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| The cover of Into the Nexus |
Release date: November 12, 2013 (Canada)
Console: PS3
Publisher: Sony
Creator: Insomniac Games
ESRB Rating: E 10+
Did you know that you can rent video games from the library? I found that out recently when I rented out Into the Nexus. Don’t all rush over there, though; aside from this and Arkham City, all they had were variations of Wii Sports. A bit of a disclaimer, I’ve never actually played a game from this series, so playing the latest game first might not have been a good call. Yet I found that the game makes very few references to past installments, and whatever was mentioned wasn’t too complicated to understand. Then again, the story itself isn’t very complex.
This game, like every other in the series, is a 3D platformer exclusive to the Playstation consoles. You play as Ratchet, who couldn’t pick whether he prefered Han Solo or Lion-O and decided to be both, and your task is to bring two twins to justice after they murder his friends. Well, that seems a little dark for only E10+. Oh, but don't worry: they were robots, so it doesn’t count. I do have to hand it to the game developers though, they did a good job of incorporating story, tutorial, and gameplay, and the additional Clank mini-game without having it all clash with the overall flow of the game. However there were some cases where some things seemed out of place and ridiculous. For example at one point you are required to navigate a museum, and killer robots jump out of the floor. Why are they there? I know you want to reinforce the “hands-off-the-display” policy, but this is a bit overkill, wouldn’t you say?
But the story wasn’t sacrificed in vain, as the gameplay holds up nicely. The controls are familiar to any person who has played on the PS3, and all the guns were unique and fun to use. However, some guns were more useful than others. Why would I want to slowly freeze my enemies when I can shoot them with a shotgun from the same distance? And the killer drones that watch your back, I mean, jeez. Don’t even bother to upgrade your non-explosives past this point, as they quickly dispatch anything lower than a miniboss. Even with most of the bosses, I just ended up sending them out while using the distraction gun and shooting rockets at it.
Still, you may want to replay the game just to upgrade all your guns; the game is so short it won’t even take too long for you to do. I have a friend who’s a big fan of the series, and he assures me that this game is unusually short compared to the other games in the series; however, I beat the game on medium difficulty in just two short sessions, slightly lengthened by dying at least twice per world because the designers didn’t bother giving the player a clue where the cliffs are on the map.
Unfortunately the game has little replay value. I mean, yes there’s the aforementioned gun upgrades and armor upgrades, but that just delays the issue, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t help that the game basically gives you the achievements. I finished my first playthrough with 75% of total achievements, just missing two for beating the game on the other two difficulties, one for 100% completion, and one for using the distraction gun on every character in the game. So if you want ALL THE THINGS, you need to play this game three times at least. That blow is not softened in the least by the killer drone family, which spew the same five lines about forty times after they stopped being funny. Into the Nexus falls victim to the same irritation that similar games do, in that the lines are funny at first, but get stale quickly due to their repetition.
Even with all of the complaints above, I really enjoyed Into the Nexus. Despite being the most recent addition, it acts as a good introduction to the series due to its brevity, limited required knowledge of past titles, and understandable story. Out of ten, I’d give it an eight-and-a-half. I’m really glad I picked it up, and even more glad that I didn’t have to pay for it.
Final Rating: 8.5/10
-Kadabra Guy
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Gameplay of Into the Nexus
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