1001 Challenge

The Ratchet & Clank series is now pretty well known, and has spawned a hell of a lot of games — cur­rently stand­ing at around 12 in all, with re-releases and ‘HD remakes’ still turn­ing up for the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of con­soles. It’s a pop­u­lar series — and of course there’s good rea­son for that. Let’s look at 2 of the 3 that fea­ture in the 1001 list –

1001 No.62: ‘Ratchet & Clank’ (PS2, 2002)

The orig­i­nal game in the series was a rel­a­tively early PS2 title, com­ing out 2 years after the PS2 itself. But you’d never know it — it looks great, and even play­ing through it today I was sur­prised at the fram­er­ate and gen­er­ally impres­sive look of the game. The voice act­ing is well done, and the char­ac­ters of Ratchet (a weird kinda rab­bit alien thing) and Clank (a lit­tle robot dude) are rather love­able — it’s a nice comedic duo, and you do warm to them.

The premise is pretty sim­ple — you’re just some rab­bit thing mind­ing his busi­ness, when (with the arrival of Clank) you get caught up in a galac­tic strug­gle to save the uni­verse from a crazed evil alien, whose plan it is to build all over other people’s plan­ets. Basically a mad prop­erty developer.

It’s essen­tially just a plat­former, but with many dif­fer­ent kinds of fun weapons — so many that some­times it’s a pain just to cycle through them all. It’s sim­plis­tic, slightly lengthy if any­thing, but fun — and cer­tainly not with­out its chal­lenges. You can see why the series really took off, as it man­ages to tread that line of frus­tra­tion vs reward, with plenty of vari­ety to keep you hooked. You hop from planet to planet, shoot­ing bad guys and col­lect­ing 1000’s of bolts, which act as currency.

1001 No.63: ‘Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction’ (PS3, 2007)

This new instal­ment of the series was the first to appear on the PS3, and so as expected takes advan­tage of the increased abil­i­ties of the sys­tem — it looks fan­tas­tic, and plays superbly. All the ele­ments are still there from the pre­vi­ous game — it’s the same kind of shooter/platformer, with an even big­ger arse­nal, more stuff to kill, more bolts to col­lect, and more plan­ets to visit. The sto­ry­line is noth­ing spe­cial either — another case of ‘save the galaxy’, this time from a crea­ture who seems deter­mined to exter­mi­nate your species.

On one hand you could say it is far too sim­i­lar, that it’s just ‘more of the same’ — and I’m pretty con­fi­dent that every Ratchet & Clank game plays pretty iden­ti­cally — but why change a win­ning for­mula? Obviously there are always a few new fea­tures, new weapons, etc — but it’s like any major gam­ing series — Zelda, Mario, Sonic — it’s consistent.

That’s not to say I’d put Ratchet & Clank up there with those giants of gam­ing — it’s great, sure — but it still does just feel like it’s miss­ing that spe­cial some­thing that would make it a real clas­sic series. Saying that, I will still give the many other titles a go someday…

I’ve been embrac­ing the world of hand­helds, and am now in pos­ses­sion of a 3DS. Rather than play the lat­est and great­est 3D titles though, I’ve gone back through the 1001 and dug out a few weird sound­ing ones for the orig­i­nal DS (thank you back­wards com­pat­i­bil­ity).

And this one cer­tainly is a bit weird. It’s called:

1001 No.61: ‘Hotel Dusk: Room 215′ (DS, 2007)

It’s essen­tially a lit­tle mys­tery game. You’re some ex-cop, who works for a kind of pri­vate detec­tive agency that poses as a door-to-door sales com­pany. You appar­ently left the force because you shot your part­ner (Bradley) but are con­vinced he’s still alive and out there some­where. And for some rea­son you’ve ended up in some dead­beat hotel. So far so weird.

But it gets much weirder, in that the hotel is full of coin­ci­dences and char­ac­ters from your past, and the whole thing becomes one crazy mys­tery — with red her­rings, dead ends and twists all over the place. The actual game­play is pretty much made up of one main thing — dia­logue. To play, you hold the DS ver­ti­cally like a book, and it sure feels like one — con­ver­sa­tions seem to go on forever.

Be sure to be pay­ing atten­tion though — as an ex-cop, of course it’s pretty much your duty to go stick­ing your nose in all over the place, and so you do with great delight. What this means is that every now and then there’s a kind of inter­ro­ga­tion as each mini-mystery comes to a close, and if you ask the wrong thing or miss a vital clue — GAME OVER.

It’s got a great visual style, roto­scop­ing mak­ing it almost comic-book like — and has obvi­ously Japanese roots. But it’s been localised really well, and the dia­logue (although bloody lengthy) is well writ­ten and pretty engag­ing. I did actu­ally end up car­ing about the char­ac­ters, which shows they’re doing some­thing right.

It tries admirably to use some of the DS’s unique fea­tures, like the sty­lus etc, but it’s obvi­ously in the rel­a­tively early days of the DS. It’ll never win any ‘best game ever’ awards, but despite being a pretty lin­ear nar­ra­tive, with no real choices apart from the cor­rect ones, it’s good fun — and as always with things like this it’s just nice to see some­thing that’s a break from the norm.

1001 No.60: ‘SOS: Final Escape / Disaster Report’ (PS2, 2003)

Now this is not a main­stream game in the slight­est. On first glance it looks like your stan­dard 3rd per­son PS2 clas­sic — but what are the bad guys? Terrorists? Aliens? Zombies? The answer is none of these (kinda). It’s your envi­ron­ment.

You know all those dis­as­ter movies, where some mas­sive cri­sis hits a city and every­one enters a strug­gle for sur­vival? Ever think that’d make a good game? Well some­one cer­tainly did, and that became ‘Disaster Report’ — or as it’s known in the UK for some rea­son, ‘SOS: Final Escape’.

You’re just a guy com­ing into your first day of a new job, on a new man-made island — when sud­denly an earth­quake strikes and chaos ensues. You miss the first res­cue chop­per, and so from then on you’re left to try and find safety within a con­stantly col­laps­ing city.

Whether it actu­ally does make a good game is another ques­tion. It is quite fun for the most part, and has some inter­est­ing mechan­ics — you can con­struct things to help you on your way, such as by com­bin­ing a hard-hat, torch and tape to make a head­lamp; and the reliance on water is a good way to keep you mov­ing — you have a ‘thirst’ level as well as a health meter.

There are some basic choices along the way that can dic­tate dif­fer­ent end­ings, but that would mean that you actu­ally care about the plot — which you won’t. As you might expect, there is some das­tardly con­spir­acy behind the dis­as­ter you’re caught up in — but it does all get rather silly. As it was orig­i­nally a Japanese game, the dia­logue and voice act­ing has been localised for English speak­ing coun­tries — but it’s pretty damn bad in places, and the con­trols are clunky as hell.

Like quite a few games I’ve come across so far in the 1001, this seems to be on the list mainly because it’s rather unique — and while it is pretty rough around the edges, it’s always good to see some­thing new.

Here’s a few games to try on the awe­some lit­tle hand­held that is the Gameboy Advance…

1001 No.57: ‘Advance Wars’ (Gameboy Advance, 2002)

In the past, turn-based-strategy games have turned me right off. These are type of the games where, unlike some­thing like Command & Conquer, each player takes turns to decide their next move — and deci­sions are dic­tated by a num­ber of points that can be used to move, attack etc.

Frankly I always found the idea extremely bor­ing and tedious — where would the excite­ment be? Turns out I was wrong… so very wrong.

Advance Wars has ten­sion — and if any­thing it is even more tense than your nor­mal strat­egy game. What’s my next move? What is my oppo­nent think­ing? It’s like a game of chess, but the kind of chess where your pieces go around shoot­ing, shelling and bomb­ing eachother. It’s bril­liant. And it’s tough — one small error early on can cost you the game, and it requires some real care­ful thought about how you deploy your armies. Don’t you dare con­sider send­ing those lit­tle mech­a­nised infantry against those heavy tanks — and woe betide you if you leave your anti-air units undefended!

Try it, it’s bril­liant fun, with awe­some anime style graph­ics and a good learn­ing curve. Thanks 1001 for get­ting me to try Advance Wars! There were a cou­ple of sequels too, so at some point I’ll have to check them out…

1001 No.58: ‘Drill Dozer’ (Gameboy Advance, 2006)

It’s always great to see some­thing fresh, a new spin on an old idea — and so I really enjoyed stum­bling upon Drill Dozer, an odd lit­tle 2D plat­former on the Gameboy Advance. It’s like very many games of its type, with var­ied lev­els, bad guys, and cre­ative end-of-stage bosses — but what makes Drill Dozer dif­fer­ent is in the name: your drill.

You basi­cally con­trol a mini drilling machine, and with the use of the L + R but­tons you can shift through gears for more power. Your drill is your one and only tool — it is your weapon but also is used for all sorts of things — spin through main­te­nance shafts; pro­pel your­self across gaps; attach a pro­peller to go through water, or fly through the air.

The orig­i­nal car­tridge fea­tured a built-in rum­ble pack; but was never released in Europe. A snappy sto­ry­line, funny dia­logue, cute graph­ics, and not too long — this one is most def­i­nitely worth a go.

1001 No.59: ‘Astro Boy: Omega Factor’ (Gameboy Advance, 2005)

Not a huge amount to say about this one — it’s a bril­liant side scroller by some of the guys who made Gunstar Heroes, so you can guess at both the tough level of dif­fi­culty and the epic mad­ness that’s in store for you should you try it.

It’s based on some anime tv show thing, which prob­a­bly adds some­thing if you know the char­ac­ters — but it doesn’t mat­ter. One odd thing about it is the amount of revis­it­ing of old lev­els you need to do to get the true end­ing — [spoiler alert!] the first time through the game, you actu­ally lose. Weird. And tough. But good. Features fly­ing robot horses.