Ratchet: Deadlocked
Ratchet: Deadlocked is another fantastic Ratchet and Clank game made by Sony Entertainment and Insomniac Games. It is also known as Ratchet: Gladiator in the continents Europe and Australia and sometimes even Ratchet and Clank 4. The game is the sequel to the Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal. It is a game for those of you who like the Ratchet and Clank series, but is made uniquely different because there are so many different maps to play in instead of just one or two big ones and also the really funny ‘commercial’ breaks in the middle.
The game starts with Ratchet and Clank on board their spaceship with their crazy scientific friend Al. They talk to the new mayor of Metropolis City, Shasha, who briefs them on sudden disappearances of heroes. She warns him to watch out when suddenly and very predictably, alien robots come and kidnap the whole crew. Ratchet then finds himself on board a space station called the DreadZone where kidnapped heroes fight as gladiators for their freedom. Ratchet then has to fight many ex-heroes that had gone corrupt with fame and eventually destroy the DreadZone station.
The idea of DreadZone is a very original idea of coliseum-like battles because they have very funny rules. First of all, you have to wear a ‘Deadlock’ collar because if they find you too boring they can blow it up and kill you. Second, you have someone that talks to you throughout the battles, which is Clank in this game, and he is allowed to hack into the battle networks and tell you what is going to happen. Normally this would be considered cheating but not in this ‘game’. The next thing is that you are allowed to have battle bots to help you fight, which is also very un-gladiator-like because you don’t have to fight by yourself like a real gladiator in Rome had to. Al is responsible for the battle bot department.
The similarities of DreadZone and Roman coliseum fighting are mainly the way you fight. You are put into many arenas, which are actually different planets that the pirates managing DreadZone captured, and are forced to fight for your life against robots manufactured in DreadZone and sometimes even the corrupt ex-heroes that I mentioned earlier. Also, all ‘contestants’ are forced to fight like many Gladiators were. Slave Gladiators were very common in Rome though some did fight for glory like the corrupt ex-heroes in the game.
Overall this game is very fun. Each level has a different mission and needs different accomplishments. It is not a very violent game because you are not killing any random people and you also are not actually killing anybody. When robots are common in the world then maybe it will be rated violent because some kids will try to blow them up and destroy them. Also, if we find any monstrous looking aliens it might be rated violent because kids will keep killing them, but the game and the company probably would not last that long. Earth might not even last that long…well not for the alien part.
Information gathered from Wikipedia.
