Cold be damned there is no rest for the weary lol, but thanks alot Dijimarouierueob for this as I needed to make some comparisons, to see if I have some issues :).

excellent work as always DJ. :) can't wait to get my copy of this game, i really hope the postal strike here in the UK doesn't affect it.:(
good to see as always another ps3 exclusive having a 2 star rating.lol the unbiased people on this site crack me up...

Gonna rent this game for sure. always plenty of great jokes and funny moments in these games. I'd like to see them try something in this genre with a more serious looking art style, that would be really interesting.

"a more serious looking art style"? How can you have crazy platforming and crazy creativity in a more boring and unimaginative photorealistic art style? Does anyone ever want a Mario game in photorealistic rendered art style?

Just played the demo (downloaded it over night). Another great R&C, can't wait for the second demo and my copy of the full version. Even if the graphics haven't really improved from Tools of Destruction, they're still up with the best on the PS3. I would have liked more anti-aliasing, but I guess that's the PS3's weakness.
I really appreciate the animations in this. They're really unique and second to none.
And of course, the humor really makes this game. It's rare for games to give me a laugh these days, so that's a big plus.
One of the games that will make my holiday great. Who agrees?

I agree, add a more realistic art stye and what you end up with is Uncharted, cartoony platforming is a different beast and for me personally is more fun simply because it is not restrained by realistic physics. Cartoon style physics allow you to pull off wacky and over the top antics that would just not fit into a realistically rendered game.

I love R&C but I do think the series could take a hiatus at least after this one and maybe reemerge in a few years with a slightly more realistic look, I stress the word slightly because going to far in a "mature" direction would cut the balls off the whole enterprise. The only reason they have almost made too many games in this series is the fact that Insomniac are so incredibly hardworking they literally have been able to produce high quality in quantity.

Isn't this the end of the trilogy for now?

I have no idea why crazy weapons and platforming couldn't be mixed with a darker toned game? Why on earth does everything have to be silly just b/c the gameplay isn't based around violent combat?

Just because it sounds stupid and wrong in my head. I just can't imagine it. Now, if Tim Schafer was on it, he'd make it awesome somehow (Psychonauts).

BTW, I never mentioned realistic graphics, just a more serious or dark tone. The R'nC games have such a cartoony light hearted look that after a while the environments really start to look like just a bunch of plastic. The movie 9 comes to mind as a tone that might work to give this genre a little boost. I know a lot of people who don't play great games like this simply b/c it looks too "kiddie". If you can't see that then you aren't paying attention.

DOES ANYONE else see pixelation especially when you smash boxes to get those nuts and bolts?

@omniscient: Yes, but like I already said, the game could have used more anti-aliasing. Many PS3 games have this pixelation problem (I recall Infamous) because the PS3's GPU lacks a hardware component to do FSAA (Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing) other than the Xbox 360's GPU and most modern PC graphics cards. That's also the reason why many multiplats look slightly better on the 360. It's pretty tricky to have a software workaround to avoid pixelation (Naughty Dog did it with Uncharted 2).

hell no! why? becasue i dont like the idea of a well recognised and iconic character been molested by realism...its the same reason i dont want a mario game to look like this

What is with everyone being such poor readers on this thread? Or is it just defensive fanboyism that blinds people??? I'm not insulting this game at all, just saying a "more serious" NOT, i repeat NOT more realistic tone would be an interesting idea.

Serious does not mean realistic, it means less childish and toy-like in nature. I don't see why this concept is so hard for some on here to grasp lol...

But obviously the theme is more certain people wanting to defend a Sony exclusive to the death, even if it isn't meant to be attacked. Or so it seems, at least I'll admit I could be wrong...

and Korndog: I didn't say make THIS game more serious, i said make A game more serious. It's like I'm speaking a different fucking language lol.

i understand entirely what you ment. but you cant make a tranditional platformer (be it ratchet and clank or a theoretical new IP) with a more serious style. you used 9 as an example of one that apparently does it, but all they've done is set it in a tim burton-esque world. the characters are still cutesey and exagerated. you cant escape that without turning something into something it is not.

you simply cannot have a serious game with cutesy characters. and if you change the way the characters look/are rendered (realism perhaps?), then you may as well just call it uncharted.

but hell, maybe if you actually elaborated on your idea then we wouldnt be having this discussions, so please, explain to me how someone goes about making a game such as ratchet and clank more "serious"? without changing the very foundation of the game itself? give the guy a hoody? and dress him in black? throw in a few cuss words? set the game in grey and brown environments? add some gore? give the guy a complete attitude problem and remove all likeability from said character? (jak 2 onwards)

serious + traditional platformer dont mix imo. whether realism is involved or not. it esentially takes away the very reason i love such games. escapism in video games are becoming a rarer and rarer breed since everything is going for a grounded, serious and realistic approach, ratchet and clank however still harkens back to the time where seeing an inteligent, mutated goldfish (jamespond) was awesome. now it's all about realistically modeled characters in realistically modeled envionments holding realistically modeled guns shooting realistic enemies following a serious grounded story. which is fine and dandy in the action adventure and FPS genre, but if that sort of mentaility when it comes to developing games even looks in the direction of these traditional platformers (of which there are few enough already) then frankly they can fuck right off.

I get it would be nice to make a darker platforming title that exists somewhere between the realism of Uncharted and the cartoony world of Ratchet and there is potentially kind of a gap there that could be filled but its a tough thing to balance I guess which is why nobody has tried it. Maybe from the fear that platform games in general are almost considered a dying genre or that an audience really does'nt exist for such a title. People are very polarized into their specific camps these days, one one hand you have the idiots who won't play a cartoon based title because it "too kiddy" and the people (like myself) who enjoy these types of games precisely because of the virtues of the cartoon style that frees the game up from having to adhere to realistic physics and limitations.

While it might sound like a nice idea to make a more serious platformer, what you basically end up with as I said before is Uncharted, which combines platforming and shooting on the opposite end of the style spectrum of Ratchet and Clank. If you go in a realistic direction it becomes harder to justify jumping around on floating platforms because why the hell would anyone make a world like that? The most successful example of a science fiction based platformer so far in my opinion would be the Metroid Prime trilogy but there were still more than a few times in those titles where the overriding logic of the world was kind of a stretch.

Again, for the 23rd time, I didn't say more realistic, I just said more serious tone (as in less childish or silly). I don't see why you couldn't have the same (or similar) gameplay mechanics of R'nC games in a world with darker themed environments where the lighting and textures look less like plastic toys. You could use magic or Sci-Fi to easily get around the realism factor if you want, not that it would really be important as it's just a video game. Unrealistic physics didn't hurt Uncharted 2 or prince of persia, why worry now that I'm talking about it?

Just look at Harry Potter or any fantasy setting. You could easily use that type of a world to employ platforming and unique weapons, or as I siad, sci-fi would work just as easily. Those are just two examples. Making up your own unique world would be the most obvious/easiest choice.

Nothing about the R'nC or Jack formula couldn't work with a more "tim burton-esque" style/theme to the game.

And I never said to stop making R'nC game either, only that it would be nice to have a little variety in the genre b/c it seems like all devs have a very closed mind about how these platformers should look (they are all too similar IMO).

All I'm hearing is closed minded sounding opinions, I've yet to hear any objective solid reasons for why this wouldn't work well at all.

Metroid Prime is a great example of a game creating it's own rules and style that mixes between serious and cartoon like graphics/tone.

It seems like you guys (mainly Korndog) are just focusing on the extreme opposite of cartoony, and not actually paying attention to what I am saying. And as for attacking me for not elobarating more....you didn't have to assume so much about my line of thinking either did you? Funny how that works both ways...

Obviously, for no apparent solid reasoning, nobody is going to do anything but blindly attack me on this and it's grown annoying and tired in a hurry. I'll just say that I personally would like to see someone have the balls to give this type of game a try. But to act like there is some sort of videogame law of nature to prevent this from working sounds quite silly IMO.

It looks like Im the only one who thinks the platforming market doesn't need to conform so strictly to such a limited style of presentation. But obvioulsy this is something that really seems to offend people, as silly as that seems to me.

But ACiT is the only time its been significant enough to be a nuisance or even recognisable (could be because of my screen size as Infamous looked phenomenal with no AA issues).

Ah yes, lack of reading comprehension coupled with pulling things out of context strikes again once more. I for one can see where you're coming from Nietzsche, and I fully understand your reasoning...

@Jato
LOL thanks, glad to know at least someone is taking to time to read carefully. It's frustrating how many comments give away the lack of comprehension based on the implications alone.

If they wanna simply disagree fine, but the respones show otherwise...

@Nietzsche- Have you ever played Beyond Good and Evil? ARRG! I need a new one! I would say that fits what you're getting at pretty well. Well, I guess it wasn't much of a platformer, but... eh. Anyway, This particular genre( box-bustin' collect-a-thons) has played itself out for me. I just cant get into it anymore...

Actually that is a really good example of what I'm talking about. And the CGI trailer for that games supposed sequal is also a great example of what I'm talking about. BGaE might not be exactly like R'nC in terms of gameplay, but it's close enough to get the idea. Psychonauts is another example of a game getting a little closer to what I'm talking about.

They seemed to focus too much on "realistic" and not enough on just a more serious and dark tone. Nothing in the R'nC world feels dangerous or evil really. I'd like a game in that genre that had a more serious sense of consequences, not just silly antics the whole way through.

I think R'nC are great games and they have a spot in the market no doubt, I just think it's quite foolish to think platformers need to fit so rigidly into such a restricting set of parameters.

I would just like a little more variety to this genre, one of the reasons I think it's not well supported anymore tbh.