Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty

If you haven't played a Ratchet and Clank game before, this is certainly a good place to start since it has a very short play time.

Though Quest for Booty, again, isn't a bad game, it's not a good Ratchet game, and in the end that makes for a slightly disappointing and possibly even overpriced offering. With zero replay value and only a few new tricks, this Quest isn't worth taking.

Quest for Booty is a solid, funny little platform game with good camerawork and controls so long established that their pristine execution scarcely warrants mention, but it feels so much like a regular Ratchet & Clank game that it's jarring to discover it ends so quickly, leaving us to damn it over and over again with faint praise.

The thing holding it back isn’t the length, but rather it’s the lack of anything different that sets it apart.

It’s really a question of quality over quantity, and though some may balk at the £9.99 price tag for such a short non replayable experience, the actual gameplay reminds us all how platforming should be fun.

With Quest for Booty Insomniac Games shows that downloadable games are turning into a serious gaming-platform. Quest for Booty offers action and gameplay elements that are more than worthy for the platform genre. You even take the minor flaws the game has (no new features whatsoever and -in comparison with Tools of Destruction- limited possibilities) for granted when you see the price.

Ratchet and Clank: A Quest for Booty feels like a long side quest away from the events of Tools Of Destruction it therefore avoids any real spoilers to the main series story.

At four hours long, Quest For Booty doesn’t outstay its welcome, but it’s devoid of ambition, as is customary with the series. Ratchet & Clank is beginning to feel like a licensed franchise, but without the licence.

Even without the extras we are accustomed to seeing in the series, the updated visuals, new mechanics and enjoyable adventure are worth the price of admission.

It has all the same elements as the original, but it just doesn't deliver the charm and appeal.

You can’t fault it in terms of artistic design, and although it’s no better than its predecessor, it’s certainly no worse. [Oct 2008, p.120]

Slick almost to a fault, Insomniac attempts to obscure the fact that Quest is merely more of the same via a façade of bombastic battles that unfortunately wind up being more tedious than exciting.