a platformer, it takes around 20 hours to defeat. The additional replay value varies from the annoying collection element that most platformers have to increase the game time and replay value. Once you beat the game, you can start a New Game+ which is called challenge mode. You keep all of you bolts, weapons, upgrades, platinum bolts and skill points. In Challenge mode you play through the game again but there are several additions. First, the enemies are much harder. Second, you can purchase an additional upgrade to your weapons. Third, a whole slew of extra stuff is available most notably the impossible challenge in the battle arenas and the insomniac Museum. The challenge mode easily adds on an additional 20+ hours to the gameplay.
Overall 9.7/10 (rounded up to 9)
This is the by far the best platformer on the PS2 and I believe the best of this generation of consoles. I enjoyed this game more than another other game in 2003, and I found myself very disappointed that it didn't win many of game of the year awards, because I felt as if it was the best game of the year.
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