I'm not fond of the Vox Network either

Finished playing Ratchet: Deadlocked last night. The game is very, very short. I think I finished the whole thing in maybe 12 hours of play, and much of that was pretty repetitive. If you've ever played any of the multiplayer in Up Your Arsenal, you've already experienced everything in this game.

The good
The levels are big, and you have two companions to help you out. Two battledroids are salvaged by your pal Al (who you may remember from the first and third Ratchet games), and they go through every level with you, watching your back and doing some of the tedious grunt work. New villians, higher bolt counts than ever, a couple of new vehicles including the Landstalker tank. There are 150 skill points to pick up for your OCD gotta-catch-'em-all pleasure. Each weapon has 10 levels and multiple upgrades. The voice talent is its usual high caliber.

The bad
There's a lot of running around, no puzzles to speak of. The Ratchet series has always been a great hybrid of platforming and shooting, with some great writing. This one? Just shooting and capturing nodes so you can open up another level to capture some more nodes to open up another level to capture some more nodes, etc. The only gadgets are the swingshot, charge boots, and gravity boots. This game is out less than a year after the previous release, so it's rushed schedule shows a lot in this respect. They're really pushing the limit of the PS2: some of the levels feature so much stuff the framerate slows to a crawl. And despite the beauty of the levels, they are nowhere near as interactive as they were in Going Commando. (Still my personal favorite of the four.)

The ugly
The weapon load has been vastly reduced. While previous games have had at least 12-14 weapons, Deadlocked has a mere 10, most of them recycled from other games. (Again, the rushed schedule is probably to blame...) Clank and Ratchet don't even share the same screen—Clank goes from a co-star to a cameo in this game and it's poorer for it. Gone also are the Easter Eggs like the Insomniac museum, which could only be reached by a weird combination of jumps or playing at certain hours of the day. The writing appears to have been farmed out to some interns or something There are some half-hearted attempts at parodying the Fox Network, but they don't really go anywhere. The series has had some great writing, but this one feels... tired.

I'm not sure that the rushed schedule is really to blame for my overall disappointment with this game. I finished it, but I didn't really play any multiplayer. Mostly since I hate playing with strangers online—I used to play a lot of StarCraft and Myth back in the day, but that was with coworkers when I was trying to avoid traffic jams on I-5 by staying at work an extra hour. If you're a fan of the series, it might be worth a rental, but I would not recommend buying it. I hope that Insomniac is working more on a PS3 title and this is just an attempt to cash in on the current holiday season before the new platform launches in spring of next year.