If I had to weight in on the top dozen PS2 title franchises worth owning (now that you can probably find all of them cheap on the bargain bin at your favorite gaming store like GameStop), two of those I have to give kudos to would be the Ratchet & Clank franchise (one of my favorite platformers ever) and the Jax franchise. Four PS2 games apiece, and a guest appearance as playable golfer/caddy in Hot Shots Golf Fore!, these two have made the leap from PS2 to PSP (and one is even making a leap to the PS3 as we speak).

These are the reviews of these two games first (and possibly last) PSP outings.

It seems another thing these two games have in common is that they’re both buddy games… except Daxter since he works solo in the game. Ratchet & Clank, however? Definitely buddy game.

It has been awhile since we’ve last touched bases with the whole Ratchet & Clank universe, hasn’t it?
Not counting my retro review of Ratchet & Clank (the original game) I haven’t reviewed a game in this venue since Ratchet & Clank : Up Your Arsenal! Well enjoy this game while it lasts (which isn’t long), because the next time you see Ratchet & Clank it’ll be part of the large justification release of games that will at last vindicate PS3 owners who bought in at the start only to get mocked for the longest time for the lack of quality games on the PS3... Which ends this Christmas and

2008 as the long wait for great games ends and the PS3 begins to earn it’s hefty (ridiculously expensive) cost by rolling out games worth playing, including Ratchet & Clank Future (the first of a hopeful trilogy of games for the PS3).

But for those of us didn’t have $600 (now $500 with $100 shaved off the top of the not so perfect 1st gen PS3 while keeping the $600 pricetag for the 2nd gen PS3) to invest in a PS3? We’ll always have the PSP and Size Matters.

After all those Ratchet & Clank games (and all that golfing in Hot Shots Golf Fore!) we’ve caught up with the duo while on vacation on some nice resort planet. After a run-in with El Capitan Qwark (who suddenly seems hot on finding his parents, maybe because he needs a loan or something) they run into a little girl (or is that the other way around) named Luna. Luna, who besides sporting a rare Yotsuba hairstyle, seems to be the target of strange evil forces bent on capturing her. One thing leads to another and the duo find themselves drawn into a grand adventure concerning her rescue and the involvement of a previously thought to be urban legend race of micronized machines -- which turn out to be quite real, and kinda pissed off about how their place in history has been usurped by those who exploited them for their own personal gain. To this end they capture and split up Ratchet & Clank, and

uee Ratchet as a basis for cloning an army of Ratchet bots for their own nefarious ends. Looks like the duo will have to log in some overtime to stop this latest galaxy threatening plot!

Controls on this game? They’re kinda a love it or hate it proposition.
I found it easy enough for the most part, though it could have used some tweaking here and there on some respects to make it perfect. Still, others were really down on the controls and that is not the fairest thing to say about this game. It’s not going to have PS2 control schematics, that’s impossible, so in light of that I thought the game did well enough on it’s controls what with two missing upper L+R buttons and one missing analog stick.

Missions are laid out in traditional Ratchet & Clank format way, but this lacks depth as the missions are shorter and not as varied as before. Also there is less reason to backtrack to previous planets unless you’re out to snap up as much of the special bolts as possible (and that isn’t as much of an incentive as it used to be in the past).

You have a nice tidy little arsenal of weapons and tools at your disposal, including a new way to open stubborn locked doors, and gain a “magnetic” personality, so that’s nice. Weapons all level up nicely (Level 4 if I remember right), and the selection is good for a PSP title (abit of choice including a few new weapons

if I remember what I used to shoot in previous games correctly).

Still the short level sizes, not so perfect controls and short game span (about 12-15 hours overall) make this a game for die hard Ratchet & Clank fans. Sure, there’s multiplayer but just try to find someone to compete against (a complaint I often have is it’s hard to find people to compete against). Oh, and there’s also a new set of arena games but they seem to be Clank-centric including a vechicular last bot standing format, bot ball and a ripoff of Lemmings.

True believers will find their need for Ratchet & Clank satisfied here, though new gamers might not be so hot on the duo as us long term gamers of the franchise. To that end Ratchet & Clank : Size Matters gets a optimistically upbeat 4 mini Ratchets out of 5... Yeah, I know, others have given it a 3 or so but it’s the last taste of the franchise you’ll get without owning a PS3 so, well, might as well enjoy this last hoorah before it goes PS3 on all of us.

And yeah, on another front I have heard about Hot Shots Tennis.
Hot Shots Tennis. Damn. Golf is one thing, and I still have to review Hot Shots Golf : Open Tee and all, but Hot Shots Tennis?!? Does this mean I have to review it?? Will there be a Hot Shots Tennis : Open Court for the PSP in the near future? Why!

(To Be Continued?)