As a continuation of my review of the demo of ratchet and clank, giving it a 7.5, and my doubts of Eye of Judgement, I was more than happy (Mania!) to get my hands on them and give them a play, or two, or fourteen.

Let us start with that strange Camera: Alright, I'll give the game some credit, it's slightly more complex than I had originally gave it credit for. Granted, the CCG is still basic as hell, but you need some considerations. There's still random things, like, why despite having an attack symbol forward, the fortess does not in fact attack when placed, which is different from EVERY OTHER CARD in the game that I saw.

For starters, the music was all metal-ish. Which I didn't expect, and seemed really weird, then again, metal is the geekiest type of music (Don't deny it. Brian Posein agrees.) Wasn't a bad point, but was just... unexpected.

The gameplay is... well, basic. Draw a card, get 2 mana, play as many non creature cards as you have mana for, and your turn ends when you either place the end turn card in front of the Camera or play a creature (Who automatically activates and does their attack, aside from weird ass fortress). Your opponent does the same, until someone has 5 creatures on the board (Game ends immediately), surrenders, or someone draws their last card(Hearsay, never actually came to that). The elements on the board are... special. Placing a card on it's element gives it +2 hp, placing it on the opposite element gives it -2 hp. When a creature dies, you get 1 mana back from it. I have seen this lead to exactly 2 "skill" plays, one a free card draw for a turn sacrifice (place a 1hp creature that lets you draw a card when placed on a non aligned element on the opposite element to get 1 mana and 1 bonus card, useful if you have high mana and want a better creature) or a card with 3 hp that gets 2 bonus damage on attack when it has 1 hp, exact same deal. Some cards hit more than one target, some hit any target, some have ranged, some hit all in a line etc. There's a summon lock, some creatures are "locked" unless there are 4 creatures on the board. Which should be in 4-5 turns, and locked creatures tend to cost a shitload of mana, so you probably couldn't cast them that early anyway.... Also, direction is very important, and the game won't continue until you change your cards on the table to match the screen... even though the screen is right. Some cards have weak points that make them take 1 extra damage and no counter. That is marked by a B on the counter square.

 My experience was with only the starter + 1 booster (Apparently we could not find booster packs yet...). Played 2 offline games 1 on 1, very "meh" experiences to be honest. The Camera sometimes decided that the cards would all disappear and need to see all of them again, or that reading a card is too hard so it'll do half, then take a 5 second break... The only other thing of note is that as I had predicted, both games, whoever went first won.

Time for online! We couldn't play a non ranked game. No custom game would connect. Lovely. Not at all broken. What the hell? So, we played a ranked game. And... now imagine this. Playing a CCG with someone, and in combat, once it starts, there are no modifiers. Okay, quick and easy. Without viewing animations, the game took about 45 full seconds to complete an attack. A card would activate, you would wait 15 seconds. Attack would go, you would wait 5 seconds. Counter attack, if any, another 5 seconds. Then, the game would nonsensically wait 20 seconds before giving mana, or ending turn, or anything. Just imagine that. "Oh, I win. 1 mississippi, 2 mississippi.. 3 mississippi". Online games are not for those who don't have a DS, or PSP, or book to read while the program tries to figure out what is going on. You will notice it, it will make you cringe.

Time for tangent rant on what I've heard:Alright, so allegedly the computer only plays with cards you have scanned. Can someone confirm this for me? See, I figure, if you want to make players WANT to get cards, give them all sorts of options to let them see what amazing cards they are missing! Have the computer always have a deck with at least 10 cards that the player has never scanned, so they can see how awesome some other cards are! Increase demand! This rant may be revoked in the case that the computer actually does use all 120 cards in some fashion.

Eye of Judgement: Another 6 out of 10. I like 6's. Slow online, mediocre game play, Camera can be very wonky, you need to reference cards constantly, some things aren't clear (Hey, my guy is retarded! He counter attacked my own guy. Because my opponent attacked me! Wait, what?. Yes, that actually happens. Your people will counter attack your own people in certain cases), and there is a very very weird balance. Maybe if I played with well made decks that had a larger variety of cards...  and the game wasn't painfully slow. Also, whoever said that you can play this game without the eye? You fail at life. If the Camera wasn't also a mic (Hi bluetooth warhawk mic!) and couldn't make movies as well, I may be even more sour on this.

Do you want the good news? Ratchet and Clank was 5 hours of almost pure enjoyment for me. The 7.5 demo turned into an 8.5 game? Want to know what I disliked rather than liked? Okay!

1) This game has proven that sixxaxis controls can be.. bad too. Small tilting in a direction when you want to move that way in Ratchet and Clank, no worky! Your slow and gradual does not work here!

2) Invisible walls, nonsensical gates, and empty platforms: Pick one. Can we just not go there, or can we spent the 5 minutes jumping, climbing, only to find that there's nothing there? Thanks for exploring rewarding by dicking us around Insomniac! Hard example of nonsensical gates: The arena. After traversing the cave of death, and ferris wheel of death (Alright, I'm not descriptive), you come to a second cave of death. This one with a shield. For no apparent reason. None. There's stuff behind it. There's no sign saying "Need new gadget". Just a big ass shield that you can't get through a quarter through the second cave. Aww, insomniac really loves dicking us around!

3) Swimming. I thought we figured this out in the NES version of TMNT: He can swim. Why does he randomly drown in half the water, and swim in the other half? Alright, he's a Lombax, whatever that is (Apaprently the most hated creature in the univerese), do they only like water when the moon is full?

4) Odd deaths: Often after exploring, returning would take too much effort, and since killing yourself also fully heals you, as well as more often than not returning you to where you wanted to go, jumping into the normally harmless water is fatal. Except in the lava level. That's not fatal. You bounce. Unless you touch a rock. That rock, you sink into. Alright then.

5) Challenge: Well, all shops heal you. Health is everywhere. All large fights come with crates that replenish ammo in infinite supply. The only time the game will be a challenge is when you're leveling up a new gun. If I wanted to, I could stay with the whip and homing launcher alone for the first 20 planets and laugh at the enemies, or I could slowly level up the much weaker "more powerful" weapons slowly and have the game be more annoying.

6) Did someone say there were no fetch quests? Can I ask them their definition of fetch quest? Because I fetched a lot of things. Souls, souls, souls, ship parts, statues, optional secret items, and I'm probably not even a third done the game.

7) Groovetron still = pretty useless.  

Anyway, solid game that unlike Lair, Heavenly Sword, Darkness, Eye of Judgement etc never really lost it's fun. 8.5 / 10. Thus making Insomniac by far the only developer worth anything on the PS3 to me because they are the makers of the only games that won't make want to stop playing within an hour.

R & C only 8.5 ?

In before sony defense force!

The game is only 5 hours?

Yep, I played Super Stardust.

I only played for 5 hours. I said I was guess I was about a third of the way through. Which would mean 15 hours. Which is a pure guess.

SDF already had their way with me for 7.5, at least this time I should get some cuddling afterwards.

@ dtewi

Gamenode: "The singleplayer mode takes between 12-15 hours to beat on the first playthrough, and the challenge mode you can play after completing the game extends the gameply tremendously. "

God, how did one of my favorite series get puked on like this?

I suppose I should make this very clear:

I Only played Ratchet and Clank for 5 hours. I was no where near completing ratchet and Clank in that 5 hour tie period.

@ Fuzzmosis

OK, but confusion was to be expected. IMO reviews should be done after completing a game, this is more like a first impressions preview.

I'd agree with you on some types of games, but are any of the points I made going to change after I play 10 hours? Will I dislike the extreme randomness of exploring sometimes? Will the groovitron still suck? Will some water still be fatal? Or are those negatives going to change, aside from the enemies getting a tiny bit stronger and my weapons also doing the same?

And if I had the time to, I probably would have beat it. That's the 8.5. My score, tis all about fun. And, you can absolutely disagree. That tends to be why I try and say how long I spent with a game, so you can gather impressions from that.