You: "I didn't grow up playing Ratchet and Clank"

*Cue tragic backstory music
😂😂😂

Funfact about those yetis. They were never intended to be as strong as they are, but the whole planet was just really rushed in development. Because of that, insomniac would internally hand out the "Snowbeast Award" to any developer who is at fault for the respective worst part of any game they shipped from that point onwards.

"can I play?"
"this is my game. I will let you watch."

always the coolest guys huh

You being overly scared as a kid checks out, based on how you describe it a butterfly appearing out of nowhere would scare you. But in that spirit, I recommend Piglet's Big Game. It's memed as kid Silent Hill, but that's exactly what it is. In terms of locations, gameplay and sound design, it makes you wonder what they were on when they made it. But if you want true creepy, play Dredge. As someone with a deep fear of the dark ocean and the horrors within, playing that game freaked me out especially at night.

As a kid, I originally thought Nefarious was a robot hiding as a squishy to fit in. Realizing her was turned into a robot is far more horrifying and explains his mannerisms (his robotic freezes) and motives. I belief Nefarious wants to turn everyone into robots so they can feel the same pain he felt being felt. I wish you talked about the Aquatos sewers and quarks hideout. Those quarkbots REALLY creeped me out as a kid

I'll always hold the opinion that Racthet 1 had the best atmosphere in the series. Gemlik Base is just so eerie. A lone space station in the middle of nowhere, no NPCs at all to talk to, the only people there are Ratchet, Clank and Quark waiting to ambush them at the end. Combine this with what's probably the best track in the game, something that manages to be both creepy AND catchy, and you have the most memorable level in the game.

Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart just has a straight up horror-like level.

To me, the crazy thing about Nefarious that should have been on this list.... he actually does it. He genuinely shows his real machine working, and the enemies from across the entire game (IIRC even when you go back levels) go from organisms to robots, and they had done it to a team ally as well. You get a chance to even feel this shift in the level, then there's the cutscenes with the president even playing with a "half robot" persona to give up and play with the chance of his new constituents. That was pretty creepy from such a goofy villain. In fact, Nefarious is kind of like that in general. He's amazing for comedy, has so many dumb flaws and things in his way, can't make a single decent pal or henchmen, and yet when he genuinely sets his mind to a plan its actually genuinely horrible and devious. I think he was also retroactively set as responsible for the ameboid invasion. His next bigger scheme is actually erasing time itself, and resetting it so that not only himself, but other villains win - but in itself, is a flaw, and would likely destabilize and end the universe from a temporal apocalypse.

Honestly planet Snivelak from the second game was one of the scariest planets for me as a kid. The red sky, the uneasy music and atmosphere. And fighting the thugs on the bridge and the narrow streets.

Only 5 minutes in….i can tell this video is going to be a real treat as I rediscover forgotten memories I had for this game as a kid

9:42 this happens because when Ratchet is above or in the water, the timer for the fish attack already starts no matter if you're in air or not :D

You can test this by just gliding (for a longer time than your usual jump) above shark infested water and landing in it

If you jump straight in, the shark takes his time, if you take a bit flying above water, as soon as you touch it, it turns into a death plane so you can't sequence break at some points in the games

when you take it at face value, OG quadrology is super dark
R&C 1: an entrepeneur purposefully destroys natural habitats to generate an artificial one, and make it into a resort purely for money, rinse and repeat
R&C 2: a giant corporation tasks you with performing corporrate espionage, to recover a biological prototype  that underwent torture sessions
R&C 3: get in the middle of a galaxy-spanning conflict against a gncidal warlord who wants to mutilate everyone in the galaxy in the same way he was mutilated
R&C 4: get kidnapped by a hostile organization that pits law enforcement agents against each other in death games, and televises it, also torturing, or potentially ending those who try to escape

When I was a kid all these world seemed so amazing and colorful. They still are, but now I have context as an adult. Wackiness aside, the Ratchet and Clank universe is horrifying. Mercs, hostile flora and fauna, ascendant conquerors... All those weapons and R&D companies clearly exist and sell to the public for a reason. Great vid.

3 will always be my favorite game in the series !

Honestly, Quark's monkey business is the most horrific to me...

Something that's stayed with me from childhood but I never see anyone talk about is Doctor Nefarious's ethereal power. In every Boss fight he's able to conjure various forms of energy with his hands and no weapons or devices of any kind even though he does also briefly use pistols. On Mylon he can fly, generate a shield, create many shadowy clones of himself, and fire missiles out of thin air. He can even generate a beam of energy and leave it floating in its place to continue targeting Ratchet independently of himself as if summoning it from a portal to another dimension. He has telekinesis in Rift Apart. Even the knowledge to change organic matter into metal while retaining consciousness resembles alchemy or mysticism. Sure, since he's a mad scientist and it's a sci-fi universe he's in, all of these could be explained as extremely advanced upgrades like magnetism or nanotechnology, but it visually really comes across as black magic. Before Vendra and the Zoni, everyone else uses weapons and can't just open a hell portal with energy coming out of the ground with a wave of their hand. If anything, giving him rocket thrusters in his feet in A Crack in Time took away some of his mystique from levitating.

Great video! I feel like the first game had the most unapologetically strong atmosphere and i love it so much for that, it never gets old when replaying it too, actually grew on me the more i played it

If your're looking for video games with dark undertones, you should give Röki a try. It's like walking into a fairy tale, from a time when fairy tales were creepy and unsanitized.

Spooky story for me: after the first checkpoint on Florana, you have to glide down to continue. There are actually platforms and a ladder which presumably exist to allow you to get back. However, I recall that when trying to to do this, a fish snatched me right out of the air, no contact with the water (they seem to do that sometimes, e.g. RaC2 Dobbo, first dynamo platforms).

That waterbroke me.

21:30 you are right, that bossfight freaked me out and i wasn't even that young when i first played it, because i only found it on my third or fourth playthrough. It's that chase and swallow attack specifically that almost violated the way i understood the game, no other enemy grabs Ratchet like that and just makes you watch as it takes control (and health) away from you.