We’ve put an end to the Protopet menace and saved the galaxy, but that doesn’t mean our time with Going Commando is over just yet. Thanks to a couple of save files I found on GameFAQs, we have access to all of the extras available in both Going Commando and the original Ratchet & Clank.

So let’s slow down a little and explore these bonuses before moving on to the next adventure.

As I’ve said many times before, Going Commando set out the formula that the series would use henceforth, and the bonus content in it is no different in that respect.

Challenge Mode in particular has become such a core feature of the franchise that it’s hard to think that there was a time when it wasn’t part of the game. Without fail, it always compels me to return to play the game again and again. It is fun to replay the game with your full arsenal and watch it once again build up into an even more potent set of deadly tools of destruction. Even at full power though, the bolt multiplier raises the skill ceiling dramatically. Players are rewarded for avoiding damage with increased cash flow that accelerates the rate at which their gear can be upgraded. It’s an ingeniously satisfying gameplay loop for repeat playthroughs.

As for the Insomniac Museum, I can’t heap enough praise on it. I live for these kinds of glimpses into the process that made my favorite games. It’s why I still shout out the Developer Commentary Let’s Play and Golden Bolt’s Retrospective. If anything, I get way more out of it now than I did as a child since I know much more about the industry.

With that, our time in the Bogon Galaxy has come to an end. Next time, depending on what happens with The Quarry, we will either begin that, or continue onto Sly 2: Band of Thieves.

It’s time to D-d-d-d-Duel!

We’ve previously played with one of the best decks in Master Duel, Zoodiac Tri-Brigade. While it’s still one of the best decks around, another hybrid of two archetypes has chosen to step up to the plate as a top-tier contender.

So let’s take it for a spin. It’s time to play some Swordsoul Tenyi.

Thanks to Hex Lab for his combo guide, which I used to get comfortable with the deck even if I bungled the combos more than a few times. He’s also made videos for Zoodiac Tri-Brigade, and an update for it to explain how certain combos can be modified to incorporate Destiny Hero – Destroyer Pheonix Enforcer. These guides are worth watching if you’re looking to up your skill at the game.

Thankfully, with the exception of staple cards that nearly every deck uses these days, Swordsoul of Mo Ye is the only Ultra Rare we need for the main deck. The real expense lies in the extra deck, consisting of many Super and Ultra Rare cards that are fairly unique to these archetypes. Still, it’s not as bad as other decks can be in terms of cost, and it is one of the most powerful ones on the ranked ladder.

At this point, I have a few decks built out in Master Duel, despite not putting much money at all into it. I still have issues with it, but the economy isn’t anywhere near as bad as it could be, and it’s reasonable for a free player to build out a strong collection by playing regularly.

It’s still Yu-Gi-Oh, and the best of one format needs work, but as a Magic: Arena refugee I’m more than happy.

The Protopet has been unleashed upon the Bogon Galaxy’s unsuspecting population and untold devastation with it. Fortunately, our new ally has precisely what we need to stop the menace before it gets out of hand…

…as soon as she stops tripping all over herself.

It is difficult to overestimate the impact Going Commando has continued to have on the series going forward. So much of what makes the Ratchet & Clank formula what it is today can be traced directly back to this game, from the ability to strafe to upgrade health and weaponry. Even aspects like the large open level where players gather roughly 100 of a specific item to trade for quest progression and money can be traced directly back here.

They also do an excellent job of seeding many of the important details leading up to the big final twist well in advance. As a kid, I had no idea that all those “Behind the Hero” shorts were leading up to anything important, let alone foreshadowing who the big villain of the game would turn out to be. Once you hear Fizwidget speak normally, it makes sense why Qwark disguised as him would try to use big words to obfuscate the fact he’s an incompetent, yet opportunistic simpleton. It’s even reasonable to suspect either Angela or Qwark put the batteries in backward with their personalities.

Considering how much crunch we now know the studio went through in order to complete this project, it’s astounding to me that it all came together as well as it did sans a few minor issues. I would go so far as to call it the perfect sequel.

Though we’ve finished the story, tune in next week as we collect the remaining Titanium Bolts, and explore some of the extras that were included both in this game and in the original Ratchet & Clank.

The Path of Champions calls to us once more, as we join forces with another powerful warrior from the lands of Runeterra. This time, the martial arts master Lee Sin will demolish our enemies with the dragon’s fury.

Something I’ve noticed as I progress through Path of Champions is just how crucial the powers and passives are to our builds. Combined with our supporting champion, the powers we choose along the adventure go a long way towards informing what cards and future powers we take for the rest of the run.

The decision to go with Lux, for example, made sense because both her and Lee Sin level up based on the spells we cast, though along slightly different axes. And that decision to bring Lux is partly why I chose to take that Judgement which ultimately sealed the game for us in that final round. The mana reduction brought it to a 6-cost card, which is exactly expensive enough to level up Lux if she’s on the board.

A bad start won’t break the run, but a good one sets us up for success.

Now that our time as a galactic gladiator has come to an end, and the Infiltrator is soundly in our possession, it’s about time we got to the truth of the experiment that we returned to Megacorp.

As I said during the recording, I actually like the fight against the giant robot in Snivelak. I don’t think it’s a bad design, it just takes too long to defeat it. If they increased the damage that the turrets dealt, doubling or even tripling it, then the fight would be much better paced. As it stands, he’s just too much of a bullet sponge.

It leads to players exploring alternative cheese strategies. Players don’t try these because the boss is tough, but rather because he simply takes too long to kill. Admittedly, all of my experimentation ultimately took more time than just killing the boss “normally”, but I still stand behind doing that because I had more fun that way, and doing so gave me new strategies I can take with me in future replays.

Next time, we go hot on the trail of the Protopet.

It’s been quite some time since we last set put in the lands of Runeterra, and a new update has once again given us the perfect excuse to return.

This time, the incredibly popular Path of Champions mode has undergone a dramatic overhaul. Let’s dive in to see how much the mode has improved as a result.

While there’s certainly something to be said for developing an overpowered and heavily synergistic deck to demolish the AI, one of the only real issues I could have had with the old Path of Champions mode is that once we had “the build”, there was just no more need to think about our players in the middle of the match. There was no more need for strategy.

These higher difficulty runs solve that problem. As you can see, despite how strong my deck was, I still lost the final round on my first try, and almost lost again on my second try, both due to severe misplays. It’s both a test of our deckbuilding capability and our ability to play.

Additionally, the other cool part is how the mode now has several axes upon which we can develop our characters so that we can improve our chances in future runs. There is both account-wide progress with our Legends level, character-specific experience and relics, and character-specific star shards which can be used to upgrade our characters’ passive powers.

I’ve been having a blast playing this mode when I have a spare moment or two, and the new version is absolutely everything I could have asked for and more.

Our sterling act of “heroism” has inadvertently done more harm than good. According to the thief we recovered the experiment from, the whole galaxy is in imminent danger.

Now that our ship has been restored, it’s time to investigate this potential risk to the Bogon Galaxy.

Going back to replay these older Ratchet & Clank games, knowing more about the development cycle of them now than I did growing up, it’s fascinating to watch Insomniac learn valuable lessons about player engagement in real time.

Lessons like the fact that players don’t enjoy being nickel-and-dimed just to make story progress. Back in the original Spyro the Dragon, there was little incentive to collect treasure beyond a couple of checks that the balloonists would make before allowing players to travel to the next world. Unless one was going to 100%, there was simply no need to be concerned with the treasure counts.

To correct that, Spyro 2 created Moneybags, an NPC who served as a gem sink, which gave players a reason to gather, save up, and spend gems in order to make progress in the game. That way, even if players don’t go for 100%, they still have a reason to go out of their way to collect the gems scattered about the level.

In the hypercapitalist world of Ratchet & Clank, NPCs all over have plenty of reason to charge us for the items and information we need to make progress throughout the game. And thus, our money sink is still in effect. However, unlike Spyro, we already have something to spend our hard-earned bolts on… weapons!

In other words, our bolt count is being taxed both to make the story progress and to upgrade our armor and arsenal. The fact that we spend on weaponry invalidates the need for the game designers to charge us for raw progression. It wasn’t until Going Commando’s release that this was something they learned, and it is the last game to impose those kinds of money gates.

You’ll see this and other such lessons learned as well, but this was the one that always stood out to me.

The Fusion Festival has begun in Master Duel and with it some phenomenal support for certain archetypes that make use of the mechanic. One of which is the incredible Destroyer Pheonix Enforcer package, which we will make use of.

And the other is the powerful Despia archetype, which is the basis of our deck today.

I don’t know if it’s a problem, but something I’ve started to notice in Master Duel is that almost every deck contains these exact cards.

• 3 Maxx “C”
• 3 Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring
• 1 Destiny HERO – Celestial
• 1 Destiny HERO – Dasher
• 2 Fusion Destiny
• 2 Called By The Grave
  
• 1 Destiny HERO – Destroyer Pheonix Enforcer
• 1 Predaplant Verte Anaconda

With the occasional 2-3 copies of Infinite Impermanence, this 12-15 card package forms between 1/4 to 1/2 of the main deck before we even start to discuss what else belongs in it, and for good reason. Every one of these cards is an absurdly powerful tool that can be used for a huge advantage in the form of card draw, removal, or (usually) disruption.

Beyond that, since we’re a fusion archetype with many boss monsters that have broad, almost generic requirements for fusion, we can run a few copies of Super Polymerization. Like our Fallen of Albaz, it can be used to get around cards that protect themselves from our effects by sacrificing them as the cost for fusion. What makes Super Polymerization even better is that our opponents have no way of responding to it, so we can take care of their omni-negate monster without giving them a chance to use it.

Payoffs like Pheonix Enforcer, Masquerade the Blazing Dragon, and Despian Quaeritis all serve as powerful ways to keep our opponents down so we can threaten lethal. Masquerade’s 600 life point tax on every ability our opponent uses, and Quaeritis can keep them unable to attack us, or otherwise set up a powerful Battle Phase.

And thanks to all of our powerful searches like Aluber the Jester of Despia, Despian Tragedy, and Branded Opening, we should always have access to the tools we need.

It might not be the most powerful deck, that’s still probably Zoodiac Tri-Brigade, but it’s a fun deck.

We’re still hot on the trail of the elusive thief of Megacorp’s latest experiment. After what he did to our little robot buddy, he’s cruisin’ for a brusin’.

There’s a mission to complete, so let’s rough him up and take back what was taken.

We spent a lot of time talking about it, but the twist with Angela, to this day, is the source of great contention for the Ratchet and Clank fandom. Part of it comes from the game itself since she basically becomes almost a completely different character once she’s no longer “The Thief”. More importantly, she looks a lot like Ratchet, to the point many people assume she’s also a lombax. And without going too deeply into it, a significant plot point of the Future games and beyond is that Ratchet is the only lombax remaining in the entire galaxy. Queue the internet dwellers arguing over whether or not she is a lombax, which continues even now.

Additionally, we also hit another one of the big innovations that Going Commando brought to the series, which is the larger sprawling open space with a ton of collectibles that can be cashed in for bolts. These worlds often become a place to grind for early-game experience for our weaponry, and many games in the series to come would make use of this concept. It’s another example of the series forging its own identity separate from the other mascot platformers on the PS2.

It’s part of why this game is so foundational for what’s to come.

How good can a game that only costs three dollars realistically be? Well… as of the time of writing, I’ve played it for over 22 hours, and I’m still having as much fun as I did at the start.

This is Vampire Survivors, a game that is far better than it has any right to be.

It’s such a simple concept, but it’s one that has a ton of depth hidden within it. The fact that our weapons fire off automatically means that we can focus entirely on our character’s movements to make sure they stay out of danger for as long as possible, positioning so that when they do fire they do maximum damage.

And the more we play, the more characters, weapons, and passives we unlock to further diversify each run. The loop is damn near addicting.

If anything here was of interest to you, please spend the $3 and give it a try.