Known as Ratchet: Deadlocked outside of Europe and Australia, Ratchet: Gladiator is the fourth game in the Ratchet & Clank series. Originally for the PS2, as Gladiator was not included within the Ratchet & Clank Collection, this was remastered and sold separately, but the majority of people obtained the game as an apology for the delayed release of Full Frontal Assault on Vita. This remaster upgrades the visuals to 720p. Unfortunately, this is a disappointing port. Immediately upon start the game, you're treated to pre-rendered cutscenes that retain their 4:3 aspect ratio. This would still be forgiveable if not for the fact that they look extremely blurry, it makes you feel as if there were no effort put into porting the game. The in-game rendered cutscenes on the other hand stutter every 5 seconds and there are various visual glitches. Thankfully, the glitches does not transfer over to the gameplay aspect but you have to watch out for the potential save glitch, in which the game's autosaving will corrupt your save file. It's disappointing that this was never patched and therefore the player must manually save every so often on a different save slot just in case. Note that I did not encounter any game breaking glitches, only the visual glitches during cutscenes.
Gladiator focuses upon the combat aspect of the Ratchet & Clank gameplay. There are no planets to explore in the traditional sense; this is purely a combat game with the variety of weapons that you'd expect of the series. It retains the addictive mix of RPG elements such as leveling up to gain additional health and also leveling up the weapons themselves through usage which makes them more powerful, and gaining additional capabilities. There are ten weapons in total and all of the weapons are useful. You can add mods to the weapons, which adds an element of customizability. There are two types of mods. The first type are additional effects such as adding an acid effect, a shock mod that strikes surrounding enemies of the one you're aiming at and lava explosions. The second type of mod is towards the technical aspects of the weapon itself such as increasing the rate of fire, additional ammo capacity and a bigger area of effect. You can pick and choose what you want, which is really neat. Apart from the run and gunning, there are vehicular segments where you control a vehicle on missions. These vehicles including a walking tank, a hoverbike, a flying vehicle and a type of open-wheeled car.
The types of vehicular missions include on-rail shooting, clearing checkpoints scattered across the environment within the time limit and also as part of normal levels where you just use the vehicle to assist in blasting all the enemies. Two Dreadbots follow you and assist in the combat mechanics. They are similar to Mr Zurkon from other games but without the sarcastic remarks. They help not only with also blasting enemies, but with hacking orbs for mission progression, make grindrails for Ratchet to jump upon and throw EMPs to stun large mechanical enemies. They can die too but are easily revived. The combat is super fun and the controls are smooth and intuitive. However, when there are too many enemies and effects onscreen, the game slows down dramatically. Luckily this framerate drop doesn't occur too often. The story is the weakest aspect of Gladiator. Ratchet is captured and thrown into gladiator styled survival arena matches. Ratchet must play through the matches he's placed in due to a death collar which will kill him if he doesn't participate. The plot is overly basic and no character development occurs, especially compared to previous games. That said, the humor aspect of the story is excellent; every cutscene has some funny and witty dialogue.
The game is played via missions that you select from a list. You still travel to various planets so the environments for each mission is different. Each mission is very short, ranging from 1 minute to 10 minutes, but very rarely exceeding 7 minutes unless you're just really slow or playing on a high difficulty. This means that you can power through the game very quickly, Gladiator is the shortest Ratchet & Clank game. On Normal difficulty, it'll take somewhere between 6 hours to 10 hours. The game has adjustable difficulty and on the whole, it's an easy game to progress through. The short missions can sometimes cut the fun abruptly as just when you're enjoying yourself blasting the waves and waves of enemies, the mission ends. Each mission will had different objectives, from hacking a specific number of orbs, taking over nodes and surviving against waves of enemies. None of the objectives are frustrating which is good, and the most interesting mission was a survival mission in which for each enemy you defeat, the enemies' movements speed up going up to twice as fast as they normally are. That made for some frantic action!
To increase the longevity there are skill points in each planet, which are mini challenges. There are 165 skill points in total and they are easy enough to consistently achieve when you aim for them, but also challenging enough to keep the game interesting and not frustrate you. For example, a skill point will require you to defeat a certain number of enemies with certain mods and weapons within a time limit, or finishing challenges without getting hit. Gladiator retains the bolt collecting. Each enemy you defeat will grant you bolts, which you use to purchase additional weapons and upgrades. Lastly, Gladiator has a multiplayer aspect. You can co-op play locally in the story mode (split screen) or play online competitive. There are a variety of modes but unfortunately, the player base is very low so finding games is difficult. Just like other Ratchet & Clank games, upon finishing the game for the first time you can enter into Challenge Mode, which unlocks a new difficulty, allows you to level your weapons all the way to Level 99 and earn more bolts. Overall, while Ratchet & Clank: Gladiator is a disappointing port from the PS2 to the PS3, the game itself is extremely fun. The combat aspect of the series have been refined here and blasting enemies with the variety of weapons, and leveling them up have never been so fun. Gladiator is recommended for players who haven't played the original but have to be wary of the potential glitches.
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