Ratchet Deadlocked
DISCLAIMER: The following is a copy-pasted review from my Backloggd account, transferred as-is so that this blog has some entries available
If there were two phrases to succinctly summarize Deadlocked, they’d be “Greatest Hits” and “All Killer, No Filler”. This, admittedly, means a chunk of my praises stem from the parts that were already excellent from the preceding trilogy, but even then there’s still some refurbished and new irons to make this one stand at the apex.
By incorporating the prior trilogies’ individual strengths - 02’s consistent tongue-in-cheek satire and intimate weapon cycling, Going Commando’s high-octane and uber-kinetic setpieces, and Up Your Arsenal’s fixation on Shooting Shit Up - Deadlocked feels like an amalgamation of everything that makes the series as addictive as it is straightforward. Despite having the lowest arsenal count in the series as of yet - a whopping 9 you unlock normally, plus the mandated replay purchase, the Harbinger, bringing it up 10 - this had the highest swap-out I’ve experienced in order to properly deal with the combatants. Even the two starting weapons, ones you’d think would have a harsh decline in use, end up being just as important in Stygia as they were in Sarathos in one way (Dual Vipers are the only weapons you can use on grind rails, and a LV3-5 can still pepper enough shots on a foe in order to off-balance or even outright fell a stationed target) or another (Magma Cannon’s spread of each trigger pull are both spacious and expansive enough to hit everything within your direct line, even the drop ships). I’d say the Obliterator is likely my least favorite, but it’s less so out of poor craftsmanship, and more that its style as a grenade launcher doesn’t quite suit me in this implementation as it did before. I also briefly mentioned the enemy roster in UYA, due to its puzzling yet overall adequate implementation of the archetypes, and it feels like the team also realized there was more to gain from a limited view than there was to lose. Honing into the “shooter” part of this “third person shooting platformer”, all the enemies fall into a specific gear of the large conglomerate Vox Industries’ militaristics. You got the Grunts, the Elites, the Brutes, the Jackals, the uh, Drones and the… hmmmm… even the Hoverbike, Hovership, and Landstalker, three vehicles you use at various points in the game’s challenges, are reminding me of something… oh right, someone at Insomniac had been doing some hard studies, cause a lot of what makes the gunfights work are due to rather heavy influences when it came to this entry’s tone/design shift. Just as well, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone was particularly inspired by the Flail but instead swapped it out for a Hammer. It also helps a lot of them just feel crunchy and munchy both sound and design wise, meaning maligned aspects such as visible knockback get mitigated from this, allies Merc & Bot having their own AI tactics that the game elegantly protocols to make them feel like true allies instead of chained weights, the true understanding of might being the hardware crawling like an utter bitch amidst the heap of gameplay, and, finally, a good ass Mod system.
Insomniac figured out a good way to circumvent prior efforts’s pitfalls of conjoined blemishes, by ironically combining the approaches: GC’s multi-use options intermixing with UYA’s progression-based unlocks makes it so that, not only are you encouraged to explore and utilize each loadout even more, it’s also to make specific kits a lot more succinct and deadly once you find one that works for you. For instance, I noticed the Scorpion Flail and the Fusion Rifle really benefit from a faster rate of fire, the former being a melee weapon with a thrust and radius encompassing a rather generous circle even at stock and the latter the designated (and obvious) sniper rifle expy. Nabbed several Speed mods from either increased leveling or from my surplus supply, and I saw swathes of high utility from the melee approach, as well as being able to comfortably hip-fire the FR to surprisingly great results. That’s just covering the Alpha mods as well - Omega mods are ones you purchase at different points of the game and are permanent options to freely choose between all the guns. While these ones aren’t quite as freeform, given that some weapons clearly benefit from one or a couple of injected function than others, it’s made up by the fact that it can be Really Fucking Strong and Super Goddamn Funny when you play the cards right. Those two weapons I mentioned prior? FR became an acidic piercer to help trickle down health values just a fair bit for either added effect or proper setups, and attaching Freeze onto the Scorpion Flail transmogrified it into the most overpowered tool I’ve used in these titles thus far, practically one-shotting everything, aerial threats included, and either nearly or immediately putting anyone that actually managed to survive into a popsicle. Heck, putting the Shock Mod on my Holoshield Launcher was the key ingredient in defeating Eviscerator, since I was frantically and hastily running out of ammo fast and needed him properly baited to the right spot in order to launch and chip him towards desolation. It was a good idea to lock the ability to purchase Alphas at the ready on Challenge Mode, and even then they’re not exactly easy to snatch up aside from the Impact and Aiming ones, since working with what you’d have and concocting ideas to best fit the various situations is a key component as to what makes this series work as it is. As a result, if you’re going in release order like I have, I actually recommend doing everything on Hero. You’ve already learned the essentials, now it’s time to test your mettle and showboating prowess.
Surprisingly enough, what actually cemented my infatuation with Deadlocked was the writing. I consciously reiterated the fact that the satirical nature of the PS2 entries are rather exaggerated and aren’t nearly as high-marked as the zealots would have you believe. That said, if there was a title here that closely matches the appeal they strongly yearn for, it’d be this one. Some of the consumerist gags are rather obvious - you got the Rollerball-ass death game setting, Gleeman Vox is a snarky and crude business-first man, and the commercials amping and exaggerating Product Purchase™ are back and more poignant than ever. Then there’s the fact that Vox grows increasingly agitated that his bias, purposeful marketing of former hero Ace Hardlight is failing to catch the eyes of the demographic, while Ratchet is out here raking it in no problem despite all the libel spewed from his news anchors (while one isn’t busy trying (and failing) to get a quickie from his female co-host). Then you turn down the dialog and effects volume while bumping up the music and notice David Bergeaud’s going all in on the industrial side of techno to ensure your grists towards the mill and runs of the gauntlets are at least a lil seedy. Finally comes the realization that the planets’ color palettes are of muted primaries and dulled secondaries usually attributed to flash and attention, as well as practically every ‘challenge course’ being an endangerment unto the geographic/populace/ecology of the space within.
A tale as old as time itself; conglomerates wilting you down and merchandising your stone-faced mein til kingdom come. As far as everyone is concerned, you’re more entertainment than sentient.
What makes the narrative work is precisely from that obvious separation of Clank from Ratchet. I mean, Clank’s still here, but he’s settled as a supporting hook so that everyone’s able to get out of there. Ratchet, on the other hand, is already showing signs of devolvement - more of a headstrong egoist than he is a mannered hero that’s been established since his time in Bogon. Early on, he even shows some signs of his dormant 02 persona, relishing and itching to get the fame and glory. It becomes rather interesting at certain points - if the player’s stuck on something or is just scraping through skins, you can imagine Ratchet’s feeling even worse about it through refreshes and restarts. There’s little platforming obstacles - and what is there really just match the early-midish ventures done prior, UYA excluded of course - due to the death colosseum’s malignant fixation on Shoot, Shoot, and Shooting Some More. To a small degree, progression-gates have also been personified as needing to earn “Dread Points” in order to access the next tourney, and while you can sorta pick and choose what to do and what to ignore, at a certain point you realize the best way to proceed is to simply attain maximum stardom within those objectives. Bolt purchase porking is angled again as well, albeit somewhat neutered compared to the first run due to an increase of bolt accruement, as well as how some challenges stockpile more ammo crates than others. Even merbots Merc and Green show sign of vulnerability and hesitation at points, with the former bluntly foretelling about rather innocuous obstacles giving him pause, and the latter having a very grim accounting of warfare. Granted, the framework of these doesn’t go to the point it dulls the action focus, but rather give clarity to the sort of prefab design principles that this entry imbues in play. The bosses especially are at their ‘best’ here both from a legitimate flow and process format, as well as when inducting all of this in mind - Ratchet defeating Vox is the endgoal, but by the end of it he’s drained out of his mind. This is the fourth time he has saved a part of an interstellar system, doubled that when including the fights he had to do against Ace and his Exterminators. He gets increasingly tired and more worn as he sees each one, the ‘backstory’ of each downsizing until all that’s left is a Face molded to sell (Ace not even directly facing you and instead prioritizing range outputs as well as a surplus of medkits when each health threshold is passed), and the business man that kickstarted the whole ordeal to start with (Vox utilizing both the environment he can directly control to give an edge, as well as the fact he uses a machine to actually cause the damage due to his stubby stature giving him an inherent disadvantage).
To reiterate, I don’t think Deadlocked’s story is particularly “complex” or “deep”. I do, however, think it’s part of an echelon where a lot of moving components and between-the-line gleans tend to get overlooked in favor of their other, more immediate aspects. I still have no idea how I would feel about the PS3 era and on’s writing, and admittedly I think the Brian and TJ going “haha wow we kinda screwed the pooch on Deadlocked didn’t we? Lol, we had to recuperate and focus on ‘’’franchise DNA’’’ for the next title” in that same GDC press is nauseatingly eye-rolling on par with how they (mis)treat the origin point, but even then? I don’t think I can really blame them too hard for the overhauled focus - where exactly could you take the despondent duos and their dissatisfaction of commercialism after that point?
I’m aware that ‘mild indifferencer/enjoyer of UYA really loves Deadlocked’ is somewhat of an R&C fan archetype, but let me be clear that I was well and truly beating this drum since day one, back in 2005, even when my only frame of reference was GC. Considering that it’s also the easiest game to pop in and breeze through - literally the only reason this 8-hour campaign took me so long to write was cause I then spaced out for breaks then fell into procrastination as well as crank out an extra 3 hours for a Challenge Mode replay - I don’t really have any reservations making such a strong declaration at the end of this lineup.