Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time more reviewing

Yes more R&C, the Ratchet mission are split over various galaxies you can travel between with the next opening up after you complete the story missions in the current one. In between you get a Clank mission; it's a nice change of pace and you don't feel hemmed in by the story.

One problem I've had is with the mini-map, perhaps I've just been spoiled but I want this navigational tool to be an aid to navigation; I'm odd like that. Instead you get a grey circle with you in the middle and points of interest as coloured blobs. While it does mean you have to look at the screen rather than being able to just follow the map layouts the flipside is that  you need to drag up the main map sometimes just to find out where the hell you are and where you're going.

The biggest problem I had was space navigation. You're constrained to a 2D plane so that's one worry taken care off, but the mini-map is the same style this time though you get a pulsing set of concentric circles around your next objective as well as a grey arrow pointing you in the right direction. Except sometimes it doesn't.

In one galaxy I had two flashing points, I went to the nearest and found I couldn't complete it because I needed something from the other in other words I went to the wrong one first by accident. The other joy is when you start a space mission with objectives as that gets added as a circle too. So tow a shuttle to the depot and as soon as you latch on to it another flash will appear, let go to defend the shuttle and the flash vanishes. Return to pick it up and um which flash should I be heading for.

Likewise in those particular missions you have to release the tow at that objective, if you think "Hey I might as well land" it won't release the tow the shuttle will revert to its original location and obviously you don't complete that mission.

That's one problem, the other was seeing planets claiming that they were "Incomplete" with no indication of why. Hover over one and look I've got the 1/1 Zoni here, so what have I missed? Don't know. On the larger planets that require a load between land and space (and space and land) the only way to find out if that Gold Bolt you've found completes that planet is by returning to your ship, blasting off, waiting for space to load, then pulling up the map to see if the status has changed. If not it's return, wait for a load and scrabble around again. When you consider that every previous game had a counter somewhere that tells you exactly this information the lack for this version is baffling.

The weapons so far have been fun, except sigh there's still the "Hey let's use the sixaxis control" weapon; it's a useful weapon as you can fire it and then steer it around the area zapping the enemies, but seriously give it up the sixaxis does not work well due to the boneheaded decision by Sony not to include an auto-balance.

Basically speaking have you ever seen anyone play a game with the controller perfectly level? Not many I'm willing to bet, yet as soon as you try to use the sixaxis motion controls the game assumes that's what you're doing. So you fire off this electric ball and it starts moving backwards and tipping to the side because that's how you're holding the controller. Now imagine you're holding the controller in this unnaturally stiff position to steer the ball around while at the same time trying to use the sticks to look and move your character; it just doesn't work. Use one or the other but not both.

The weapons also level up very quickly the more you use a weapon the better it gets until it hits the cap at level 5; which is great except if you run out of ammo during a massive firefight later in the game and need to switch from your Level 5 Blaster to your Level 1 Energy Spiral. As such you start making a conscious choice to rotate your weapons around rather than just use the most efficient. Considering that some weapons you can't buy until you progress in the game and the only way they can make you want to use them over your levelled up versions is by making them much more powerful. Then to stop you just using those, they usually have restricted amount of ammo.

It's a trade-off, but I can't see what else they can do except just collect experience for all weapons and allow you to level up whichever weapon you want.

It's still fun and as usual it's the incidentals that make me laugh so I'm still playing it.