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Family games: Ratchet & Clank - Tools of Destruction
November 19th, 2007 by Bee
Welikeplay reviews games with one principle in mind. Can you play it with your kids?
Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction on the PS3 (rating 7+)
I won’t beat around the bush. Tools is great. Unbelievably great. Over the weekend welikeplay Labs put it through its paces and didn’t want to stop until bedtime (or at least to the brink the mandatory ‘1 hour before’ exclusion zone). It’s a high-def beauty, it’s learning curve is pitched just right. It makes allowances for new players, but pushes you when you start to get good. It did lose half a star though for a sloppy installation bug that made me panic; but the game is glorious so much can be forgiven.
Now it doesn’t have any multiplayer mode, which I had made the assumption that it would struggle on the ‘playing with your kids’ criteria which we seek to uphold. But I was wrong, because it is watchable. The boys are happy to take a ‘world-per-turn’ whilst watching the other’s progress… and I could too. This led to little discussions about tactics and upgrading strategies with little potted reviews regarding the salient choice of insane weaponry comparing the predator over the buzz.
Yes, you do blow stuff up. But all innards are green or blue, and you dispatch monsters; which is a good skill to have as an imaginative child. I’m tempted to lower the age rating, but that is your own call as parents not mine. Chiefly because I don’t mind taking my own turn-per-world to play it alongside my kids. Even if they snicker when I get eaten by a heavily-armed robotic frog.
And to top it all it has the Groovitron. A bomb which causes all enimies to strut their funky stuff; with the side effect that players and their entourage to collapse into giggles. There was even an episode where the welikeplay guinea-pigs went bolt mining, just so they could purchase more to make the fishy-head baddies groove.
Easily the best PS3 games so far, and earns pride of place on my play shelf.
Enjoy.
tag... review, play for today, 8up, gamer
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November 20th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Bee,
I loved the Ratchet demo. You’re making me want to pick that game up!
That sounds like a great environment for creating true family fun. Wish more gamers would bring the whole family together and share great experiences as it sounds in your home.
Way to go!
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune would not be appropriate for your family, but it is a wonderful experience.
December 30th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
[…] brother’s old Atari… now to find a plug for it to show the boys how far their Ratchet and Clank has come. That’ll shock them, the last time they saw one was in the Science […]