Family Friendly: Ratchet and Clank Future
One of may favorite franchises, stemming from its humor, guns and gadgets, is the Sony-published Ratchet and Clank. Having enjoyed every outing since its humble beginnings on the PS2, R&C’s first retail and digital outings were must plays for me on the PS3. With little effort, it’s now one of my kid’s favorites and they’re eagerly waiting the next release this Fall.
As a standard fare action-platformer, the game revolves around jumping around and shooting no-good-nick’s and local aggressive wildlife with a myriad of different exotic weapons. This in and of itself presents an interesting situation in which my kids will be watching me blast baddies for extended periods of time. For me, since the evil-doers consist of cartooned robots, aliens, and abnormal creatures, the display is no worse than some current Saturday morning cartoons. That’s not to say there has not been any backlash. My two daughters have taken a liking to turn sticks into guns and lash out the occasional “bang bang” or “shoot shoot”, which requires consistent negative reinforcement to reduce this behavior. My oldest daughter has requested many times to play the game and tried a few times, but she was never able to grasp the control scheme. While control of the character was doable, having to jump, navigate tight areas, or using the gadgets proved too complicated.
From a humor standpoint, Ratchet and Clank usually contains minor toilet humor but nothing I would call above a PG rating. Well, maybe some of it reaches into PG-13 territory, but overall its relatively mild. All of these comments are over the heads of my two kids, so there has been no concern of it working its way into their daily vocabulary. Now that’s not say that they haven’t enjoyed the pirate robots or we haven’t heard “Yar!” shouted, although I may have egged that on. Personally, my own lexicon contains quite a bit of vulgar, and potty speech. So it’s already a constant battle of mediation on my speech and reprimanding on them to ensure my two little parrots don’t go around squawking my own verbiage.
One of the parts that my children extremely enjoy are the stories and the lively characters that permeate these titles. In fact, the PSN-specific Quest for Booty became known as the “pirate game”. The hardest part was trying to relay the fact that game was over and that we would have to wait a few months for the next game. If there had been more replay-ability, this title would have seen quite a bit more screen time. The last disc-based version received quite a bit of play time collecting all the weapons and unlocking the special events; and, had it featured true PSN Trophy support probably would have seen 100% completion, to which my daughters would have been thrilled.
All in all, I would recommend this adventure with your kids as long as you don’t mind the minor violence and speech. I’m not going to tell you what is the right environment for your kids. That is a conscious decision you must make as a parent. Also, if your kids are 5+, they should be able to graduate from watching to playing the game for further enjoyment.
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
Alcohol Reference, Crude Humor,
Fantasy Violence, Language
Average web score: 7.1/10
(according to TestFreaks)
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Do you find they learn anything from this title except better hand-eye coordination and how old are they? I've got another year or so before my son can comprehend a game like this I think.
Yeah, from a 'learning' standpoint it's only hand-eye coordination. Now, they love the story and the characters and that's what keeps bringing them back.
BTW, they're 3 and 4.
Given that my son has already mastered LEGO Batman and LittleBigPlanet by age 4, I'm guessing this fall's Ratchet & Clank will be a hit with him. I just hope the Clank sections are playable. I always worry when they start talking about expanding Clank's role with puzzle-themed side-levels. Blech.
Ahh, my son will be 3 on new years eve. Maybe R&C for Xmas ain't a bad idea!
Well isn't your son just a video game child prodigy! lol.
'Minor toilet humour' is all my six year old is interested in these days. That, and games – no matter how poor – that feature Spiderman.
It's so hard to judge kiddie ability, though. He's almost finished Spiderman – Friend or Foe (and in style, actually – he kicks my ass at it) but he struggles with LEGO Batman due to the reading/comprehension aspects.
Think I may pick this up around Christmas time, too.
He better be, because I sure hell won't be able to teach him to hit a baseball or whatever.
What's great about younger kids is that you can give them a horrible game, but they don't care. I used to be a pro at SpongeBob and Fairly Odd Parents games.
Just teach him how to throw a Pokeball and he should be fine… until he gets to high school…
This is good to know.
I was too. I played a ton of really bad Gameboy games. I especially played this Treasure Planet game. There was no save system. You had to remember the little code that they gave you. I must have played that game over 50 hours, but I never beat it.
'Minor toilet humour' is all my six year old is interested in these days. That, and games – no matter how poor – that feature Spiderman.
It's so hard to judge kiddie ability, though. He's almost finished Spiderman – Friend or Foe (and in style, actually – he kicks my ass at it) but he struggles with LEGO Batman due to the reading/comprehension aspects.
Think I may pick this up around Christmas time, too.
He better be, because I sure as hell won't be able to teach him to hit a baseball or whatever.
What's great about younger kids is that you can give them a horrible game, but they don't care. I used to be a pro at SpongeBob and Fairly Odd Parents games.
Just teach him how to throw a Pokeball and he should be fine… until he gets to high school…
This is good to know.
I was too. I played a ton of really bad Gameboy games. I especially played this Treasure Planet game. There was no save system. You had to remember the little code that they gave you. I must have played that game over 50 hours, but I never beat it.