5 things you'll hate about Ratchet & Clank Future

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...and a few you'll love, plus new screens and hands-on impressions

3. Sixaxis flight controls are awkward
We don't care what anyone says about how revolutionary and cool the Sixaxis' motion-controls are; until you get used to them, it's an absolute bitch to try and fly around by tilting your control pad. There's no tactile feedback, it's easy to slip up and precision is a near-impossibility. Lair, Warhawk and Blazing Angels all suffer from this problem, and now Ratchet & Clank Future has joined their ranks.

See, one of the key plot points of Ratchet & Clank Future is that Clank comes into contact with little floaty aliens that only he can see, who help him unlock strange new powers. One of these is an ability to sprout bright green Robo-Wings, which Ratchet can use to fly if he launches himself from special pads.

This is all fine and good when you just want to soar freely around the level; the problem is that you'll have to fly Ratchet through a series of tight rings and narrow passageways using motion controls before you can do that. Miss a ring or hit a wall, and you'll have to start over again.

To be fair, Sixaxis controls work really well for some aspects of the game, such as steering the giant twisters spat out by Ratchet's Tornado Launcher, or controlling his floating Visi-Copter, for which precision doesn't really matter. We just hope it's optional, is all.

4. Space missions are like StarFox for idiots
You won't use Sixaxis controls during the space missions Ratchet and Clank tackle between planets, but you won't really be doing much else, either. Space combat in Ratchet & Clank Future is all on rails, and your input is limited to moving the duo's ship with the left thumbstick, aiming its cannons with the right and shooting.

The levels are long and pretty - the one that we played took us past ginormous space-pirate frigates and directly into a black hole, where we fought a skull-faced boss amid a 2001-style light show - but the simplicity of it didn't hold our interest for long. We couldn't even do a barrel roll. The hell?

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.