Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters is easily one of the best portable platformers to come out recently.
User Rating: 9 | Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters PSP
Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters is easily one of the best portable platformers to come out recently, and it even rivals Daxter as one of the best games on the PSP system. Overall, everything in R&C is very much like it is in the PS2 versions of the games. The graphics, which are excellent, look almost exactly like those of the PS2 Ratchet games, with a little less detail in the environments betraying the fact that this is actually a PSP game. The sound is almost as good as the graphics are - Ratchet and Clank are perfectly voiced, as is the bumbling Captain Quark. The newest character in the game is Luna. She is the center of the plot, as she asks Ratchet and Clank to act heroic for her so that she can take pictures for a school report. Of course, things go downhill from there and Luna gets kidnapped by evil robots. Luna is voiced well, although I have heard some reviewers claim that her voice can be "grating." I haven't noticed it, but maybe others will. Overall, the weapons sound good as well. The gameplay in R&C isn't quite as good as the presentation, but it makes the most of the PSP's single analog nub. The shoulder buttons control the camera, and pressing them both at the same time will center the camera behind Ratchet. This feels so natural that I have actually started doing it in other PSP games, like GTA...which usually ends poorly for me. The X button jumps, Square is a melee attack, Triangle brings up the weapon selection menu, and O attacks with a firearm. The D-Pad is used to strafe. When using weapons the game will automatically lock on to enemies for you. The auto targeting is very good, but it can be hard to keep your target on screen. There have been a good amount of situations in which I couldn't keep a lock on an enemy while frantically trying to aviod enemy fire, which reduced me to running around the room and mashing the O button until I either won or died. There are also a few parts thrown in that seem needlessly difficult. This is especially odd because for the most part the game's difficulty is well balanced, but I have gotten stuck a few times. Maybe I'm just bad at R&C games, but these sections should have been balanced better. Other than those few flaws, though, R&C: Size Matters stands out as one of the best games on the PSP, and it is reccomended for all action and platformer fans. 
