Although I'm a huge fan of the Ratchet & Clank games, I've been a bit disappointed in the last few releases. It almost seemed like Insomniac was coasting. Which isn't terrible. Frankly, I'd rather have a Ratchet & Clank game coasting than a Jak & Daxter, Spyro, or even Mario game at full throttle. But it wasn't until I started playing Crack in Time that I really appreciated what I'd been missing.

Insomniac is back in rare form this time around. They've created the finest platformer of this generation, assuming by "platformer" you can also include what is arguably a shooter. Furthermore, I'd say this is the best looking Playstation 3 game you can play. It's full of moments where I just had to stop and smile and marvel and sigh a little affectionate sigh. I'd even go so far as to say this is probably the best Ratchet & Clank of them all.

After the jump, let me tell you what you'll find here that you won't find in any other Ratchet & Clank.

11) It's easy to dismiss crates. But what's harder to do is appreciate when they're well done. I don't know if it's just my imagination or if the crate-smashing technology in Crack in Time has been actually improved. It feels somehow better. Maybe extra splashier. Whatever the Insomniac scientists have been doing to perfect crate-smashing, they've truly outdone themselves. There's something so satisfying about the way the crates break open and all those shiny bolts come flying out. It's like taking a shower in treasure. It's like playing in sprinklers that spray gems instead of water. It's like a ticker tape parade with dollar bills.

10) Sure enough, the guys at Insomniac have come up with some weapons that feel unlike any of the previous weapons. Are these guys ever going to run out of ideas? That said, the Spiral of Death is what won the contest in which fans submitted weapon ideas? A boomerang sawblade is cool, sure, but that's what won? I could have thought that up!

9) The weapon stores tell you what weapon you'll unlock next, giving you something to look forward to. Similarly, you always know how close you are to upgrading your ship, and just what new ability you'll get when you upgrade. And when you do get a new weapon, the 2D intro films are clever and energetic.

8) The free-roaming space areas are fantastic and without precedent in a Ratchet & Clank game. They give you a break between levels, providing the opportunity to do side missions for money and upgrades. And one of the coolest things they've cribbed from Grand Theft Auto is a radio with a few stations. But there's only one radio station for me in Crack in Time. Playing Ratchet & Clank to the sound of a jazz soundtrack feels so right. Seriously. Switch to the third station. You'll never listen to anything else.

7) It's not not funny. This was a problem with the last few games. Instead of being funny, they tended to be snide, sarcastic, juvenile, or embarrassingly over-the-top. That's rarely the case here. I'm super picky about writing and I enjoyed most of Crack in Time.

6) Ratchet & Clank games have tended to involve unskippable minigames. But this time you get time puzzles, in which Clank makes copies of himself and then coordinates their overlapping actions over a span of time. They're those rare puzzles that you look at, think you're never going to solve, but try anyway. Then something clicks, you solve it, and you feel like the president of the local chapter of Mensa. They're fueled by 100% brain power. And best of all, they can be skipped if you beat your head against them for a while. However, in the process of beating your head against a puzzle, you're likely to get just close enough to the solution that you play it out anyway. I'm proud to say I didn't skip a single time puzzle, even when I'd decided at the outset I wasn't interested in figuring it out.

5) I do not hate the Sixaxis control gimmick. The controllable tornado in the last game was terrible. It just felt like it was out of control, which is appropriate for a tornado. But the only Sixaxis gimmick in Crack in Time is a giant ball of crackling energy. It rolls slowly and deliberately enough that you can sort of finesse where you want it to go.

4) The enemies do things in this game they haven't done in any of the previous Ratchet & Clanks. They're mostly just the same old robots and cartoon aliens, but there are a few surprises I won't spoil.

3) All the Ratchet & Clanks have had big battles without framerate problems. None of them have had battles this big, often with friendlies on your side. Sony's God of War team and Naughty Dog's Uncharted team got props for making the most of the Playstation's hardware, but when it comes to amazing detail, fast action, and fluid framerates, no one does it like Insomniac. Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time isn't just the best looking game on the PS3, it's also one of the smoothest.

2) I wanted to know what was going to happen in the story. I liked the McGuffin. I liked the tension you got from having Ratchet and Clank separated from each other. It's like Cold Mountain. You want Jude Law to get back to Nicole Kidman. Actually, wait, that might be too weird of a comparison. But the point is that separating things that are supposed to be in pairs is an effective dramatic technique. It works well in Crack in Time, where both characters have their own story arcs and their own gameplay. The narrative drive of the game is working your way towards uniting them.

1) If you get through the game, you can get a gun with its own soundtrack that plays when you fire it. And, yes, the soundtrack is, of course, Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture". And it carries enough ammo that you can really enjoy the music!