I have been a massive Ratchet and Clank fan for years, so much so that I own every version of the games and maybe an action figure or two. You can probably guess my excitement when it was revealed that the all new Ratchet and Clank Q Force multiplayer BETA was released this week for adoring fans to play.
While my excitement to play the BETA was boiling hot, the after feeling from playing the competitive mode actually left me with a rather lukewarm state of mind. This is the Ratchet and Clank we all know and love, the humour and charm is all there along with yummy 3D visuals to boot, but if the gameplay in the multiplayer is anything to go by then I have a slight sense of worry for the final single player product.
While previous instalments in the series have presented linear, epic tales into the intergalactic adventures of our beloved Lombax and XJ-046 through third person shooter action. Q Force instead hopes to bring the dynamic duo into the realms of team based tower defence akin to the popular Orcs Must Die! or Monday Night Combat games.
Team are set up at the opposite ends of each map within their own base that consists of many spawn pads and a number of energy generators that represent the base’s overall health. Within the centre and outskirts of the map you will find six idle capture points that represent resource nodes for you to gain precious bolts when buying troops and defences. Capturing a node itself is a simple and straight forward affair through the use of a quick mini game that sees you trying to press the action button at the right time when a pin on a dial moves to a certain section.
Once you have captured the node you can then build up shields and infantry defences and turrets around the node to make sure no enemy heroes try and retake the electronic bolt wells. As you capture more nodes, the individual resource currency in your wallet begins to fill which in turns allows you to recruit troops that then go on to try and place siege into the enemy base.
This is where problems began to rise through my lengthy time with the BETA as you find that while dominating the individual nodes is a good thing, it always feels like you are either short on cash, or that the units you wish to buy are just too expensive themselves.
During this capture and recruit phase, you will notice a little timer going down called ‘Recon’ this is meant to be time given for you to go get as much resources as possible before the attacking stage begins where you send your rather high maintenance team of space aliens. During this attack phase all your base shields go down and it is up to you and your partner to build defences and also send out troops to destroy the enemy generators.
The thing is though as I mentioned, you just don’t have enough money to do both at the time and the matches can end up going on for an hour or more just because both teams are emptying their pockets trying to find something to throw at each other. This then leads to you trying to hunt down the enemy team who are generally sitting in between their protected nodes and forcing you to waste all your ammo trying to get through their own node defences and ultimately bringing you an inevitable death due to lack of ammo during the final 1v1.
It leads to a constant transition between boredom and frustration as you wish that there were more players on each team to purchase units and defences with. That and it doesn’t help that you don’t have a default weapon with infinite ammo to turn to when things get rough.
I’m hoping that leading to release we will have the opportunity to have bigger population games, maybe in the 4v4 variety along with a nice steady stream of node resources that will allow the matches to actually stay interesting instead of feeling like a bankrupt military general from the get-go.
Ratchet and Clank Q Force is expected for a Fall 2012 Release on Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita.
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