Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters

Tiny enemies - Big, big trouble.

The PlayStation Portable, and I suppose the PlayStation Vita too, has quite the following amongst players who dove right into them and make sure to get their moneys-worth from a system that would never reach the heights of whatever Nintendo would put out.

While it didn't seem to catch on with a casual audience, those who had a PSP knew that was a beefy little machine capable of portable gaming the likes of which couldn't really be found anywhere else - not to this degree, at least. It was a tiny little PlayStation 2 in your big pocket. 

How do you show off its capabilities? How about by taking a much loved new IP and demonstrating that it can run on the PSP just like it could on the PS2. Sort of.

That IP was Ratchet & Clank, and the demonstration was Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters. Does it matter? Let's find out.

Fun Times

I have had Size Matters in my collection since its release in mid-2007, but a quick look at the last save file I have shows no progress since about a month after release. Did I finish it? In two and a half hours I suspect not. We'll get back to that later...

Our heroic duo are chilling on the beach on Pokitaru. Graphically, yes, there is a clear distinction between this and any of the PlayStation 2 titles of the series, but let's be honest, it's perfectly serviceable and definitely looks like any other Ratchet & Clank title. Bright colours, cartoony animation, the same voice actors. If you wanted more Ratchet & Clank, you've got more Ratchet & Clank.

The peace is interrupted by Luna, a girl the thubtitlth make thure to convey has a lithp, but recognizes our heroes and wonders if she could grab some photos of them in action for her schoolwork. Luckily, she knows where to find some evil-looking robots nearby, and has the knowledge of the controls, which, after 13 years, I don't.

They are, however, more or less what you'd expect them to be. Ratchet swings his wrench with devastating speed using the square button, the triangle button opens up a weapon wheel where you can pick something to throw or shoot using the circle button, and the X button has you hop and double jump around the environment in the action-platform way that you expect from a Ratchet & Clank title.

Frustrations

You will, of course, note that something is missing when it comes to movement. The analogue nub moves Ratchet around just fine, but no second nub means the camera often looks like this - useless. Enemies can and will attack you from off-screen, and there is next to nothing you can do about it but constantly rotate the camera with the L and R shoulder buttons.

Owing to the lack of buttons on the PSP, the shoulder buttons also do double duty, serving as modifiers for your jump, either giving you extra height from a crouch jump, or distance from a long jump. Trying to long jump over a pit without having a centred camera is, therefore, rather inadvisable, and means Size Matters plays a little more cautiously than you'd like.

Further Fun Times

But it does play like Ratchet & Clank. Enemies animate like they're made of rubber, stretching back after being hit and bouncing around like cartoon characters before exploding into the shinest of nuts, bolts, and springs - still the most satisfying in-game currency there has ever been. Ah, that jingle jangle sound effect when you hoover them up...

Anyway, it may look like you're playing with all the graphics turned to low, but you're playing a Ratchet & Clank title. An awkward one, but one that doesn't skimp on the action or the story.

A sub-plot involving Captain Quarks parents distracts the gang from robots kidnapping Luna in broad daylight, and, being heroes, we better go and chase her down to save the day.

As we make progress through the beach resort, swatting robots as we find them, the game finally teaches us about strafing, a hugely important part of the series. These games are full of enemies attacking you from all over the place, so locking onto and moving safely around your target is essential.

With limited buttons available, weapons auto-lock onto targets when they detect one, and from there you switch over to the D-pad to strafe left and right around that enemy. You can switch the analogue nub with the D-pad in the settings if you prefer, but basically strafing and moving are separated, and while that's not ideal, it does at least work.

You're still going to get camera issues, but it works, and it allows you to play Size Matters and largely forget that you're playing a PSP. Everything about the game is the same as its bigger brothers. Bolts hide in crates and destructible scenery, ammo and health can be found in crates or purchase from Gedgetron vendors, and everything gains its own experience points to level up, including your arsenal of elaborate and sometimes goofy weapons.

Throughout the level so far we've been collecting bits and pieces of our armour, each offering various bonuses, and a full set giving you something worthwhile, like a flaming wrench. But with all the combinations you could wear them in, and I suppose to save on space, the cutscenes are pre-rendered with Ratchet in his default shirtless state.

It's no big deal, but these cutscenes are a little compressed and noticeably not as smooth as the gameplay. Small grumble, though, because they're just as well animated as anything else from the series.

The plot this time out involves Technomites, beings which supposedly make all the technology in the universe work, but people like Ratchet cast aside as the stuff of fairy tales, or other nonsense. Still, as Clank says, the co-ordinates on this object are the only leads we have as to where these robots have taken Luna. It's time to go planet-hopping.

It's also time to put these bolts to use, and the Concussion Gun is the first new weapon we can afford, giving us a shotgun to complement our rifle and wrench.

It's absolutely awful, especially if you aim it at a load of crates in the distance and not the spikey threat that exists inches away from you, but it, like any other weapon, can be levelled up and upgraded with use the more you use it, which promotes you to make use of all your tools, rather than relying on one or two, like your wrench.

From what I've heard though, ammo and bolts are in short supply in Size Matters, so you may want to get a lot of practice in with your wrench and your strafing, and finish off enemies with a weapon. I don't know, though. I'm not much of a strategist, and it has been more than a decade since I was playing this properly, for want of a better word.

A little way into the planet, we meet up with a wacky little scientist who has developed a water pistol that allows us to get plants to follow us and turn into useful little elements to help us through a stage, like turning into a ladder or, here, sprouting explosive fruit, right in front of an obviously destructible wall...

Different plants grow into different objects, and can only be planted in Electrosoil sandpits, so the rest of the level involves wiping out every enemy in sight before leading a plant into a sandpit and using it to navigate the level. Simple, action-platformer kind of puzzle, really.

While Ratchet & Clank games use their subtitles for a quick joke, Size Matters at least makes size matter some of the time. Ratchet can't open a door, but Clank can fit through a nearby crack and go off on his own adventure involving evil little helper bots.

They can be ordered to attack enemies or follow you through a level, and these sections are often more puzzly than what you do with Ratchet, as you throw them onto buttons or have them wait in place to keep a door open for you and so on.

It suits the handheld, casual nature of the PSP a little better, you might argue, but it still comes with camera issues, and I really hope you don't have to backtrack because one of the little buggers died...

This big ancient-looking temple building was a Technomite map room with a fancy projector in it, the mysterious object we found the map itself, it seems. We've got ourselves a galaxy to explore, though we're pretty much railroaded into where to go and which step. Off to Kalidon it is then.

Further Frustrations

Here's where I stopped emulating Size Matters and fired up my PSP (after a long recharge) to see what my save file was about. According to the data, I was 2 hours and 33 minutes into the game, which doesn't seem like very much at all if it took me close to an hour to get to Kalidon.

The mission list had a lot of ticked off missions involving hoverboard races, which I have no memory of ever doing outside of the PlayStation 2 games. It also had some unfinished missions, and I had the option of two to go for.

The one I chose involved giant clank hurtling through space in an attempt to destroy the planetary defence system. This is a mission where you play a dazzling shoot 'em up where you have infinite lasers but have to wait for your stronger missiles to charge up and come online, where they can be used to sort of clear the screen, but mostly don't.

It's a challenge where you just keep the fire button held down because you're never quite sure what is and isn't a threat, and when the enemies start shooting, you're never quite sure what is and isn't an enemy, an incoming shot, Clank himself... it's a barrage of colourful visual effects that I just couldn't make heads or tails of.

And it's a looooong level too. The more I pushed through it, the more health I'd lose, with no obvious way of replenishing it - though I did get a handful of health points back from time to time. A pittance getting four when I started with 100, though.

Because it's a long level, my hand was basically immediately uncomfortable with the analogue nub, my thumb resting in a manner that shouldn't be described as resting at all. I'd have to play this level with my finger and the PSP on the table if I wanted to get through it without any pain - and even then I might get bored or blinded before the level was over.

After dying, I just quit out. I actually think that I abandoned Size Matters back in the day. This doesn't look like a New Game+ save at all, and nor does it look finished, or near to being finished. I genuinely think I couldn't carry on playing back in 2007, and can't now either.

Final Word

I have watched a view videos of Size Matters and none of it really triggers any memories. I can't have finished it. I probably didn't even get close. The game might have looked like Ratchet & Clank, and in places might have felt like Ratchet & Clank, but the lack of buttons on the PlayStation Portable means it's only the dedicated fan that persisted with it for any length of time.

And that's a bit of a shame because this really does look like a galaxy-spanning Ratchet & Clank game squished onto a UMD for gaming on the go. It wasn't done by the original development team, but it was done by former Naughty Dog and Insomniac developers, teams who know what they're doing and absolutely did the best they could with the hardware.

But my goodness is it a challenge. Those controls, despite being the best they could be, are not ideal. They're customizable, but not to the point of 'fixing' the game in any way. A PlayStation 2 port was released, and you'd think would be the better version, but I hear it's not. I don't know how that's even possible.

I may be a lapsed fan, but I am still a fan of Ratchet & Clank. I trailed off during the PlayStation 3 games, I think largely because I'd done it all so many times during the PlayStation 2 titles. I got the PlayStation 4 reimagining and thought it was great. Different, flawed, but a great showing of how far we've come graphically, and now there's a PlayStation 5 on the horizon with a Ratchet & Clank title designed to show off the progress of hardware as much as graphics.

If I'm not excited for Ratchet & Clank then I'm nostalgic for it, but Size Matters doesn't do it for me. It tries, and it gives a damn good effort, but it doesn't land. I'm going to have to watch this one, and I know it won't reach the heights of the console games in terms of story because of the hardware limitations of the PSP.

Is it an essential game to play? Well, it certainly shows off what the PSP can achieve, but does highlight its limitations, too. It's side content for Ratchet & Clank fans, but it is more Ratchet & Clank, and who wouldn't want that?

If you're at all interested in any aspect of this game, then definitely check it out. If you don't care about the PSP, the characters, action-platformers... there's no need to try to convince you otherwise.

Fun Facts

Save data for Size Matters can unlock content in the other Ratchet & Clank PSP spin-off, Secret Agent Clank, which is as cool as it sounds. The title, not the unlocking content.

Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, developed by High Impact Games, first released in 2007.

Version played: PlayStation Portable, 2007, also via emulation.