Awesome / Ratchet & Clank

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Games with their own pages

• Ratchet & Clank (2002)
• Ratchet & Clank (2016)
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Mainline games

Up Your Arsenal

• Our disposable mooks this time around are the Tyhrranoids, a race of small brained round monsters with googly eyes, who are too stupid to realise that their bosses master plan involves killing them all right from the get-go. And then you go on to assault their home planet of Tyhrranosis and meet the Momma Tyhrranoid, who, despite the name, is about thirty feet tall, has about ten rows of sharp teeth, and has a freakin' rocket launching turret strapped onto her head! Suddenly there is something about the 'Noids which is genuinely threatening.
  • The sheer Mood Whiplash is worth commenting on. Ratchet and Clank made its fortune as a series in the early 2000s by appealing to both kids and teens with its more adult humor, but the bosses, while sometimes serious, were just as often played for comedy, being silly-looking or cackling inbetween taunts. Then you blow up the turrets on Tyhrranosis and think "alright, time to go have fun beating the boss". Then you enter the Control Room, and this starts playing. The Momma Tyhrranoid, introduced with an Impending Doom P.O.V. like something out of a slasher movie, is taken deadly seriously and is a surprisingly difficult boss this early in the game to boot. Its ragged breathing, Lamprey Mouth full of teeth, roars of anger, and the way it menacingly comes closer while fighting you wouldn't be out of place in a horror game.
• The bit where Ratchet and Clank encounter Nefarious' Bio-bliterator. Ratchet comments that his biggest gun wouldn't even be able to dent the weapon. Clank responds by indicating a huge anti-spacecraft turret: "Then we shall just have to find a bigger gun." When the pair get inside the turret, Clank hacks the weapon as Nefarious rants at him over a monitor:
  Clank: After all those holo-films, there is one thing you should know by now: do not mess with Agent Clank! (*BOOM!*)
• As Ratchet approaches the final boss arena he is suddenly confronted by several of the toughest robo-mooks the game can throw at him. When it looks like these guys might finish him off before he can even get to the boss... the usually cowardly Galactic Rangers warp in and start blasting the mooks apart. "LET 'EM HAVE IT, RANGERS!" "YEAH! YOU WANT SOME A' THIS?!"
  • Doubles as a Heartwarming Moment.
  • For that matter, the actual fight against Nefarious himself. For a Laughably Evil villain, Nefarious has the distinct honor of being the only antagonist in the PS2 quadrilogy to take Ratchet on personally.
    • He doesn't rely on a mech (until the second half, anyway)^note  And said mech is gigantic, dwarfing even Drek's from the first game to the point Ratchet has to use the Hovership to stand a chance. like Drek or sic a mutant abomination like Qwark did, he fights Ratchet head-on with his own abilities and by god is it intense. He comes at you swinging with everything he's got and he just doesn't let up.
    • The track playing in the background is also a great indicator of just how serious things are. After all, when it comes to the fate of the Solana Galaxy, it's very clear that neither side is going to let up at all. Shit just got real.
    • Oh, and what does Nefarious say before deciding to handle Ratchet personally?
      Nefarious: Fine! I'll do it myself!
  • Captain Qwark does the same thing in the battle against Nefarious, marking his change from Villain with Good Publicity to a comedic hero with a side of The Atoner.
    Qwark: (coming in, guns a-blazing) YEEEEEEE-HAW!
    Nefarious: NO! I DON'T BELIEVE IT!
    Qwark: Believe it, toaster-head!

Tools Of Destruction

• The Space Pirate battle at the Verdigris Black Hole. Starts with an ambush by Pirate Fighters, followed by Ratchet piloting Aphelion through a Pirate outpost on an icy asteroid (And destroying it, too!) and ending with a boss fight as you pilot through a black hole. "Incredible" doesn't even begin to describe it.

• The climax of the game. Ratchet's spent the entire adventure trying to learn more about his race in the hopes of possibly reuniting with them, and Tachyon taunts him with this by opening a portal to the Lombax dimension, sadistically offering him a choice between rejoining them or staying in his universe and remaining the only Lombax, possibly forever. Ratchet looks back at his friends and allies, and in a tone more sincere than he's ever been before, firmly chooses the latter in order to to protect the people and universe he cares about. Cue final boss battle.
  Ratchet: If I leave you with the Dimensionator, no one will be safe. Not the Lombaxes, not my friends... I'm not going anywhere until it's destroyed.

A Crack in Time

• Clank's fight with the Hypersonic Brainwave Scrambler. It's one of the few boss fights in the entire series where Clank does NOT turn into Giant Clank...and yet he still scraps the Hypersonic Brainwave Scrambler.
  Clank: One Hypersonic Brainwave Scrambler...scrambled! (chuckles)
• It's shown that, despite getting tricked and captured by Dr. Nefarious, Orvus still managed to screw him over in some regard— he went so far as to erase his own memory to prevent Nefarious from probing him for info on the Great Clock and the Orvus Chamber, and manages to hold back the Hypersonic Brainwave Scrambler before he disappears. Yes, Nefarious was still able to track down and kidnap Clank, but thanks to Orvus' trickery it took him way longer to control the Clock for himself.
  • And as Word of God has stated, Orvus survived the Hypersonic Brainwave Scrambler with Nefarious none the wiser. Up yours, doctor!
• Ratchet's mid-air rescue of Clank on Vapedia.
• Fighting in the past, Ratchet and Clank manage to turn back an Argile invasion force single handedly, changing history forever.
• The "six minutes" scene, which crosses over with heartwarming. When Alister Azimuth kills Ratchet and attempts to get control over the Orvus Chamber for himself, Clank manages to beat him to it in the nick of time and shut out any entry. When staring at the Great Clock's control switch, Clank recalls Orvus' and Sigmund's warnings about the Clock's sacredness as they conflict with his friendship with Ratchet. Until he remembers the Plumber's odd advice: "I wouldn't risk any more than six minutes." Clank then turns back time six minutes, and promptly saves Ratchet, with time and space none the worse for wear.
  • Sigmund also gets a much-understated one: in both timelines, his first instinct upon seeing Azimuth going berserk is to face the "scary demon Lombax" head-on, and just about gives Clank enough time to save Ratchet in the original timeline. In the altered timeline Azimuth manages to beat him before Ratchet and Clank can arrive, but it's still a satisfying moment considering how he spent half the game hiding from both danger and his own inner sadness over Orvus' disappearance. Seeing him come into his own is enough to show you why he earned the role of Senior Caretaker.
• The RYNO V. The deadliest and most awesome weapon in the known universe so far, with missiles and bullets galore to utterly decimates the competition, and it plays the 1812 Overture to boot. You will be satisfied upon finally getting it.
• It's heavily implied via Space Radio news that Max Apogee is indeed alive following his ambiguous fate mentioned last game. How would he have disappeared, you ask? Why, only by jumping dimensions to save Angela Cross' life from Tachyon! And the WildStorm comics pretty much confirm it!