Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando

Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando
North American PlayStation 2 box art
Developer(s)	Insomniac Games Idol Minds (HD edition) Mass Media Inc. (Vita port)
Publisher(s)	Sony Computer Entertainment
Composer(s)	David Bergeaud, Niels Bye Nielsen (additional music)
Series	Ratchet & Clank
Platform(s)	PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 (HD), PlayStation Vita
Release date(s)	November 11, 2003 Going Commando PlayStation 2 NA November 11, 2003 EU November 21, 2003 AUS 2003 JP December 11, 2003 HD Collection PlayStation 3 AUS June 28, 2012 EU June 29, 2012 NA August 28, 2012 JP September 6, 2012 PlayStation Vita NA July 29, 2014 EU July 2, 2014 AUS July 9, 2014[1]
Genre(s)	Platformer
Mode(s)	Single-player

Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (known as Ratchet & Clank 2: Locked and Loaded in Europe and Australia, and Ratchet & Clank 2 in Japan) is a 2003 3D platform video game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2. Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando is the second game in the Ratchet & Clank series, following Ratchet & Clank and preceding Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal.

The game begins with an interview of Ratchet and Clank that is seen by Megacorp CEO Abercrombie Fizzwidget. Fizzwidget contacts Ratchet and Clank and explains that a top secret experiment was stolen from Megacorp. Ratchet and Clank are given the task of tracking down the experiment but run into difficulties as they journey across the galaxy.

The gameplay of Going Commando is similar to that of the original Ratchet & Clank. The player controlled protagonists are seen in a third-person perspective; the player uses various weapons and gadgets to defeat enemies and solve puzzles, while exploring planets, completing platforming sections and minigames, and progressing through the story. The game features many improvements over the original game, such as the aesthetics, and introduces many new gameplay aspects, such as weapon upgrading.

Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando was released roughly a year after its predecessor, and received critical acclaim, with some calling it one of the best PlayStation 2 games ever made. Critics noted the game's improved graphics, engaging gameplay, longer story, and overall sound as being major improvements over the original, but criticized the game for its high difficulty level, and certain minigames.

Gameplay

Ratchet uses the Blitz Gun in a combat arena. Also visible is the game's head-up display, which displays weapon and health information, the progress towards upgrades, and available Bolts.

The player controls Ratchet from a third-person perspective, and uses weapons to defeat enemies. The player can also use gadgets to explore new areas. The player travels to planets in the "Bogon" Galaxy and completes main objectives and optional side quests. "Bolts", the game world's currency, are primarily obtained by defeating enemies and breaking crates located throughout the game's levels.^[2] Going Commando also includes four types of "maxi-games", or minigames. These games include arena battles, spherical world battles, hover bike races, and space races/battles.^[2] After completing the game, the player may also enter "challenge mode" which is more difficult but the player starts with the weapons and health that they had when they finished the game the first time, additional weapon upgrades are also unlocked.^[3]

Going Commando introduces eighteen new weapons, such as the Blitz Gun, Seeker and Lava Gun.^[4] Each weapon has a "growth bar", which increases when the weapon is used to defeat enemies. The weapon is upgraded once the bar is filled, increasing its power and changing the design of it.^[4] Certain devices from the original Ratchet & Clank make a return, such as the Swingshot, while others are new to Going Commando.^[5] The player can use a save file from the original Ratchet & Clank to get "retro" weapons from the first game for free.^[2]

As with weapons, Ratchet gains experience with each enemy destroyed. When Ratchet's experience bar fills, he gains a new level of "nanotech". This awards him with additional health bubbles, up to a maximum of 80.^[6][7] Ratchet's health can also be increased by finding nanotech upgrades.^[8] The game introduces armor vendors, which are able to provide up to four additional levels of protection.^[8]

Plot

After defeating Drek in the previous game, Ratchet and Clank become celebrities, though their lives remain otherwise uneventful.^[9] After an interview for the holovision show Behind the Hero, Ratchet and Clank are suddenly teleported to the Bogon Galaxy by Abercrombie Fizzwidget, the founder and CEO of Megacorp, an extremely powerful corporation that manufactures every product in the Bogon Galaxy. Fizzwidget asks the duo for their assistance in recovering a stolen biological experiment.^[10] Ratchet is given commando training and equipment, and is sent to a flying laboratory on planet Aranos to search for the Experiment, where he finds it in a cage. The thief reveals himself, and Ratchet tries to pass himself off as a repairman when caught.^[11] The thief takes the Experiment, and leaves the ship. Ratchet returns to his ship and contacts Fizzwidget, informing him of the thief's escape.

Ratchet is given coordinates by Fizzwidget and, with the help of Clank, chases the thief across several planets, eventually confronting the thief on the frozen planet Siberius. The duo defeat the thief, reclaim the Experiment, and return it to Fizzwidget. Later, after Fizzwidget "accidentally" ejects Ratchet and Clank from his ship, the thief approaches, demanding the Experiment back, not realizing that Ratchet gave it to Fizzwidget. The thief unintentionally knocks off his own mask, and it is revealed that "he" is actually a female Lombax named Angela Cross. After learning that the experiment has been handed back to Megacorp, she warns them that it will ultimately doom the galaxy.^[12]

On planet Dobbo, Ratchet and Clank discover that Angela's claims are true, as the Experiment is revealed to be a dangerous predator.^[13] They try to persuade Fizzwidget to destroy the experiment, but their efforts prove to be futile. The duo then stumble across an advertisement for the Experiment, officially called the "Protopet", which is being cloned and prepared for mass release. On planet Boldan, Ratchet and Clank are captured by the "Thugs-4-Less" mercenary company (formerly affiliated with Angela) which has been hired by Fizzwidget. They are sent to a remote prison, but escape and try to rescue Angela, who has also been captured. After Ratchet defeats the Thug Leader on Planet Snivelak and rescues Angela, they go to Megacorp Headquarters to destroy the Protopets.

After they get there, they discover that Captain Qwark, the disgraced "superhero" from Ratchet & Clank, had disguised himself as Fizzwidget and planned to release the protopet from the beginning in spite of its hostility, so he could quell the threat it would pose to Bogon and restore his own reputation.^[14] He attempts to use a "Helix-o-morph", a gadget Angela designed to repair the genetic flaw in the Protopets that causes their aggression, and zaps the original Protopet, but it malfunctions, mutating the protopet into a gigantic, vicious monster that swallows Qwark whole. After Ratchet defeats the giant Protopet, Angela and the real Fizzwidget arrive on the scene, with Angela explaining that Fizzwidget had been tied up in a closet during the entirety of Qwark's takeover. After spitting Qwark back out, the giant Protopet is changed back to normal once Angela retrieves the Helix-o-morph and fixes it by putting the batteries in the right way. Angela proceeds to amplify the device with Megacorp's TV transponders to cure all the Protopets in the galaxy, ending the threat. In the game's epilogue, Ratchet, Clank, Angela, and a female Infobot that Clank had met at several points in the game hang out at Clank's apartment, where Angela informs Ratchet that Qwark has found employment as a test subject at Megacorp.

Development and release

Going Commando was approved for development five months before the first game's release, after highly positive reviews from the original's playtesters.^[15] In August 2002, Insomniac Games started designing the visual concepts for Going Commando, while still fixing bugs in the original game.^[16] Brian Hastings, Insomniac's Vice President of Programming, said in a 2003 interview that the first step in the game's design was to "try to come up with a few 'Big Ideas'. These are the things we think will really grab people's attention and give the game that Wow-Factor. In the case of Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando the big ideas were RPG elements (like weapon upgrades and health upgrades), spherical planets and space combat."^[16] Hastings said that the inspiration for the game's spherical worlds came in part from the cover of the 1943 novel The Little Prince.^[17] Designing the spherical worlds required changing about 50,000 lines of the game's code, to account for the different handling of gravity.^[17] Development took a total of ten months, during which time Insomniac's design team doubled from 40 to 80 members.^[18]

One common criticism of the original Ratchet & Clank was the design and personality of Ratchet.^[19] Ted Price, the game's producer, said that to fix this they made Ratchet "less cocky, he is much more friendly to Clank, and he's able to handle himself better in stressful situations without being impetuous, which is what he was in Ratchet 1."^[19] The character of Captain Qwark was a late addition to the game.^[15]

Going Commando was released in North America on November 11, 2003,^[20] Europe on November 21, 2003,^[21] and Japan on December 11, 2003.^[22] In 2004, Sony added Going Commando to their Greatest Hits series of games for the PlayStation 2,^[23] and it was similarly added to the Platinum Range used in the PAL region on August 13, 2004, and to the Japanese list of The Best games on July 8, 2004.^[22]

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings 90.64%[24] Metacritic 90/100[25] Review scores Publication Score 1UP.com A[26] Eurogamer 9/10[6] Game Informer 9.5/10[7] GamePro [27] GameSpot 8.8/10[28] GameSpy [29] GameZone 9.4/10[30] IGN 9.4/10[31]
Awards Publication Award IGN Top 25 PS2 Games of All Time (11th)[32] IGN Game of the Month (November 2003)[33]

Going Commando received critical acclaim.^[25] 1UP.com said that "Everything that Ratchet & Clank did, Going Commando does better, and the tweaks and additions just push it further over the top."^[26] Game Informer's Andy McNamara said that the game has "the best and most compelling content [Insomniac] has put out to date."^[7]

The game's arena combat and racing levels were praised by Andrew Reiner of Game Informer,^[7] and Benjamin Turner of GameSpy similarly said that "it's surprising how fun it can be to play interstellar gladiator."^[29] GamePro praised the game's pacing, saying that the first game felt like it didn't "really show its true colors until about halfway through", but that Going Commando had the same feeling by the end of the second level.^[27] GameSpot mentioned that the "great sense of humor" of the original game is also noticeable in Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando,^[28] a statement echoed by GameZone when they said that the game's cut-scenes "represent some of the most thought-out and gut-wrenchingly funny sequences ever witnessed in a platforming game."^[30]

Going Commando's graphics were praised by reviewers, who specifically mentioned Ratchet's improved character design.^[26] Game Informer said that "the graphical details will leave you speechless..."^[7] GameSpot considered the reuse of graphics for the menus and mission screens to be "a little lazy", but praised the graphics and sound effects of the game's weapons.^[28] GameSpy mentioned that "Going Commando is easily the most graphically impressive platformer on the market".^[29] GameZone reported that the game's sound was well-done, including the music, weapon effects, and dialogue.^[30]

Criticism of the game was aimed at its level of difficulty, which is higher than that of its predecessor; 1UP.com mentioned that this was most noticeable near the end of the game, where "there are levels that consist of nothing but wave after wave of difficult enemies thrown at you to deplete your ammo, and then more waves of enemies after that."^[26] GameSpy, however, praised this aspect of the game, saying that it made Going Commando more interesting than the original.^[29] Some reviewers also felt that the game's space combat was poorly done in comparison to the rest of the game,^[7] and that the "Giant Clank" levels were "brainless and boring".^[29]

The game was awarded 11th place on IGN's 2007 list of "The Top 25 PS2 Games of All Time".^[32] IGN also awarded both Going Commando and Final Fantasy X-2 their Game of the Month award for November 2003 in their first "Game of the Month" feature to cover two games.^[33]

While the first Ratchet and Clank suffered, in my opinion, because of its immensely generic homogenization of character and because of its relative ease, Ratchet and Clank Going Commando tries to solve these problems in typical Insomniac fashion. Ratchet too annoying? Let him grow up and take charge. Game too easy? Increase the quantity and kinds of weapons for Ratchet and for the enemies.

But Insomniac didn't just fix problems. It looked at every detail of the first game and from the ground up improved everything wholesale. It upgraded everything, and then it added new stuff. [...] Throughout its core fabric, Going Commando is improved in every way.

— Douglass C. Perry^[31]

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando

• Official website
• Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando at MobyGames