I've been wrong about Ratchet & Clank. I always thought Sony's series was the Dreamworks to Nintendo's Pixar. Yeah, they can be cute, and they can be funny, but Ratchet & Clank games always felt like the result of extreme market-testing, with whatever soul they could have had replaced with lowest common denominator pandering. Just look at Ratchet: He has that face, that smug smirk that every Dreamworks character makes (at least according to that popular web comic from a few years ago.)

Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus isn't the first Ratchet & Clank that I've played, but it's the first to make me feel bad about writing these games off. Some of the dialogue and character designs might veer into that cloyingly sassy turf claimed by Dreamworks and so many smarmy kids' shows, but it doesn't happen as often as I had feared. Much of the game is legitimately funny. The variety of the game's action, and how smoothly it flows from third-person shoot-out to twisty platforming section, makes up for any of the story's creakier moments.