In The Grip Of Change

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday May 21, 2007

Eliot Fish

This hand-held charmer's relentless variety means you'll never be bored, writes Eliot Fish.

RATCHET & CLANK: SIZE MATTERS

PC Xbox

PS2 X360

Wii PS3

NDS PSP

$79.95

PG

3

After a handful of very successful outings on the PS2, the cat-like Ratchet and his robotic sidekick Clank have taken off on a hand-held adventure to convince us that, despite the title, size doesn't really matter when it comes to action-packed platform gaming.

Lazing by the seaside, Ratchet and Clank meet the mysterious Luna, a young girl who is kidnapped before the first level is complete. She leaves behind an object that Clank somehow identifies as an ancient "Technomite" artefact - and so the adventure begins.

With Clank strapped to his back, Ratchet can hover across wide gaps, operate machinery with his wrench and wield a variety of space-age weapons. Your arsenal will include the "Lacerator" laser pistols, a toxic grenade launcher, a suck cannon that vacuums up small enemies and the Scorcher flamethrower for frying enemies to a crisp. Other gadgets include the Sprout-O-Matic watering can that turns plants into useful ladders or weapons and a Polariser wand to move objects around magnetically.

There's so much relentless variety here that the game feels as if it was designed for sufferers of Attention Deficit Disorder. One second you're zapping aliens on an island, the next you're piloting a giant exoskeleton through space, taking part in robot gladiator battles, completing hover-board races or sliding along rails like a sci-fi skateboarder. One imaginative level even has you navigating a surreal dreamland as drowsy Ratchet fights off the effects of anaesthetic.

You'll never be bored playing Size Matters, but under the barrage of ideas are elements of the game that feel clumsy and frustrating. Targeting enemies is difficult and controls for strafing require you to take your thumb off the movement stick.

Frequent difficulty bottlenecks also have you restarting from the same checkpoints over and over until you luck out to victory.

ENDGAME All the character, charm and cleverness of its PS2 forebears but an eagerness to please and lack of fine-tuning results in a game that can go from excellent to annoying in a heartbeat.

MIND QUIZ: YOUR BRAIN COACH

PC Xbox

PS2 X360

Wii PS3

NDS PSP

$49.95

G

2

Following the success of Nintendo's Big Brain Academy and Dr Kawashima's Brain Training comes this Sega game for flexing the old grey matter. Don't be fooled by the title though, because Mind Quiz is as much a quiz as Channel 9's Quizmania is a battle of brainpower.

Instead of testing you on facts and trivia, Mind Quiz: Your Brain Coach has a series of reaction-based mini-games aimed at exercising your "brain alertness" and "mind activation".

With stylus pen in one hand, the player must first have his mental stress level and approximate brain age assessed by quickly organising jumbled numbers on the touch screen into ascending order. With your brain assessed as healthy, under-used or as old as Yoda, you can then move on to the daily training exercises. These mini-games range from tile-sliding puzzles, memory challenges and reflex tests to those that require you to blow or shout into the built-in DS microphone.

The "Let's Shout" mini-game is probably the worst item, requiring you to identify pieces of falling fruit and bark out your answers. Unfortunately, the voice recognition is pitiful and your repeated chants are frequently ignored.

Other exercises are just as dubious, such as flicking the stylus across the screen to hurl bones at a man dashing across a room - which apparently develops insight and reflexes. Surely playing the more enjoyable Mario Brothers on a daily basis would be far more likely to transform you into a genius than these weak mini-games?

One or two of the exercises prove a little more mentally stimulating: Simple Calculation (a maths challenge) and Block Inference (counting a number of stacked 3D blocks) are both decent tests.

ENDGAME With none of the fun factor or challenge level of similar mind-muscle games, Mind Quiz proves a tool of very little benefit. Perhaps you should read a book instead.

EF

More games reviews, p17

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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