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Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction Official Thread

Greg said:
Wal-Mart... what the fuck. I don't know why I even asked the lady working at electronics. The dumb bitch asked me the name of the game eight times, and each time I told her just search 'Ratchet.' Finally, she confessed she didn't know how to spell the damn thing...

Same thing happened to me at FS.
 
@Jstevenson,
Has James Westbrook received his copy yet? Is it possible to get him on the podcast and listen to his reaction to the game? The boy must be really happy.

You guys should try and interview some of the kids who play your games. They're the true fanboys/girls.
 
Raist said:
For the lazies


9.0 Overall
DESIGN 9.0
STORY 8.8
GAMEPLAY 8.7
PRESENTATION 9.5

AAA confirmed.
angry.gif
 
mysticstylez said:
I know others here will say otherwise but I believe that Sony, needing a great 1st party exclusive this fall with brand name recognition was the reason for no MP in Tools of Destruction.

Which would be directly related to allocating resources, as has already been explained. Obviously there is a budget involved, and if they had unlimited time and money to develop the game I'm sure it would have shipped with everything and the kitchen sink. But that's the whole point; the game is coming out now, and had it been an SP and MP game, something would have been compromised. Quality of one or two components, or finishing the game within budget and a given timeframe. MP in R&C was never all that popular, so in the interest of actually getting a game out that was both on time and relevant to the vast majority of fans, MP isn't in.
 
mysticstylez said:
I know others here will say otherwise but I believe that Sony, needing a great 1st party exclusive this fall with brand name recognition was the reason for no MP in Tools of Destruction.
The others who will say otherwise are Insomniac themselves. This was their call, all the way.
 
mysticstylez said:
I know others here will say otherwise but I believe that Sony, needing a great 1st party exclusive this fall with brand name recognition was the reason for no MP in Tools of Destruction.

Huh? How are these 2 things related? Or is this just a tinfoil hat situation? (Oh and Insom is not Sony owned... so it's not like Sony can come down and call the shots exactly).
 
mysticstylez said:
I'm sorry but the whole "If they add MP then it would divert the resources from the SP" is starting to become a scapegoat for no MP.


I can understand if this was a dev's first game, but this is Insomniac, they were spitting out Ratchet games on PS2 every year, and they were all quality games. Insomniac also already has experience with putting online games on PS3 with Resistance, plus the overall experience working with PS3.


I know others here will say otherwise but I believe that Sony, needing a great 1st party exclusive this fall with brand name recognition was the reason for no MP in Tools of Destruction.


Yeah this is Insomniac. And they always deliver highly polished games. So I guess they wouldn't have just thrown some MP elements in there. They would have to heavily work on weapons balancing, level design etc, and it would have taken time and resources from the SP part. For RFoM I guess it's easier because they could basically "recycle" the SP levels to make MP ones. It's an FPS. Should be much harder to create MP levels from SP levels in a platforming game. So yes, it would have taken a lot of time and resources, that's pretty obvious IMO. Maybe some MP elements will come back in future episodes on the PS3, who knows.
 
What about online co-op as an mp component?

I agree that not every game needs MP, only a few games need it and the vast majority gets ignored after a few nights. Wasted resources. No MP in R&C doesn't bother me at all as I rarely touch MP in games. Only one or two get heavy play for me.
 
Thrakier said:
And now read what those guys after you wrote... :D

When I think logical Ratchet CAN'T be without jaggys because I don't think it has more than 2xFSAA from what I can see. The Guys who said that their image is PERFECTLY clean like 16xFSAA - fire up the demo, go onto the bridge, stand up and go in front of your tv, look at the statue. No jaggies?

4xAA like Resistance. And of course there's still some level of aliasing, no game is "jaggy free". But this is one of if not the cleanest looking games I've seen on the consoles so far. I have a native 720p set though. Apparently there's an issue with a few 1080p sets when scaling the 720p image for some reason. Not sure if that's been explained yet.
 
ChryZ said:
It's pretty amazing how every triple A title on PS3 got to defend itself, while 360 and Wii enjoy some kind of unholy righteousness.

I don't know why Chryz, it was completely irrational, but I just did not like your old avatar. To go from that to having quite literally the very best avatar on the entire internet, that's something.:lol
 
AltogetherAndrews said:
Being disappointed is one thing, but actually allowing an unknown to affect the rating of a game knowing full well what an effect a splitting of resources can have on the quality of SP, that's not proper.



Would have worked, probably, but it would have also forced Insomniac to divert resources to it as opposed to focusing squarely on making one component as good as it could be. I understand the mention of it, I'm just not particularly thrilled about the idea of it actually negatively affecting the summary and score.


I dont know if I buy that cause R&C:UYA has the SAME great Single player that R&CF:ToD has, but UYA has a excellent multiplayer aspect also. With even more people playing online than before makes the MP feature feel even more missed. It just would have been nice if they brought over that great multiplayer into this game, but i'm sure its coming(2008? :) )
 
Tieno said:
What about online co-op as an mp component?

I agree that not every game needs MP, only a few games need it and the vast majority gets ignored after a few nights. Wasted resources.

With Ratchet and ... Ratchet's twin brother? Oh yeah and clank's cyborg twin as well... yeah. It's easy to say 'just add multiplayer, or co-op'. Much more difficult when you actually take a second to realize what that actually MEANS. And how much time and resources it would take away from the SP game.

mysticstylez said:
Yeah cause like the Ratchet series, previous Mario games had online multiplayer.

I don't understand this argument whatsoever.
 
frankthurk said:
With Ratchet and ... Ratchet's twin brother? Oh yeah and clank's cyborg twin as well... yeah. It's easy to say 'just add multiplayer, or co-op'. Much more difficult when you actually take a second to realize what that actually MEANS. And how much time and resources it would take away from the SP game.
Insomniac is creative, I'm sure they can think of a way to make co-op fit. Even a 'copy'-Ratchet wouldn't bother me. It's better than nothing.
I can see the argument for SP co-op a lot more than for plain old MP. It's not that big of a deal, but it would be a nice bonus.
 
Tieno said:
Insomniac is creative, I'm sure they can think of a way to make co-op fit. Even a 'copy'-Ratchet wouldn't bother me. It's better than nothing.

Er, unless I'm misreading the whole "the last Lombax" thing, that wouldn't make a ton of sense.

Besides, it's hardly that easy. Even a simple co-op experience would force levels and objectives to be altered to fit the two player mechanic, and with this being a platformer... I could see that being a nightmare.
 
Tieno said:
Insomniac is creative, I'm sure they can think of a way to make co-op fit. Even a 'copy'-Ratchet wouldn't bother me. It's better than nothing.
I can see the argument for SP co-op a lot more than for plain old MP.

Sure could, but guess what? It would take time and resources away from the SP making it less and less polished. A lot of people don't want that. That's all we're saying. Do you disagree?
 
kaching said:
Hey, I'm not their keeper :p

In terms of the perception of jaggies, a lot of people are saying they don't see them, but everyone's sensitivity to this kind of thing is different. To some extent individual TV rendering quirks are at play here, as well as possibly whether or not people are observing at optimal viewing distances for their display.

Yeah, but my TV is by no means something "special" in a bad way - it's a very good Samsung TV. Maybe I see the Jaggies a bit more because of the 1080p Problem, but I just can't believe that it should be perfectly clean without any jaggies. I don't think this is possible.
 
frankthurk said:
Sure could, but guess what? It would take time and resources away from the SP making it less and less polished. A lot of people don't want that. That's all we're saying. Do you disagree?


Insomniac are the kings of polish in my book, they could have done it.
 
hukasmokincaterpillar said:
4xAA like Resistance. And of course there's still some level of aliasing, no game is "jaggy free". But this is one of if not the cleanest looking games I've seen on the consoles so far. I have a native 720p set though. Apparently there's an issue with a few 1080p sets when scaling the 720p image for some reason. Not sure if that's been explained yet.

I see less jaggies in Resistance I think...anyway, it would be very nice if JS could tell us what's wrong with Ratchet and why people see more or less jaggies and if it will be fixed.
 
mysticstylez said:
That was in response to someone saying that "yeah that's stupid will Mario Galaxy be criticize because there's no MP?"

I know. And I still don't understand the 'they have done it before so we're going to take points off' vs. 'they've never branched out to MP so we won't take points off.' It seems a really flawed argument to me.

mysticstylez said:
Insomniac are the kings of polish in my book, they could have done it.

Wow. I don't know how else to state the obvious. Yes, they could have 'done it'. But with fewer resources they could not have 'done it' as well as they did. Spending more time and resources on something will make it better, it doesn't matter how good you are at it... more = more. If you can't understand that there's nothing more I can really do for you.
 
frankthurk said:
Sure could, but guess what? It would take time and resources away from the SP making it less and less polished. A lot of people don't want that. That's all we're saying. Do you disagree?
I understand the reason why it's not added, just saying it'd be nice in this day and age for an established franchise.
Though when you go down that path you can start to scrap a lot of stuff (not saying Insomniac did). But developing games is all about compromises so I'll wait till I've played the game and see for myself.
 
frankthurk said:
I know. And I still don't understand the 'they have done it before so we're going to take points off' vs. 'they've never branched out to MP so we won't take points off.' It seems a really flawed argument to me.


I was making the point that it's more understandble for a reviewer to dock points for a mode missing that the previous games had, compared to a game that never had this mode.
 
Thrakier said:
I see less jaggies in Resistance I think...anyway, it would be very nice if JS could tell us what's wrong with Ratchet and why people see more or less jaggies and if it will be fixed.

OK sounds like you're experience whatever 1080p issue is going on. If you haven't already, try turning off 720p in PS3's display option and see how it looks through 1080i.
 
mysticstylez said:
I was making the point that it's more understandble for a reviewer to dock points for a mode missing that the previous games had, compared to a game that never had this mode.

It's still not understandable to dock scores for the exclusion, because that puts the critic in a position way the hell out of his or her league.
 
mysticstylez said:
Maybe if you read what the person I was quoting said you would understand.

I'm just not sure how previous Mario titles were going to have online without a net connection.

This is the first Mario on a console with online functionality (ok, ignoring DS). It seems perfectly reasonable to expect Galaxy to have some online features especially if Ratchet carries that expectation.
 
lol R&C online? I love R&C but I don't think of "MP online" goodness when I see the characters. I can live without that in a R&C title. When I wanna get my online on, I have Halo 3, Resistance, Gears of War, Team Fortress 2, and tons more games that will do the job much better. I'm glad the game is coming out tomorrow instead of Holiday 2008 and the lack of a previously not so popular and pretty inferior online mode has played a major role in that, I'm sure.
 
I am super happy Ratchet is SP, only. I would hate to have to explain to my 5-year-old that I am not a black, gay, jewish cunt who loves a bunch of other guys' mothers while their dads love mine.
 
mysticstylez said:
Insomniac are the kings of polish in my book, they could have done it.

They just recently finished the game even though it's only single player. There's no way they would've hit the deadline had they added multiplayer. According to the GT review (and basically every other set of impressions) this has the best R&C ever. And that was Insomniac's goal, they wanted to focus on what people liked most which was the single player and make it better than ever. They did that.
 
DenogginizerOS said:
I am super happy Ratchet is SP, only. I would hate to have to explain to my 5-year-old that I am not a black, gay, jewish cunt who loves a bunch of other guys mothers while their dads love mine.

:lol
 
Has any reviewer actually docked R&C for not having MP? It just looks like something that the reviewers mentioned as something they would like to have instead of something that spoiled R&C's experience greatly. Personally, I would rather not have every review look like it came out of Play.
 
theBishop said:
I'm just not sure how previous Mario titles were going to have online without a net connection.

This is the first Mario on a console with online functionality (ok, ignoring DS). It seems perfectly reasonable to expect Galaxy to have some online features especially if Ratchet carries that expectation.



Gamecube had online functionality.
 
Z3F said:
Has any reviewer actually docked R&C for not having MP? It just looks like something that the reviewers mentioned as something they would like to have instead of something that spoiled R&C's experience greatly. Personally, I would rather not have every review look like it came out of Play.


Well, when it's mentionned in every negative closing comments, it's safe to think that it was taken into account, yeah.


Seriously, if a game like RFoM2 doesn't have MP, I understand that you could criticize it. But R&C ? C'mon, maybe it was a nice addition, but it was completely ignored in the past. I've owned all R&C games, never played MP, and I do not know a single person who did. Sounds like anecdotal evidence, but it really doesn't look like the MP servers were crowded...
 
SolidSnakex said:
They just recently finished the game even though it's only single player. There's no way they would've hit the deadline had they added multiplayer. According to the GT review (and basically every other set of impressions) this has the best R&C ever. And that was Insomniac's goal, they wanted to focus on what people liked most which was the single player and make it better than ever. They did that.

WORD!!!
 
kaching said:
It seems like they're mentioning it more to have something to put under the negatives column, for lack of anything else bad to say ;)

The worst complaints about the game proper are that it's not particularly hard (R&C never has been) and it isn't really pushing major new ground (we knew that).

I'd have to agree here - there isn't anything wrong with the game. It's bloody near perfect. So, to stay "balanced", reviewers are trying as hard as they can to put something in the negative column.
 
Tieno said:
Insomniac is creative, I'm sure they can think of a way to make co-op fit. Even a 'copy'-Ratchet wouldn't bother me. It's better than nothing.
I can see the argument for SP co-op a lot more than for plain old MP. It's not that big of a deal, but it would be a nice bonus.

Yeah, like that mysterious black guy who was also infected but survived yet no-one ever spoke to or acknowledged in any way. Man, people were really racist back in the '50s. I will admit it made a bit more sense than having two Master Chiefs running around in Halo: CE, but only marginally.
 
Insomniac is creative, I'm sure they can think of a way to make co-op fit. Even a 'copy'-Ratchet wouldn't bother me. It's better than nothing.
I can see the argument for SP co-op a lot more than for plain old MP. It's not that big of a deal, but it would be a nice bonus.

Why should they destroy the game for a shitty coop mode? People nowadays care too much for Coop or other MP modes. They should just enjoy the game as it was meant to be.

To hell with multiplayer!!!!
 
freethought said:
Yeah, like that mysterious black guy who was also infected but survived yet no-one ever spoke to or acknowledged in any wayoff. Man, people really were racist back in the '50s. I will admit it made a bit more sense than having two Master Chiefs running around in Halo: CE, but only marginally.
Actually I would like two MC's or the custom armor spartans in SP (for Halo 3). Don't care if it makes sense or not cause whenever I've played co-op I'm entirely focused on the co-operative play instead of story or whatnot hence why my first playtrough of a game is solo. I'm just too busy with my partner to pay attention to the finer details. Stuff like unnamed second character who nobody pays attention to doesn't bother me at all, it's better than nothing.
 
So are EB's and Gamestops pretty much selling them tommorow? anybody have any luck today?

Also can we move the multi player talk out of the official thread? It's not there, it's still a great SP game, move on with it.
 
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