Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction Review

The visual leap is the headline and it deserved to be. Fur, subsurface scattering on skin, dense particle work from every weapon and a stable sixty frames combined into something that genuinely looked like an animated film running live, and in 2007 that was not a thing anyone else was doing. The design underneath is a careful iteration rather than a reinvention. Weapon levelling returns, the new toys are inventive, and the Groovitron and Mr Zurkon in particular have never left the series since.

Clank's Zoni sections introduce a slower puzzle rhythm that divides people, and the sixaxis motion controls for gliding and hacking are the clear misstep, tolerated rather than enjoyed. Story wise it is a setup chapter for a trilogy, so it ends on a cliffhanger without resolving its own mysteries, and the Lombax backstory is teased more than told. Difficulty is on the gentle side throughout. As a technical showcase with a genuinely good game inside it, this is where the series went high definition without losing itself.