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Release Date: November 3, 2004
Developers: Insomniac Games
Publishers: Sony Computer Entertainment
Platforms: PlayStation 2
Genre: Platform
Players: Single-player, multiplayer (online)
Rating: 3+

Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (known as Ratchet & Clank 3 in Europe and Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal in Australia) is a platform game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony. It is the third installment in the Ratchet & Clank series and was released in North America on November 3, 2004. Shortly after it was released in Japan on November 25, the first volume of the Ratchet & Clank manga, drawn by Shinbo Nomura, was released.

The setting was pretty nice, once again they have designed the perfect setting with new worlds, new weapons, new characters, new gadgets. It was just perfect. Once again from the pervious game it sent you to a range of different planets, fighting different enemies and undergoing some bizarre events. The planets once again had some pretty bizarre scenery and some pretty cool scenery effects. Overall Ratchet and Clank 3 had a pretty good scenery and another amazing game to add to the series.

Well the gameplay was once again just pure class. The new features and weapons, planets everything was just amazing. First of all the weapons. Apart from the melee wrench you automatically have at the beginning of all of the games the weapons have took a much higher step in technical advancement, they added a few more weapons and kept a few aswell. The ones that they kept were so much better than what they were like on the previous game, due to an advancement to them and making them much stronger. The new weapons were great overall, there was one weapon that was the funniest for me, it was a duck gun, and when you shot someone they would turn into a duck and would be completely defenceless for a while, this was a really fun gun to use and awesome to use on your friends when playing with them, its just classic to see them rage over it. They have also made some changes to the upgrade system, many of the weapons now are upgraded to an ultimate killing machine, instead of just increasing ammo and stuff like that, with new upgrades, new sights for weapons, adding power and changing color sometimes, the weapons were a great hit for me. Secondly Clank. Clank becomes a much more needed part to the story in this game. There is also quite a few missions with him in. Usually in one of his movies like at the beginning of the game, clank is mostly used for places that Ratchet cannot go into due his his size, so Clank is the next in line for the job. With his crew of minirobots Clank is used to go through puzzles in order to make some kinda of opening for Ratchet to get through. Clank also has a couple of Giant Clank missions, where clank becomes a massive robot and undergoes some amazing missions being able to fie weapons and bombs and usually come against enemies of a similar height. This was a really fun part to the mission as it was fun to have a game as a bulldozer just smashing his way from one side of the mission to the other. Clank was also a useful feature for ratchet acting as a jet pack for him so he can fly, was a brilliant idea. There are also a few missions with Captain Qwark, but these are a side mini-game where it would be a side-scrolling comic-book mission telling storys of his past and triumphant battles. Overall the gameplay was amazing and i enjoyed every second of it.

Well if you play Ratchet and Clank 2 and the put in Ratchet and Clank 3, you will see the massive graphical developmemnt the game has made. Everything ran smoother there were no glitches whatsoever, no slow loading screens and the visuals were fantastic. I hade no reason to hate this games graphics because they were just perfect, they were defiantly one of the best of the ps2 era. The effects on the characters aswell was great, i mean how shiny could Clank possibly get? Overall i thought the graphics were amazing.

The controls were quite simple because the game was a platformer making the controls pretty easy, the new weapons and clanks new controls didn't make the game any more complicating. There were no complicating moves at all which was good. The game could be played by my little sister and she probably wouldn't find it that hard after a while, so pretty easy controls but fun all the same. Overall pretty decent easy controls.

Soon after its release Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal received critical acclaim. GameSpy awarded it 5 stars out of 5, and IGN said that "You MUST buy this immediately" due to its extensive line-up of weaponry, high quality graphics and polished sound effects. IGN did however, believe it was easier than the previous game, Going Commando, while GameSpot thought that the gameplay was too similar to the previous title, but both reviewers considered these as minor issues and they made little difference to the overall score. Gaming magazines GamesTM and Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine both mentioned that the offbeat comedy that was apparent throughout the majority of the game was one of the points that made it unique.

My final comments for this game would be that...It was a fun game to play kept me amused for a pretty long time, the gameplay was amazing, the graphics were smooth and great, the new planets were epic. It was just the perfect game.