Big Al has been shot, and Ace Hardlight (that tool) has sabotaged our escape plan. Unfortunately, we have no other recourse except to continue participating in Dreadzone, if only to buy a bit more time.

I must admit, as a child playing this game, I did not expect them to shoot, and possibly kill Al. You always assume he’s invincible because he’s your robot upgrade vendor and never takes the field. He always exists in your safe space.

But this is a reminder that our safe space was given to us by Dreadzone. We exist at the pleasure of Gleeman Vox and his empire. We are not safe.

Already, we are confronted with another Exterminator. Maybe this one will finally give us the challenge we seek.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense for a combat-focused Ratchet and Clank to scale down on the number of weapons. Inevitably, every game in the franchise has more than a few weapons that quickly lose relevance over the course of the adventure. With an arsenal as focused as this one, I find myself even using the Dual Vipers regularly.

Each weapon, from start to finish, has a function and purpose against the waves of enemies Dreadzone brings against us. Some get less use than others, but all have their uses. When the development team knows we have ready access to this kit, than they know they can design challenges around it.

Reactor’s had an unfortunate meltdown, so it’s time to progress to the next Dreadzone campaign.

In case you’re curious, here is the link to Brandon the Hedgehog aka He Who Wields the Toonblade.

I unironically enjoy these “which game is best” conversations. As long as the conversation comes from a place of love for the franchise, and we understand that even the worst Ratchet and Clank games are at least good games (aside from Secret Agent Clank), then we can focus on the merits of each one. It’s the same with any long-running franchise, really.

The second exterminator has stepped up to the plate, but he doesn’t get much of a… reaction for us.

Aha. Aha. Aha. Ah-HAAAAH!

I had forgotten how mediocre all of the bosses in this combat-focused Ratchet and Clank game were. None of their attacks are particularly dangerous, and their own health bars melt in no time, even on this higher difficult mode I’ve chosen for myself.

It’s only odd because of Deadlocked’s increased focus on gunplay versus raw platforming. One would expect the Exterminators to have more varied and interesting attack patterns to make them stand out as something other than normal enemies with larger hitboxes and a pile of stats.

Perhaps there just wasn’t enough time to give them the love and care they needed to truly shine.

Now that we qualify for the rank of Avenger, we have access to more Dreadzone campaigns. So let’s complete them so that we can qualify for another match with an Exterminator.

Sometimes one just finds a weapon that feels good in the hand. For me, that’s the Scorpion Flail. What can I say? Eventually time it collides with both my enemies and the pavement with that satisfying “thud”, I get a little giddy.

I’m not sure what that says about me. Whatever the case, we now qualify to face Reactor, so we’ll start off next week with another boss fight.

By terminating the Exterminator Shellshock, we’ve qualified to challenge the Battledrome, that we may rise up to the rank of Avenger.

Team Darkstar… ASSEMBLE! For poor Coco!

Jokes aside, I actually enjoy how our villains at Vox News need to use propaganda in order to slander us because their viewers like Ratchet way more than their star, Ace Hardlight. Admittedly, we do have to stretch the world to accommodate the fact that this “black market” program in the “Shadow Sector” is marketed to children and has billions of viewers, complete with toys and other collectibles, but it’s worth it to have this little tale of corporate power and abuse in the hypercapitalist setting that has been established over three previous games.

Evidently, the Galatic Rangers aren’t doing their job very well, but that’s no surprise.

At long last, we arrive at our first boss fight against one of Vox’s Exterminators. This one calls himself Shellshock, but I’m unimpressed.

Let’s send him straight to the scrap heap!

What was most surprising to me was how little that actual boss in this boss fight mattered compared to his flunkies. Perhaps again, this is due to the heightened difficulty I’m playing on, but the adds were the only actual sources of damage I needed to be concerned about. Shellshock himself was a pushover in every round of the fight.

For once, Ace Hardlight is probably right. He should have retired years ago.

Thankfully, I was able to fix the issues we were having with Deadlocked. Although I have the Uncharted trilogy at the ready as a fallback, we’re able to continue our Dreadzone campaigns in Ratchet: Deadlocked.

I think it’s clear that the reason the enemies in my game are soaking so much damage, and dishing out about as much, is that my difficulty is set one notch above “Normal”. If it continues to be an issue, I will happily bump the difficulty down, but we’ve reached the point in building up our arsenal that we have plenty of weapons to cycle through. Ammo will soon no longer be a concern, even if damage still will.

As is always in Ratchet and Clank, the solution is just to have more and bigger guns.

The Miracle returns, and we’re Surfing its waves to victory!

Now that we’ve established how the Sera Miracle works in this deck, let’s discuss some of the reasons we play the others cards in our decklist.

Brood is in this deck for a similar reason that it was in the Cerebro deck that we played a few weeks ago. Where it gave Cerebro three 2 powered bodies that could all receive the buff, here we instead see three 3-cost bodies that can each be pumped up by the Surfer. Even if we don’t draw Sera, we can play Brood and Silver Surfer out on the final turn for a combined +15 power in one location, a swing so large that few other plays can match it. With all of the other 3-drops here, that’s likely going to be an even bigger number. For that reason, Brood is exactly as vital here as it was in Cerebro.

The other card I would consider part of the deck’s core is Bishop. Even should all else fail, our mana curve is such that we should be able to play at least one, if not two cards on turns four, five, and six. That makes it more than reasonable for a Bishop on turn 3, which we should always play if we can, to reach 6 power, or greater, over the course of a match. For 3-energy, it’s a rate that’s difficult to match.

The rest of the deck is far more flexible in terms of what we can do with it. Cosmo and Killmonger are strong techs against a number of cards and strategies. Cosmo in particular can potentially shut down enemy Leaders or similar cards. Killmonger can similarly wipe out a board of 1-drops if the games that call for it.

Iceman and Scorpion are two of the strongest 1 and 2-drops in the game, so they slot in nicely as ways to use up any extra mana we might have before and after turn 3. Combined with Cosmo, Armor can protect our Sera plays from cards that shut down ongoing effects. Polaris offers very high base stats for her cost and a strong disruption effect that can screw with our opponent’s plays, and Mr. Fantastic is mostly just another way to put stats on the board.

With this deck, you’d be surprised how often we can catch our opponents off guard and steal a ton of cubes from them.

Our time in the Dreadzone continues, as we fight for our freedom from Gleeman Vox, and his hyper-capitalistic (even by Ratchet and Clank standards) media empire.

I confess part of why I never promised to play through Deadlocked is because I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to fill the air time. Because there’s so much combat and not as many cutscenes, I didn’t know if I would have enough to talk about in order to keep up the conversation. I’m less worried about that now, but sadly my hardware appears to have other plans at the moment.

It’s truly a shame because I was finally starting to get into my groove with Deadlocked when I realized I wouldn’t be able to stream it any further until I either figure out what’s wrong with my hardware.

So for now, let’s say that this series is paused until further notice.

PS: “Further notice” ended up being a few days after I did some troubleshooting.