Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time

Some of the other new weapons are less useful. There's plenty of novelty value to the Sonic Eruptor - pull the trigger and the frog on the end of the gun will let out a huge burp, knocking nearby enemies to the floor. This might be fun at first, but you soon realise that temporarily stunning enemies with a comedy frog is not as effective as blasting their torsos open with your old friend The Negotiator.

Then there's the Dynamo of Doom, which unleashes a sphere of electrifying energy. You can move the sphere around and attack more enemies with it by tilting the Sixaxis. This is tricky to do while simultaneously keeping Ratchet clear of flying ammo, and as a result the DOD isn't really worth bothering with. Nor is the new weapon customisation system - the answer to whether you want to upgrade a weapon is always 'Yes', and though you can choose between various effects the differences are slight.

Most of the weapons in the game are old favourites, including the Buzz Blades and the Groovitron (be sure to try it out on the big lizardy boss Qwark runs away from in the Bronze arena). They're just as enjoyable to use as ever but you can't help wishing there were more new toys to play with, and more which weren't so similar to those we've seen before.

At least Clank gets a new weapon too. Ratchet's storyline is broken up by sections where you get to control his former sidekick, who's now equipped with a special sceptre. It can throw time bombs which create a sphere of slo-mo for a limited time - useful when you need to jump on a fast-moving platform, for example. It can fix time anomalies, or in other words be used to complete mini-games which involve shooting fast-moving spikey things. The sceptre is also good for whacking enemies in the same way as Ratchet's wrench, but there's not a great deal of combat in the Clank levels.

Instead the emphasis is mainly on solving puzzles, which is done by using a series of switches to record and play back time. For example, Clank can record himself running over to a pressure pad and standing on it to open a door. When he plays back the recording, a hologram version of Clank will perform exactly the same actions - leaving the real Clank to run through to the next area.

This might all sound simple enough but things get complicated once the puzzles start to feature multiple recording tracks, several pressure pads, rising and falling platforms and so on. Younger players may struggle to complete a lot of them without adult help. Adults who still don't really understand what happened in the last season of Lost will also struggle. Luckily there is an option to bypass puzzles if you get really stuck. Yes, this feels like cheating, and it will cost you some of the precious bolts you've collected, but it's a lot less depressing and expensive than kicking the telly's face off.