Ratchet & Clank

Ratchet & Clank is a 3D platform-adventure game featuring the protagonists Ratchet, a furry alien creature, and Clank, a small robot. The two travel across the galaxy in search of Captain Qwark and ultimately…

80 4 November 2002

Adventure Platform Shooter Action Comedy Science fiction

Ratchet & Clank is an adventure developed by Insomniac Games, released 4 November 2002 on PlayStation 2. The main story takes about 11.9 hrs to finish.

Verified 15 Oct 2026 Sources: IGDB , Wikipedia

What Ratchet & Clank is

Ratchet & Clank is an adventure game developed by Insomniac Games and released in 2002. It was published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is available on PlayStation 2 only.

The premise, in the publisher's words

On a fine day on the planet Veldin, a furry Lombax named Ratchet is working on his spaceship when a robot crash-lands near his home. Ratchet recovers the robot from the wreckage, naming him “Clank.” Clank shows Ratchet a recording of Chairman Drek of the Blarg race. In the recording, Drek explains that his home planet has become so polluted it is now uninhabitable. Drek’s solution is to build a new planet for his race by extracting areas from other planets! What’s worse is that Drek has developed a superweapon called the Deplanetizer, which will destroy Veldin to make room for his new planet. Fearing that Drek will destroy everything in his path, Ratchet and Clank team up for their first…

Description from the publisher · source

How it plays

It is played from a third person perspective. Its themes are action, comedy and science fiction. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component.

Where it sits in the Ratchet & Clank series

Ratchet & Clank is the first of 32 entries we hold in the Ratchet & Clank series. The next entry was Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando in 2003. Its critic score of 80 is 4 points above the series average of 76. The highest-rated entry is Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction at 92.

See all 32 Ratchet & Clank games in release order →

How it was received

Ratchet & Clank holds a critic score of 80 out of 100. That places it above 64% of the 7,525 rated adventure games in our database, which average 72. Games released in 2002 averaged 68, so it scored 12 points above the year average. Player ratings track closely with critics at 81, across 301 votes.

How long it takes, and what that costs

The main story runs about 11.9 hrs.

What it launched against

Ratchet & Clank launched on 4 November 2002, within three weeks of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Metroid Prime, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Metroid Fusion. All of them reviewed better.

Released around the same time: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Metroid Prime, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Metroid Fusion.

Cheats and codes

We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for Ratchet & Clank yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.

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