Size Matters
Honestly, the game was fine, but definitely the worst of all the Ratchet games. Yes, I honestly LOVED Deadlocked. A lot.
While some people prefer the platforming and exploring in Ratchet games, I prefer the gunplay and Size Matters kinda fails there. The game feels like the #1 fan game, but not an actual franchise title.
My biggest gripe, oddly enough, is the same one I had for Crash Twinsanity which is a lack of ambience. The background music was pretty much useless and ignored, WHEN IT PLAYED. I came across many glitches where the music stopped playing. But I hardly noticed because when it did play, I didn't care. In the other titles in the series, it had a much bigger impact on the environment, but in Size Matters it was clearly an afterthought.
The cutscenes were all prerendered, too, which kinda sucked because a large part of the game was collecting armor pieces, so often you'd skip between having armor on, then not, and then back to armor. I understand why they did it for the PSP, but at least the PS2 could have been tweaked a bit. But the whole game also just felt unpolished. The crates didn't explode with the same voracity. The camera glitched a HELL of a lot. I mean it completely lost focus sometimes and wouldn't let me change the angle. I had to restart the last boss fight, which meant starting the whole planet over again.
And I understand the game was scaled down, too, obviously. Weapons max out at level 4 and most of them are reused from previous titles. That's fine. I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with the copious unpolished minigames they added. And the railgrinding which took place of the standard hacking. The racing minigame was the worst. It was so hard to control and when you crashed into the wall, you exploded and lost 5 or so seconds as everbody else raced by. But honestly, you could easily still come in first if you continually fuck up. But that's not fun. There's no challenge if it feels broken.
Oh, I should also mention the title is basically a stupid gimmick in the game. You get a shrink ray and use it periodically to fit yourself through keyholes and to become the size of these small people. It's not like it's a big story element outside of the fact that the main bad guys are small. You could have easily made them regular size and it would not have affected the story one bit. I figure it was just an idea they ran with for the PSP.
I also was upset at how useless some weapons were. The Sniper Mine was like a sniper rifle, but if you missed, planted a mine on the wall. You got 8 shots for Level 1 and it took FOREVER to level up. In contrast, the shield you get, I leveled up FAR faster and that only held 5 uses.
Story-wise the game was weak. The writing was definitely hurried in pace and lacked a certain punch of the old titles. At least they had the same voice actors.
Overall, I'd recommend it if you like the Ratchet games and need a quick 6-hour fix for cheap, but otherwise, you can do better on the PS2.
Additionally, for the sake of continuity, important things revealed in the game:
Qwark's parents
The inside of Clank
Ancient Technological Species
Shrunck (The one-eyed monkey) getting a friend
That's about it. Otherwise it's pretty forgettable.
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