Ratchet, Clank and uncontrollable dragons (+ photos)

Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction could be one of the PS3's best titles yet.

From the crop of PS3 new releases comes an expected winner from one of PlayStation's most successful franchises and a game that is much better than some critics have said.

Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

G, Insomniac.

PS3

You can depend on the developers of Ratchet and Clank games to get it right.

They have sculpted the working formula in stone, and now they can concentrate on showing off the potential of the new PS3 console and breathe exciting new life into the gameplay and visuals of a franchise that has always pleased - especially with its quirky humour and bright visuals.

The result?

Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

and perhaps the best yet - it could even be the most polished game on PlayStation 3 so far. It's hard to fault.

The story is good and varied - not that it matters so much with Ratchet, the shiny surfaces and glinting metals are impressive, the environments expansive, the framerate smooth, the six-axis controls behave superbly, and there are lots of fun weapons. The result is a fun platform shooter that bounces along for about 12 hours.

In the story, Ratchet is the last Lombax in the world but Emperor Percival Tachoyon wants the Lombaxs wiped out, especially Ratchet.

Any negatives? Sure, it's a bit easy, you may have grown tired of Ratchet after five years and there is no full-on multiplayer.

But the rest of us love the storyline and glorious visuals, word.

MadGamer's rating: 9.5 / 10

Lair

M, Sony/Factory 5.

PS3

Lair

held a lot of promise. The story sounded good, it is good. In a world ravaged by endless conflict and natural disasters, a call for peace turns into a bloodbath of betrayal and deceit.

Playing as a warrior riding a voracious dragon trained for deadly aerial and ground combat, and capable of scorching, clawing and smashing thousands of enemies, gamers must defeat endless armies to save civilisation.

Together, Rohn and the beast attempt to change the destiny of a world where two civilisations battle for resources on the brink of extinction. Wow. In other words, you fly around atop your dragon, burning and pillaging your attacking enemies and the other reptiles.

The problem: it's frustrating. The combat system works well but identifying and targeting enemies becomes near impossible.

The visuals are indeed remarkable, I suspect due to the sometimes choppy framerates that there is simply too much graphical goodness packed in. The sound is impeccable, which is tricky for a game of this type to get right. There are more downsides however.

Before your training, you are expected to defend your mother city and her grain stores, learning somehow 'on the fly' how to use the long-learning curve controls.

Once you pick up the controls things become easier than you'd expect - it's a fantastic experience flying through missions quicker than anticipated.

Controls have their annoyances also in that you should be able to dive into your opponents or shoot flames at them. But you don't get to choose what to lock on to and have to wait for a circle to appear on an enemy. Randomly firing multiple rapid flame bursts seems more effective at knocking weak dragons from the sky.

So - it's got great production values, but is no fun to play. If only they could have got that targeting system right and had the training up front, then this would have lived up to the hype.

MadGamer rating 7 / 10