You won't spend the entire game blasting through aliens and robots as Ratchet, of course. As in previous games, Clank sometimes has to set out on his own - although things are a little different for him this time around. Instead of commanding groups of toothy, lemming-like Clank-bots, he'll issue commands to the Zoni, a race of floating aliens that only he can see. Invisible or not, they're awfully good at blowing up enemies, and they're key to solving the simple puzzles Clank has to deal with. They'll also grant him certain powers later in the game, like the ability to sprout Robo-Wings, which enable Ratchet to fly using the Sixaxis motion controls.
Overall, Ratchet & Clank Future makes pretty good use of the tilt controls; they're not intrusive, and they're largely limited to things like free-falling, gliding and minigames, where it makes sense to use them. For example, the computer-hacking minigame involves tilting a circuit board to roll a ball around, using it to bridge gaps for a slow-moving spark, which feels completely natural. Even the Robo-Wing controls (which we slagged on in our last preview) have been fine-tuned to the point where controller-tilting doesn't feel awkward in the slightest. And if you still have a problem with any of that, you're free to turn the motion controls off altogether.
We'll even go so far as to say that Sixaxis controls might have improved the Starfox -y, on-rails space-combat sequences, which - while pretty - are way too slow and simple to be much more than a distraction from the main storyline. Three of the game's 18 levels are devoted to these set-pieces, and while they're kind of fun, Insomniac was apparently so concerned with making them accessible to newcomers that there isn't much challenge or excitement to them. Survival is just a matter of pasting everything that looks like a target with the right analog stick while keeping your ship drifting out of harm's way with the left. The option of using Panzer Dragoon-style cluster missiles makes things a little more interesting, but a greater sense of speed and a lot more enemies wouldn't have hurt, either. At least we could do barrel rolls.
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big000 - August 8, 2011 2:36 a.m.