One of the great things about the Ratchet & Clank games is how they move forward relentlessly. There was almost never an instance of spinning your wheels and getting nowhere. Even if you kept dying in a certain area, you were still earning money and leveling up your weapons. If there's one thing Insomnia knows, it's positive reinforcement. They're a generous people.

High Impact, the folks doing their own PSP versions of Ratchet & Clank, didn't get that memo. Their first attempt, Size Matters, had some awful "You shall not pass!" boss battles. Now Secret Agent Clank offers a wide assortment of dead-ends. It moves laterally through about five or six different types of gameplay, veering from type to type like a drunk driver down a six-lane freeway. Actually, that would imply a sense of freedom. Secret Agent Clank is more like a Disney ride that stops every so often and makes you get out and ride another ride. It confuses partitioning with generosity.

One minute I'm playing an extended dancing minigame apparently created by someone who doesn't understand the concept of a beat. The next I'm in a snowboarding game that plays like a Flash rip-off of a budget clone of some third-rate publisher's version of SSX. Then I'm doing one of those wretched "secretly tail the bad guy" missions. You know the type. A dude is slowly walking a pre-determined course. If you get to close, "Oh no, he's seen you!" If you get too far, "Oh no, he's gotten away!" Peppered throughout my distance-jockeying are a variety of fail states. Like all the worst stealth game, Secret Agent Clank loves its fail states. I can't think of a single fail state in one of Insomniac's Ratchet & Clank games.

There's a lot of traditional Ratchet & Clank goodness in here, but lord, do you have to work for it. On the one hand, I loved the Playstation 3 version, but its "more of the same" was getting a little long in the tooth. So it's nice to see something different done with the Ratchet & Clank franchise. On the other hand, did it have to be this?