Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time
Ratchet and Clank is a very refined game on many levels. It is technically complex and has a clean and consistent art-style that harmonizes with the engine, and it is very balanced design-wise. The game has just the right amount of variety and levels are remarkably free from annoying areas. The trademark set of wacky weapons arguably makes for a little too many different powerups, but as what kind of pickups you get rarely matter a lot I do not consider this an issue.
Gameplay is more reminiscent of Mario Galaxy in terms of progression and sidequests than was Ratchet and Clank Future. This makes sense seeing as the design of Ratchet and Clank is a lot more character progression and story-driven than the very platform-driven Mario series… Although it does place more responsibility in the player of how much of the game you want to experience than a linear set of levels, which I guess can be annoying.
A Crack in Time has some issues to be sure, the checkpoint placement is sometimes uneven, some puzzle segments drag on for a bit too long and some of the minigames feel a lot less polished than the main platform game. It also does not have the perfect platform game camera, but then again nobody has done that yet… It cannot be argued that it is not a very solid platform game, though.
It occurs to me that I have said basically the same thing about all of the games I played during my vacation so far, which seems kind of pointless; I should probably try and elaborate more on what constitutes quality in the individual games instead of rambling about them not being perfect but having the core mechanics down. I will have to think about that next time…