Watch out Jak & Daxter, there's a new unlikely duo on your tail and their adventures promise to be even more fun and outlandish than yours!

With the acclaimed success of Jak & Daxter, Naughty Dog are hard at work on a sequel. So the torch has been handed to Insomniac Games, the developer charged with bringing out an all new platform game to rival, if not better, the mighty Jak & Daxter. And with a whole universe and 18 planets to explore, they certainly haven't disappointed!

The nefarious Chairman Drek has hatched a diabolical plot that threatens the whole galaxy. With his homeworld polluted, overpopulated and damaged beyond repair, he sets out to build a new planet to replace it - using pieces of other ones! Fortunately, the robot army factory experiences a malfunction and along with all the huge, brainless automatons comes Clank - a small, clever, moral and very cute little robot. He escapes from Drek and crashlands on a nearby planet. The home of a young mechanic called Ratchet is not far from the crash site and when Ratchet and Clank are united, they set out on a quest to find the heroic Captain Quark, the only man who can stop Drek.

Using the same game and graphics engine as Jak & Daxter, the gameplay will be immediately familiar to all who have played this and other quality 3D platform games. However, the futuristic look of each planet could not be much further from the idyllic islands and ancient technology of Jak's home. The attention to detail on every planet is nothing short of magnificent - the mining trucks of the Aridia Outpost, the logging robots of the forest world Eudora, the desolation of the besieged city on Planet Batalia and the spectacular Blarg Station in Nebula G34. When you first get a good look at the spectacular heights of Metropolis, where the skyscrapers are so tall you can't see their bases and there is a constant flow of flying traffic (akin to Fifth Element and Attack of the Clones), it'll blow you away. And that's just the backgrounds! The animation of Ratchet, Clank and their enemies is superb and with most enemies being part of Drek's robot army or indigenous creatures, there is a great range of different enemies on each world. The characters you meet along the way are even more eccentric and stylised than in Jak & Daxter, including a crazy commando, a spaced-out hoverboard champion and his agent, the robot technician Big Al, a disgruntled bodyguard and of course Captain Quark himself. The dialogue in the cut scenes that further the plot is highly amusing and most of the people you meet will force you to pay them for what you need. The currency in Ratchet's world is nuts and bolts and fortunately they are everywhere. There are crates you can smash and every enemy explodes into a shower of them. Your magnetised Omniwrench 8000 attracts the bolts to you, preventing tedious running around collecting every last one.

The Omniwrench 8000 is Gadgetron's staple product, but there are a whole host more to find, win and buy along the way. The wrench can be used to swipe at crates and enemies or it can be thrown short distances to destroy enemies and collect unreachable bolts. This is just the tip of the metalberg though, as throughout the game there are over 30 weapons and gadgets to collect. The Bomb Glove fires medium range bombs that explode on impact, whilst the Mine Glove drops mines that are activated by proximity or by your Taunter, another cool gadget. This can be used to draw stupid enemies towards the mines or forcefields that will destroy them. Your Blaster is the best all-round weapon as it's quick to fire and locks onto enemies. Other great fun weapons include the flame-throwing Pyrocitor, the Suck Cannon that sucks up small enemies then fires them out as ammo and the Glove of Doom, which sends four speedy little robots off that home in on the nearest enemies and self-destruct!

Hand gadgets include the trusty Swingshot, Trespasser and Hydrodisplacer. The Swingshot allows you to swing across wide gaps, the Trespasser can pick increasingly complex locks that serve as a cool puzzle game and the Hydrodisplacer can suck up or release huge quantities of water. Clank gets some gadgets too, which get increasingly more impressive as the game goes on, but begins with the excellent Heli-Pack, where his head and hands turn into rotor blades. As Clank sits on your back, this pack allows you to jump extra high, perform long jumps and glide across large gaps. Other gadgets include the Summoner, a pair of bizarre green glasses that activates alien helpers who fly around with you, blasting your enemies, the Grind Boots that you can use to grind your way around some seriously imaginative courses to find new items and the Hoverboard. This is used to compete in races, another entertaining sub-game. And I haven't even described half of the gadgets on offer. Every gadget is brilliantly animated, especially the weapons, which expand onto your arm accompanied with clanking and whirring sound effects. All of the technology in the game is so imaginative and the sound effects are excellent, from Clank's Heli-Pack to the sounds of your many different weapons and the explosions of enemies. The voice acting is great too, with Ratchet, Clank, Drek and Captain Quark being particularly superb. Meanwhile each world has a different tune, all of them catchy and futuristic, adding another great element to the action.

The level designs are as smart, varied, enjoyable and as huge as Jak & Daxter, with plenty of secrets to be found, ranging from a nice big batch of nuts and bolts to the well-hidden Gold Bolts. These can be used to buy super weapons such as the R.Y.N.O. (don't ask what it stands for!) Each level has 1-4 Gold Bolts and you can see how many you have found in the handy map screen. The maps are particularly good, showing clearly any places you haven't yet explored and marking objects or people of interest. You can view the list of missions for each world, which include things like exploring the area, carrying out a task for someone, buying or winning a gadget or locating someone. The selection screens are easy to access too and there is a fully definable quick select menu to which you can assign 8 gadgets and weapons. You can then select these without pausing, simply by pressing triangle to bring up the circular menu and pressing a direction on the joystick to select them. Without this feature, changing weapons would have become very laborious very soon. I'll skip the part where I criticise the game as I have nothing bad to say about it!

Ratchet & Clank is a stylish, gorgeous and imaginative roller coaster ride of fun with a great story, huge levels and incredible variety thanks to the massive range of gadgets and weapons available. Each world you visit introduces new weapons, gadgets, characters and challenges, meaning that the action never gets repetitive for a minute. So strap on your Heli-Pack, get out your blaster and liberate a copy today!

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).