Up Your Arsenal!

Under the tree from obsessivewoman this year was Insomniac Games’ worthy successor to their first two Ratchet and Clank games, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. It has many satisfying weapons (such as the Rift Inducer, which sucks enemies into small black holes) and deranged ones (such as the Quack-O-Ray, which turns your opponents into ducks— the first upgrade makes them into ducks that lay explosive eggs, and it gets weirder from there until you have flaming ducks that fly into enemies). Sadly, the Suck Cannon has lost one of its features from the original game: it no longer allows indirect fire.

Saves from the first two games come in handy in this one, dropping the price for weapons from those games to zero. The titanium bolts in this game aren’t as compelling as the gold and platinum bolts in the last two since all they do is unlock skins for Ratchet, most of which are complete disguises rather than interesting outfits. (I play with the tuxedo skin; it adds to the demented quality of the game to have Ratchet wearing formal gear while blowing up everything in sight.)