Par for the course, right?
As far as the action bits go, Clank generally takes the backseat while Ratchet is doing his thing. Sure, Clank facilitates some of it, but it’s a tempered role. He’s a sidekick who knows his job. That makes the relationship work.
From the two slices we saw of Ratchet & Clank: The Game at Tokyo Game Show, that dynamic is maintained and possibly even taken to a new extreme. Clank was barely around at all. It was The Ratchet Show, through and through.
Aboard a sky train in an aesthetically-pleasing futuristic city, Clank made his biggest impression. On two separate occasions, he helped grapple across chasms slightly too large to jump across. More optionally, he also slowed descent by serving as helicopter blades, but that wasn’t ever really necessary.
Ratchet caused a racket though, armed to the teeth as if he were a guard at the on-ramp. Barrages of missiles and wild melee attacks brute forced the way through the demo. Nuts that serve as a currency spilled out of everything and magnetized their way to the lawless lombax.
Clank’s presence was diminished even further during the second half of the demo. Dropped into a hellish pit against some sort of Rancor-esque boss-thing, Clank clearly wanted nothing to do with it. Ratchet swung, swung, swung away at the feet of the monster, as it reared up and down but did very little harm. It was kind of like getting under a Souls boss and doing way more damage than you probably deserve to.
It didn’t stay like that forever, though. Two times during the fight, he disappeared and summoned swarms of battle toads before coming back to the fray. Toward the end, he spit fire at me so I pulled out a flamethrower and we had a neat back-and-forth of slowly jumping over walls of flame while facing the other. His health meter plummeted a lot quicker than mine, so I was the victor — no Clank required.
In all likelihood, Clank will prove to be more useful and prevalent in the final game. This demo was probably skewed a bit too far in its omission. Ratchet was the star of the day, and his platforming and action work quite well. Once Clank gets properly added into the mix, the 2016 installment should feel right at home alongside all the other games in the series.
