Anyone who's read any of my previous Ratchet & Clank reviews knows just what a huge fan I am of the series. Unwilling to rest on their laurels, Insomniac Games have constantly reinvented and reinvigorated the series, retaining the core gameplay while building upon a solid foundation to introduce crazier weapons, funnier gadgets, dafter characters and more gorgeous visuals with each iteration. Indeed, with their PS3 debut, Tools of Destruction, making for a pinnacle that seems almost impossible to improve upon (although I have no doubt that Insomniac Games will somehow do this with the next release), Ratchet & Clank has never been better. Unfortunately there is a downside to all this success - namely that the PS2 conversion of Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters on PSP is something of a disappointment by comparison.

Now, before I go any further, I realise that drawing comparisons between a PS3 game and a PS2 conversion of a PSP game is inherently unfair, so I'm not about to judge Size Matters against the almighty Tools of Destruction. However, even when held up against the original Ratchet & Clank, Size Matters isn't anywhere near as good - it's good, but not brilliant, and the reason behind this is very simple: it wasn't developed by Insomniac Games. Instead, a developer by the name of High Impact Games was assigned the task of creating Size Matters on PSP, and while they've done an admirable job in creating a version that's very well suited to handheld gaming, it's obvious from the beginning that this isn't the signature work of Insomniac. The weapons aren't quite as interesting, the script isn't quite as tight and witty, and the mini-games are frankly abysmal. It's still Ratchet & Clank and it's still well worth a look for fans of the series, but the way that Size Matters comes up short in comparison clearly shows just what geniuses Insomniac Games really are.

The story begins with our heroes relaxing on the beach - Ratchet is determined to take a well-earned rest from saving the universe and Clank is busy building a little sand-robot. However, the peace doesn't last long, as you might have guessed, when a cute little girl by the name of Luna shows up, flattering Ratchet, taking his picture and asking to see her hero in action. Happy to oblige, the brief training level sees Ratchet blasting crabs and robots as he roams the coastal resort level with a tropical flavour to its catchy music, using just his Lacerator and Acid Bomb, the standard laser blaster and bomb glove he's initially equipped with. Here you are quickly taught, or reminded of, the basics for high and long jumps, shooting, switching weapons and so on. Indeed, as usual the game is very straightforward, with each new weapon and gadget clearly explained.

After showing off a bit, a bunch of robots turn up and kidnap Luna - now the real action begins, as Ratchet battles his way through the level, failing to save Luna but left with a clue to her whereabouts. With Captain Qwark tagging along for no particular reason, and noticeably absent for most of the game, our intrepid duo blast off for the next planet in search of the kidnapped girl. The story is good fun as it progresses and raises a few chuckles along the way, with a couple of twists and turns, but it's just not up to the usual standard - the dialogue isn't as sharp, the belly laughs are only chuckles, and the whole thing seems a little bit daft and disappointing, which is a shame considering that Ratchet & Clank's stories usually thrive on being daft. There aren't many memorable characters this time around, and the way Qwark's role is just tacked on is disappointing, given how funny a character he is.

Still, the mainstay of Ratchet & Clank has always been a great combination of shooting, platform jumping, more shooting, boss battles, mini-games and even more shooting - and in this respect Size Matters does well overall. The levels are interesting and cleverly designed, and the various environmental themes are well done, if a little generic and sparse at times. The primary problem with Size Matters however is that it's been converted directly from PSP without a graphical spruce up, and so the usually busy, teeming environments feel very sparse and basic in comparison. Indeed, this doesn't look anywhere near as good as the original Ratchet & Clank, and while that's to be expected for a PSP game, to convert this to PS2 without a graphical makeover is almost (but not quite) unforgivable. The cut scenes suffer too, especially Captain Qwark, whose chest is set too far down, so it looks like he's got lumpy boobs rather than massive pecs! I hate to sound superficial, but a big part of the appeal of Ratchet & Clank for me has always been the fascinating, fully formed environments that are filled with intricate detail and bustling with life; without this aspect, some of the atmosphere and charm of the series is lost.

The audio component too isn't quite as good as usual, although the gap is far less than with the visual side. The voices sound a bit tinny at times, the sound effects aren't quite as impressive and apt, and the music isn't quite as good, although it's still very good and captures the theme and feel of the series, and indeed the levels, quite nicely. There is an annoying glitch though where sometimes the music just stops playing during certain boss sequences, and while pausing the game and then un-pausing fixes this, it's still a glaring fault that you'd never find in an Insomniac Games title. Still, the regular voice cast are on great form, delivering their slightly less well scripted lines with their usual panache.

Once you've swallowed the PSP-quality presentation, the game is pretty good fun - for the most part, but I'll come onto the sections that aren't fun later. For now, lets see what Ratchet's got in his arsenal this time around. As well as the Lacerator and Acid Bomb, old favourites return, some in slightly different guises, including the Concussion Gun (an energy-based shotgun), the Suck Cannon, which sucks up crates and small enemies to blast back out as projectiles, the Agents of Doom, four little robots that run around shooting foes, the Mootator, which morphs enemies into cows, a handy sniper weapon, a flamethrower, a shield that protects you against a few hits, the Bee Mine, a beehive that sends out bees like the Nanoturret in other games, and more. As the game progresses, more weapons become available to purchase from the Gadgetron vendors you'll find on each level, but they're not cheap and so you'll have to collect lots of nuts and bolts by killing enemies and smashing crates if you want to afford them all (as usual, the price of the RYNO is astronomical!)

The weapons gain experience and auto-upgrade as you use them, becoming more powerful and increasing in ammo capacity until finally transforming at Level 4 into a maxed out, super version. The Agents of Dread go from little bots that run around performing melee attacks to floating droids that fire missiles, the Lacerator becomes a dual weapon for twice the damage, and so on. You can also purchase further upgrades to customise each weapon even more, giving your dual Lacerators dual barrels, for example, but you won't earn enough bolts to purchase everything on your first play through, unless you replay the final levels many times. As is tradition, you can restart the game upon completion with all your weapons intact, earning a lot more bolts when fighting enemies that are a lot tougher and deadlier the second time around. Your health increases steadily as you gain experience too, and there are over a dozen of sets of armour to collect, most of which you'll find as you progress, with a few to be won in the mini-games. Each armour is split into helmet, torso, gloves and boots, and if you equip a complete set of armour then you'll get a special power, like setting enemies on fire for ongoing damage when you hit them with your trusty wrench, blowing enemies up with a melee attack after taking damage, causing crystals to come up from the ground for extra damage, and much more. This is a feature that's new to the series and a nice touch that works very well.

Speaking of new features, the only two new gadgets you get other than your trusty Hypershot to swing across gaps, are the Polariser and the Sprout-O-Matic. The Polariser allows you to magnetise certain objects like ledges and consoles, making for some fun but simple puzzles in certain levels, while the Sprout-O-Matic allows you to water alien plants that follow you around until you soak some Electro-Soil and they plant themselves, transforming into a ladder, a bouncy flower for gaining a lot of height, a catapult or even a bomb launcher. These are again simple little puzzles for progressing through the levels, but they're good fun. You also get your usual upgrades - a smash attack that breaks all nearby crates and objects, a bolt grabber to bring in bolts from further away, a map that shows all the secret areas and a PDA for buying ammo without needing a Gadgetron vendor. As useful and fun as all the weapons and gadgets are, none of them really stand out as being exceptional.

It's not all fun though - the mini-games on offer in Size Matters are some of the most boring and downright frustrating I've ever come across, and they simply don't belong in a Ratchet & Clank game. Clank suffers more than usual - his solo levels have never been a highlight of the series, and on the odd occasion where you do set out alone as Clank, using the Gadgebots to solve simple puzzles is somewhat dull. At least his Giant Clank levels are a bit better - rather than walking around a small satellite laying waste to buildings, these sections take the form of old-school into the screen shooters as Clank hurtles through space, blasting away myriad spaceships and facing off against tough but woefully predictable bosses (just fly in a circle around the screen and you'll barely take a hit, but do anything else and you won't survive). These levels are a graphical highlight - there's so much happening onscreen and so many enemies, projectiles, asteroids and pieces of space junk that they measure up well to the rest of the PS2 series.

However, you'll soon be tearing your hair out when it comes to the atrocious hoverboard races that you're subjected to. Fortunately only two of these are compulsory to complete, because while the courses are well designed with a multitude of routes and shortcuts to discover, the handling on your hoverboard is so loose and jerky that it's no fun at all to control, and when you find yourself repeatedly hitting walls only to fall further and further behind the crowd, you'll be yelling with frustration. Seriously, on a couple of occasions I just had to walk away from the game due to being utterly fed up with the useless handling - a first for me when it comes to Ratchet & Clank. The arena challenges for Clank meanwhile are just very dull; a derivative Robot Wars style arena battle amounts to just mindlessly ramming enemies while collecting weapon and health power-ups until all your foes are destroyed, while the bot-throwing mode where you must throw bots into a goal to reach a score before your opponents, punching or bombing enemies to make them drop the bot, is just tedious beyond belief and no fun whatsoever. The highlight is the blatant Lemmings rip-off where you're controlling Gadgebots on a 2D level. You can select each bot and command them to form a bridge, swing across gaps, use teleporters or self-destruct to blow a hole in a ledge. These levels are mildly entertaining and quite challenging towards the end, making for a nice little diversion and by far the best mini-game on offer.

The boss battles in Size Matters are another disappointment - again they're very generic and you must just jump, dodge and blast endlessly until you finally whittle down the health of a flying spaceship or a big enemy. The challenge lies in lasting long enough to remove their health, and the final boss battle is particularly tough; it probably took me close to twenty attempts to finish that one off, costing me tens of thousands of bolts to replenish my ammo after each attempt. The worst one though is an awful level where you're being chased by a plane through a cornfield. Running into the screen, first you must dodge left and right to avoid the plane's bullets, then it transforms into a combine harvester and you must keep running while avoiding were-sheep(!) and jumping over rocks. After this you're on a platform dodging falling boulders for a while, then finally you're in a face off against the combine harvester, which has laser weapons. The problem is, you can only take about four hits through the whole sequence before you die, and once you do die, you have to replay the whole tedious section again. This was another moment where I had to take a break and come back later to finish off the boss - I don't mind tough bosses, but bosses that are tough in a cheap way and very tedious with it just aren't any fun. Finally I defeated the combine harvester and breathed a sigh of relief.

Not wanting to finish on a negative note, I've saved one extra gadget for last - the Shrink Ray. Not only does this play a part in the story, but at one point you have to shrink yourself to go inside Clank and clear out the miniscule enemies that have invaded his body! This is one of the coolest levels in the whole game and a really nice touch. You also unlock doors by shrinking yourself and grinding around rails within the locks, hopping between rails, leaping over bombs and hitting switches to lower forcefields. As always, these sections are good fun. Another highlight is the dream sequence level where Ratchet wades through nightmarish landscapes filled with hallucinations, with a cool, dreamlike shimmer to the whole thing. There is a multiplayer mode too, but it's limited and not really a factor when deciding whether or not to invest in the game.

I hate to be so negative about Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, but with the quality of the series being sky high, a game that's even slightly inferior just doesn't measure up by comparison. This is still Ratchet & Clank and it's still good fun, but it's by far the weakest game of the series - and the shortest too, with barely a dozen planets to explore - while its sparse, basic, PSP-quality graphics really are a big disappointment. The core gameplay remains more enjoyable than the average platform romp and the range of weapons and gadgets on offer is more than enough to making wading through the hundreds of enemies good fun, but the poorly designed mini-games, hoverboard races and boss battles are a real chore. If you're new to the series then you should definitely start at the beginning, but if you're a fan who doesn't own a PSP then this is worth a look, as there is plenty of enjoyment to be found. There's more than a bit of irony here though, because in terms of the game's arsenal, polygon count and number of levels, it's never been more apparent that size does indeed matter, while as an entry into a consistently fantastic series, this particular game fails to make a high impact.

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