Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal

The controls are flawless, the weapons are diverse, and the production values are some of the highest in the industry. [Dec 2004, p.106]

UYA's multiplayer experience is excellent. The level of polish is surprisingly high, which is evident in everything from specific gameplay details (the grappling beam's ease of use is superb, for example) to the extensive number of options that can be tweaked.

After a long and successful history, Insomniac Games has finally created its masterpiece, a tour de force that is the zenith of a trio of titles that I feel should be held up in action/platforming history alongside the original "Super Mario Bros." trilogy on the NES. [Nov 2004, p.150]

Up Your Arsenal may be the best game on the PlayStation 2. This is "Mario 64" level quality folks. If you own a PS2 and don't play this game, I'll come to your house personally with a Sheepinator and remove you from the gaming gene pool.

The online game play is just as smooth and fast-moving as the offline versions, and the wacky variety of weapons -- turn your enemy into a sheep! -- makes it a heap of fun.

You've got virtual movie sets to demolish, ships to fly, buggies to battle in, turrets to command, inventively integrated puzzles. [Dec 2004, p.68]

No game is perfect, but I'll be damned if Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal isn't close as can be. There's something in here for everyone to enjoy, and at a mere $40 pricepoint, it's worth every penny.

The multiplayer is just the gravy on the best open-faced turkey sandwich of a game I've played in a long time. This is perfection.

The online multiplayer would be worth the purchase by itself. It's a perfect hybrid between platforming and first-person deathmatch -- in fact, you have the option to play both the single-player and multiplayer using a first-person view -- and works perfectly online.

Friendly enough for the first-time platform player, deep enough for platform veterans, and funny as hell...It's a brilliant game. [Dec 2004, p.126]

One of the best character-action-platform games ever made - right alongside "Mario 64." [Feb 2005, p.9]

Bottom line, this game is absolutely incredible.

Possibly the best PS2 game to date...No other title that has come out or is coming out this year for any system will match the good-natured fun Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal gives you.

A phenomenal game.

Up Your Arsenal has capitalized on what has made the series so beloved: incredible action, outrageous weapons, endearing and humorous characters, beautiful visuals, and everything in between that has made the series stand out in a crowded genre.

Absolutely a must-have title. It is one of the best games of the year. The gameplay is highly addictive and the cut scenes are hilarious- especially Captain Qwark's hand-drawn battle plans.

Excellent work has also been done with the voice acting of the characters. It is as if they hand picked the voices first and then made the looks of the characters to reflect the voices because the voices are well trimmed to the personality of the character they resemble.

The dialogue in Up Your Arsenal is as funny as ever, with some scenes that might have you rolling on the floor. The scene with Ratchet imitating pop star Courtney Gears is absolutely hilarious.

The sheer amount of fun you'll have when playing against seven other people in the ten different maps and various gameplay modes here is almost immeasurable -- it's that damn good. But what impresses me most about Up Your Arsenal is the fact that the single-player adventure didn't suffer in the least.

Up Your Arsenal, while not radically different than its predecessors with the exception of the new online play, still provides some of the purest, most enjoyable gameplay available on the PlayStation 2.

After spending 20+ hours with this game I have no qualms calling it the best action platformer of 2004. It’s just so insanely polished, beautifully designed and amazingly addictive that it’s a wonder that it took me this long to review it.

A fantastic example of what fun games should be like. Never mind that it makes some of the most gorgeous scenes you're likely to find on the PS2, the game itself is so good the eye and ear candy is just extra.

Who would have thought that combining a platform game with an online shooter would have been so much fun?

If you were to lock a group of mad scientists in a room and force them to come up with a formula for a diabolically addictive platform game, chances are the result would play a lot like Up Your Arsenal. [Holiday 2004, p.123]

With the addition of an amazing multiplayer feature, what was widely considered the platformer of the year last year, has now easily vaulted itself into game of the year contention.

The multiplayer adds endless replay value to an already great game.

The music comes more towards the player as a cinematic element rather a primary track and it is similar to some of the more recent James Bond films during the faster paced action scenes.

Just a fantastic game. Needless to say, it's the best in the series, the best platformer on the Playstation 2, and probably the best of this generation.

The best platformer on PS2? Possibly. Fun, beautiful to look at, challenging and rife with glorious detail? You bet your ass it is. An essential purchase. [PSM2]

On its own, the campaign is a bit short (though still excellent), and the multiplayer is a fun diversion but not as deep as a traditional online shooter, but combined, it's one of Sony's top online and offline games.

Really the only problem with Up Your Arsenal is that it doesn't do anything new so much as merely refine the heck out of its past.

With a sublime mix of a humorous storyline, fantastic weaponry, some pure comedy moments, and some amazingly solid platforming sections, there's very little to criticise in Ratchet and Clank 3.

On the multiplayer side, Sony's been looking high and low for a release that can stand up to "Halo" -- we never expected it to come from a platformer! In fact, you'll be hard pressed to find a better combination of action, platforming, and multiplayer goodness than this.

Although we would have liked to see some more additions to the single player, the developers made up for it with an extremely fun multiplayer experience.

This kind of multiplayer in Sony's family friendly mascot franchise may sound odd, but it's actually a whole lot of fun, and offers the kind of compelling team-based experience that's traditionally not found in console shooters.

The environments are incredibly detailed and show a lot of innovation and imagination. It's not a stretch to believe that this world exists as characters go about their daily business and vehicles fly around in background. The AI is also more realistic and more challenging.

Multiplayer was touted to be the biggest addition to the franchise and it does not disappoint.

The animation is superb, showing detail in the smallest of characters, and the environmental damage modeling is superb! The level design is outstanding.

While this third adventure is pretty much more of the same, you also get online gameplay that's guaranteed to keep you blasting on well into the future. [Dec 2004, p.98]

It would be a tragedy if this wild romp got lost among this year's many blockbusters. The variety is fantastic.

However it's all about balance, and Insomniac know how to keep players busy long after the main story has been completed, which is good, as it does feel a little short.

I'm going to bite the bullet on this one and say that Up Your Arsenal does not top the standards set by "Going Commando." Don't, I repeat, do not take this as a sign of UYA being a bad game, because by all means, it is not.

Like the Swiss Army Knife, Up Your Arsenal does it all and even includes a decent online battle mode, as well as a corkscrew and a tiny pair of scissors.

Newcomers might want to try the first two outings in the series just to be sure they don’t get lost playing the third, but other then that small issue, there’s little to complain about.

Insomanic did a good job job of having the sometimes simplistic level design completely overshadowed by exciting gameplay and tons of humorous wit.

Despite there being only one major change to the game, and a couple of slightly smaller ones, Ratchet & Clank 3 is still an improvement and genuinely one of the best platforming games on PS2.

Weapons and flashgun-centric play make this the series' best. [Jan 2007, p.106]

Fitting a team-based shooter into a platformer might not seem like a great fit at first, but when taken as a total package, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal is a truly great game.

While the ingenuity level is a bit low, the way everything comes together is great. There are so many fun weapons to use, the control is tight, levels are fun to tromp through, and everything else doesn't hurt.

Cut-scenes too are of the highest quality and other effects such as explosions and fire have been created brilliantly.

An enjoyable experience worthy of the Ratchet name...even if we're hoping the next iteration of the series pushes the envelope instead of merely experimenting.

The robotic army better watch themselves because it is all about your arsenal. There are plenty of unique weapons to obliterate the opposition.

Excellent. A game that you must play at all costs. One or two concerns, but otherwise great.

Even though it's fun, it's almost too familiar. But the inclusion of a fleshed-out and very entertaining online mode pushes this one over the top.

One of the best of its genre, of that there is no doubt. But is it really acceptable to release a game that's so similar to the previous two that it would take the most devoted fan to spot the difference at first glance?

I'm glad to see Insomniac put a bit of effort into the game's multiplayer mode rather than just passing it off as a stale deathmatch, and I hope there's a strong enough userbase to keep the game popular for some time to come.

A solid, nicely rounded 3-D adventure that is annoyingly satisfying to play.

Indeed, the levelling up system that applies to character, weapons and armour gives the title a much needed pace that may have been left wanting by lacklustre narrative.

The only slight downsides to Up Your Arsenal are Clank's solo missions, where the wee robot has to solve ridiculously simple puzzles on his own, which can be a bit of letdown. Not too dissimilar to the previous titles there, then. The other is that in some respects, the game can be slightly too easy.

An immensely varied game...The only letdown is multiplayer mode which despite pretty levels and vehicles is rather middling and perfunctory.

It's taken two near-miss games to get here, but Insomniac has finally nailed the art of war, lock, stock and around 20 smoking barrels. [Christmas 2004, p.89]

R&C3 is not really a challenging game nor does it try to be, it places key emphasis on being fun and fast paced.

It might be derivative in many ways, but there's a certain charm to the low-rent Futurama antics of the Ratchet & Clank universe: it knows its audience and panders to it without shame, scooping up a disparate medley of platforming/shooting tasks and weaving them all into a quietly epic narrative framework. [Christmas 2004, p.106]