5.) Sheepinator

There has been a weapon in almost every Ratchet and Clank game that transformed the enemy into some type of animal, such as the Morph-o-Ray from the original, which transformed the enemies into chickens, or the Mootator, which does the same with cows. This choice is pretty much a placeholder for all these awesome weapons, although the Sheepinator is my favorite of the bunch. When you first get it, it seems like any other transformation weapon except with sheep this time, although this changes as soon as it is upgraded. It becomes the Black Sheepinator, which then starts changing the enemies into black sheep, which will try to jump over to others and explode when they get close.

Seriously, I don’t think I need to elaborate much more than that. There is a weapon in the game that transforms your enemies into heat-seeking, exploding black sheep. Any weapon that makes it logical to say that sentence is doing something right. As if that weren’t enough, the Sheepinator is given to you at the point where it becomes most useful; when a humongous amount of small, easy to kill enemies appears on many worlds. The amount of time it takes to transform an enemy is based on how large and tough an enemy is, so the Sheepinator becomes the obvious weapon of choice in these situations. While I do love the concept behind these transformation weapons, again, I’m most impressed that the creators made a weapon that was both really entertaining to use and beyond useful in so many situations.

4.) Groovitron Glove

If you’ve played the recent Ratchet and Clank Future games, you were probably expecting this one to appear sooner or later. While I’ve mentioned many weapons on this list that combine a great usefulness in battle with the overall humor of the series, the Groovitron Glove is the best example of this very good design choice. Simply put, the glove tosses out a disco ball that rises up and starts playing a song while multicolored lights are flashing everywhere. This song then makes your enemies dance uncontrollably for as long as the disco ball lasts and, when the weapon is upgraded, it can last for a surprisingly long time. This is very similar to the Mag-Net Launcher in function, although it’s better for strategy because, although it doesn’t hurt enemies, it keeps them incapacitated for much longer and affects all enemies within range instead of just one. You can easily defeat an entire enemy group by having them dance and then picking them off one-by-one with the weapon of your choice. At the same time, it is hilarious in that it is making all your enemies dance. In fact, there is a unique dance for every enemy in the game, even bosses, and seeing them all even gets you a skill point, so it’s obvious they put a lot of effort and entertainment into this one weapon. Of all the weapons in A Crack in Time, this was probably my most used weapon in the second half of the game, as it gave me time to defeat all my enemies, laughing all the while.

3.) R.Y.N.O. V

With a couple exceptions, the most powerful weapon in any Ratchet and Clank game is some variation on the R.Y.N.O, or Rip Ya’ a New One. The R.Y.N.O. V from A Crack in Time is, as the name implies, the fifth incarnation of the, as the game puts it, “most powerful weapon in the known universe.” At its most basic, any incarnation normally fires out an extremely powerful volley of homing missiles that can rip through almost any enemy in a manner of seconds. However, the R.Y.N.O. V is different is a couple ways that only serve to make the gun even more awesome. For one, besides firing the normal volley of missiles, it also fires bullets akin to dual miniguns from the outer barrels as a more powerful missile is fired out of the center. Honestly, I’ve never seen any other gun have this many bullets and rockets coming out of it at once and it is just beyond fun to fire off. It also has the highest ammo count of any gun in the entire series at 1500 rounds and although it runs through ammo faster than you can imagine, it’s more than enough to kill almost anything.

While this enormous firepower is great to use, what really seals the deal for me on this weapon is how, after firing the gun for a few seconds continuously, it starts playing the 1812 Overture. As if that wasn’t awesomely entertaining enough, the more powerful rockets that fire from the center actually fire on every cymbal crash from the 1812 Overture. I love how the song that is classically played over montages of explosions is played over a gun that does just that in game. A gun with astounding firepower that plays very appropriate music as it is fired? Sounds good to me.

2.) Rift Inducer

The Rift Inducer is another one of those weapons where the simple description of what the gun does is almost enough to understand why it’s so awesome. The Rift Inducer shoots out mini black holes that suck in all the enemies nearby and, if you put two or more black holes close to each other, they will combine into an even bigger black hole. Of course, you can’t get sucked into the holes, but they will still kill almost any enemy that’s not gigantic, as those ones are too big and strong to be sucked in. Bigger enemies can also be a problem until you upgrade to the Rift Ripper, which then fires lightning out of the black holes to weaken those foes enough until the suction works on them as well.

Besides just plain being cool, it’s also a very useful weapon because, despite a somewhat low ammo count, it can easily clear entire rooms of enemies with minimal effort, especially if the black holes are combined. I used the weapon so much, it upgraded much quicker than almost every other weapon, especially because weapon upgrade based on the amount of damage dealt with them and the Rift Inducer is akin to taking out an enemy’s entire life bar. However, what I like the most about this weapon is the originality in its design. While a fair amount of the weapons in the series can be seen as a variation on a basic weapon like a machinegun or a shotgun, this is another weapon that is completely unique and can’t be likened to other weapons in almost any game. As I have said, this series is good at making weapons with that nature and this one is my favorite of those, due to its great use and awesome premise.

1.) The Harbinger

Ratchet: Deadlocked departed from series norms in many significant ways, such as removing Clank from gameplay, getting rid of almost all platforming, and having an extremely strong focus on only the weapons. Despite this, I found most of the weapons in Deadlocked to be a bit on the boring side. However, The Harbinger, Deadlocked’s equivalent to the R.Y.N.O, stood out among the crowd as something truly awesome. This weapon fired out a number of small missiles that put multiple targets on the ground in front of Ratchet. These targets were then used to direct multiple orbital ion cannons to fire down from space and blast enemies to pieces. This only got better when you upgraded it to the Supernova, which called down even more powerful lasers that obliterated all enemies in your line of sight and left craters in the ground due to the overwhelming power of the cannons.

I’m sure I don’t need to explain just how awesome it is to call down orbital lasers to defeat your foes. Even better, despite how incredibly strong The Harbinger was, they let you have at least 10 shots with it, which, if you had upgraded it enough, was enough to completely blast away even the final boss easily. Clearing entire rooms became a cinch and it is wonderfully entertaining to watch all these enemies who could previously cause annoying problems get blasted to oblivion. While I have seen a couple other weapons of this nature before in video games, it doesn’t prevent this particular one from being very awesome and more than unique enough to be considered original. Few can deny that there were more imaginative weapons than The Harbinger in this series, but it doesn’t change just how much I enjoyed using it and the awe-inspiring destruction it rained down that makes it my favorite weapon of the Ratchet and Clank games.

Those were my favorite weapons in the Ratchet and Clank series. I plan to follow this one up with a Top 10 list of my favorite gadgets in the series, so keep an eye out for it. Until then, please tell me which weapons were your favorites in the comments below, along with any constructive criticism you may have about the list. I hope you enjoyed the read.

Robert H.

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