I downloaded the demo of Ratchet and Clank Future for PS3 yesterday and spent a good deal of time playing through the game. First impressions: the game is utterly beautiful. Sure, it’s not life-like, but these are some amazing graphics! It’s been said before, but this really does look like a Pixar movie. The game has a great feel, like previous Ratchet and Clank games. There’s a good deal of humor involved in both gameplay and cutscenes.
The controls are great and feel like just previous Ratchet games. I wasn’t able to find an option to invert the Y axis, which was disconcerting. I’m guessing this is just missing in the demo, but it made the demo more difficult for me since I’m used to an inverted axis for all games. There is also no explanation in the demo of what the controls are. For users new to the series, this can be frustrating. The camera isn’t the best, much like all Ratchet games. For platforms, I’m a big fan of auto-centering the camera behind the character. Ratchet and Clank Future does this, but it’s a very slow centering. It’s a personal thing of mine, so take it as you will.
Overall, the demo is very fun. The solid gameplay combined with the beautiful graphics mean I’ll be picking this up the day it launches.
I have the version of the demo that came on disc a few weeks back, and it has options to invert both horizontal and vertical axes (otherwise I would have gone nuts).
I agree — it looks great overall. But there is a bit of V-Sync tearing on some of the more compicated scenes, especially when the camera pans. Otherwise, it’s visually as good as any platformer I’ve ever seen… and the environments are HUGE.
Where is that option for inverting the controls? If I hit start, I only have options for sound levels
From my understanding the downloaded version and the one that was at Gamestop are not the same version. The one from gamestop had additional options, and problems with Vsync. The one from the download fixed the vsync (at least I have not noticed any problems with it) and did not have the options to modify the controls. The full version is supposed to have all of the standard control options.
I have no idea why they removed them for the demo though…….
I have to say that’s pretty dumb. Taking out control options for the demo on the PSN will only upset potential buyers of the game.
That said, I didn’t see any Vsync issues with the downloaded demo
@pandas,
I agree that it was pretty dumb — although it might have just been an oversight when the did the new demo build for the PSN. A lot of people were concerned that they would not have these options, but I am pretty sure I read somewhere that the Insomniac said those control features would be in the final build. (Although I can’t find the link… so I may be wrong).
Yeah not having the option to invert the Y axis is a HUGE downfall should it not make it in the game. People that only use inverted will have a difficult time playing the game. It took some of the fun out of the demo for me
Yeah, I am one of those people who want to invert the y-axis….. It took me a bit to get used to. I would be really shocked if this isn’t in the final build.
Not inverting sucks bigtime. But after playing this demo, I friggin loved it. My only beef aside from the non-inversion is that the demo (1.6 gigs) is maybe 10-15 minutes long. That’s one big ass download for such a short demo.