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Review Scores

VGChartz Score
7.0
                         

Ratings

     

Alternative Names

Clank & Ratchet: Maru Hi Mission * Ignition

クランク&ラチェット マル秘ミッション☆イグニッショӥ

Developer

High Impact Games

Genre

Platform

Release Dates

06/17/08 Sony Computer Entertainment
11/20/08 Sony Computer Entertainment
07/11/08 Sony Computer Entertainment

Community Stats

Owners: 42
Favorite: 0
Tracked: 0
Wishlist: 0
Now Playing: 0
 
7.4

Avg Community Rating:

 

Review: Secret Agent Clank (PSP)

By MaxwellGT2000 12th Aug 2008 | 2,833 views 

VGC reviews Secret Agent Clank, is it the game PSP needed in this summer game drought?

Ratchet and Clank are back for another go ‘round on the PSP.  This time Clank is the star, acting as a bad James Bond impersonator with none of Bond’s charms or charisma but a lot of bad one-liners inspired by the Bond films.  Ratchet still has some limelight on him, but this time he’s behind bars and gets involved with a lot of prison riots, it seems.  Quark somehow works his way in again even when the plot really doesn’t need him, and he is still bumbling his way through the galaxy.

In Secret Agent Clank, you start out as Clank finding out that Ratchet was put in jail for stealing from the museum. Clank knows it wasn’t Ratchet’s fault and sets out to find the real culprit.  The plot is much more interesting than the last PSP Ratchet game but still fell short of the console versions. The best parts of the story come from Ratchet in jail and the slightly redneck warden pestering him, and also Quark telling his tall tales of his “acts of heroism” throughout the galaxy.  The snag here is Clank’s story sounds like a bad spy spoof, and Clank isn’t the type to pull off the smoothness of being a Bond clone. All around the plot reeks of B-movie-style plots with characters not suited for their roles.


Use Clank-fu to beat the pants off ninja's that's right ninja's plus ten cool points right there.

As far as the game presents itself, as a whole it is a different story, though it’s got the same simple, easy, and clean menus we have come to enjoy from the series, and a load of new weaponry—Ratchet and Clank both have their own weapon sets.  There are lots of new places to check out, my favorite being the futuristic-looking Hong Kong, with ninjas coming from every direction (note to developers when making a game -- adding ninjas is a plus).  The game improves on most levels from Size Matters, with more weapons, better visuals, and more effects going on.  It also has some new tactics, adding stealth and a rhythm game to the gameplay.  The drawback to this title comes from them axing multiplayer, and the game’s single player mode is just as short as Size Matters.

Graphically, the game excels over many of the PSP’s titles, but still lacks a little of what it needs in order to be called outstanding.  It has everything it takes to make it look great but a bit better art direction and better textures could have made the game set some standards on what a PSP game should look like.  The visuals were all around much stronger this time compared to Size Matters, with much better lighting, effects, and design.   Some of the weapons made some crazy and visually pleasing effects that pushed what the handheld can do.  There was only one hitch frame-rate-wise during normal gameplay. Although, you could purposely bring down the frame-rate if you got a lot of enemies on screen and decided to use just about every weapon possible in a short amount of time, causing a lot of effects to go off.


There's a lot of improvement visually this time around.

The game’s music isn't awful, but it isn't really memorable either.  It had one mentionable song that played during the rhythm game, but otherwise, it was standard fare.  The voice acting was the standard for Ratchet and Clank games—good actors, just this time working with a lackluster plot. In particular, Clank’s voice/character didn’t fit his role at all so the humor fell flat, mostly being the reference jokes to James Bond movies and characters, which would have worked if the main character had been Ratchet, but it was just poor planning on the writers part.

Gameplay-wise the game is just like every other Ratchet and Clank game, action-packed fun, lots of different weapons, leveling your weapons, and tight controls.  The only big changes were the stealth and music game elements.  Starting off, stealth is fun and can help you rack up a lot of experience to level your character up, but eventually it gets pretty old, even for a game as short as this one.  You can’t level your weapons by being sneaky either, so it takes one of the game’s main attractions away. By the end of the game, it’s pointless to use stealth, as it rarely gets you past the first few guards. One will usually spot you after you use a stealth kill.  In short, stealth becomes pointless, and you can’t level/use your weapons, which takes a lot of fun away. 

The rhythm game is fun at first, challenging later on, but by the end of the game, it becomes frustrating.  You have to hit the buttons on or a little after the beat. It was odd that it seemed to not count early presses correctly like it did for late presses.  Also if you miss so many presses in a sequence you get damaged and eventually die. It was fun to do at first, and when you want the game to get harder on you, the rhythm game delivers where the main game fails.  The problem arises at the last rhythm game; it is very long and drawn out, difficult, and it restarts you at the beginning every time. It gets annoying to hear the same lines being said over and over and then having to restart from the beginning every time when the mistakes made were mostly early presses that somehow counted as wrong.  In the end, the feature could have been left out, as it seems to bring down the overall gameplay.


The most "fun" you'll have with the rhythm game is this opening one

As stated, this game is short. My playtime at the end was six hours and eight minutes, which includes me leveling up some weapons to max, and doing some side missions.  It’s a good game, but it’s near impossible to recommend it for the length compared to price. If it was twenty dollars or less it would be a good pick up, if, for nothing else, something to last you a few days, and doing the side missions when you’re bored.  If they had left in multiplayer, the bang for your buck would be much better, but as it stands, the best recommendation is to rent it. It’s a good game for a rental as it’s not long and it is worth playing, but it is not worth forty dollars to anyone but the most devout Ratchet and Clank fans.

Overall the game is about par for the course. It is very fun like most Ratchet and Clank games, but some poor choices in development brought this title down a lot.  Good ideas like the Bond spoofing failed due to the poor judgment and turned it into more of a spoof of a bad movie mocking 007.  The Ratchet and Quark parts make up for the Clank parts as their parts are pretty funny and have some good writing. Personally, I think the whole game could have been nothing but their parts, and it would have been just as good.  This game is recommended if you really love Ratchet and Clank and must have the whole collection. If that is not the case, wait for it to hit the bargain bin, or check out your local rental store.  Now play me out to some Bond music. *ba dum ba duuuum!*


VGChartz Verdict


7
Good

Read more about our Review Methodology here

Sales History

Total Sales
0.00m
Japan
0.33m
NA
0.22m
Europe
0.00m
Others
0.55m
Total
1 n/a 68 402 219 689
2 n/a 66 433 235 734
3 n/a 71 485 263 819
4 n/a 127 501 280 908
5 n/a 307 423 272 1,002
6 n/a 527 434 317 1,278
7 n/a 641 342 289 1,272
8 n/a 436 308 236 980
9 n/a 359 305 220 884
10 n/a 265 203 152 620

Opinion (22)

hunter_alien posted 07/04/2010, 04:49
The game is bundled in EU... I wish we had those numbers
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sbvgc2012 posted 21/03/2010, 04:59
Nice legs.
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hunter_alien posted 12/03/2009, 02:38
Well 270 k sales in the US& Japan at this point... probably over 400k with Other sales... maybe 600k lt without bundles?
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Aj_habfan posted 02/02/2009, 04:19
Sales are extremely steady.
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Aj_habfan posted 07/01/2009, 03:41
That was a perfect prediction hunter_alien, hehe.

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hunter_alien posted 16/10/2008, 12:37
It hit 100k... hmmm, it has a good chance IMO to reach 200k during the holiday period... it never even went under 4 k :o
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