For the uninitiated, Ratchet and Clank are the stars of a series of games on the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable. The games' style is a mixture of platforming and shooting with some mild puzzle-solving and exploration thrown in as well, where the player explored different areas and used a variety of weapons to cause massive amounts of damage.

This template hasn’t altered a great deal for the first outing on the PlayStation 3. The real change comes in the form of the sheer scale on offer. Tools of Destruction (ToD) has some beautifully realised environments teeming with lush detail and character, with each world having its own distinct style. From the opening planet of Kortog to the Lombax ruins of Planet Fastoon or the simply stunning Nundac Asteroid Ring, which conceals the Apogee Space Station. ToD manages to keep the quality high and is ambitious in its scale and execution. What would've been a static background in a past-generation title can now be fully explored and all of it presented in glorious detail and fidelity.

Animation also benefits greatly. The particle effects on show when Ratchet uses a matter transformer are sublime, as is the wide-eyed terror on the faces of enemies as they cower shorn of their battle suits, at the mercy of Ratchet's weaponry.

The upgrade in scale is also true of the weapons on offer. Always the true star of the Ratchet games they're split into two different categories, Weapons and Devices. The former runs the gamut from the initial fun with the Fusion Grenades to the Predator Launcher, which pays homage to the film from which it takes its name, by targeting enemies with a triangle of red light before unleashing merry hell on them. Later on, some of the weapons are truly awesome to witness in action but to list them all would do any prospective gamer a disservice and spoil the joy of unlocking them. The Devices are also varied, with examples such as the Groovitron which makes any enemy within the immediate vicinity dance as a disco ball projects multicoloured light above them, leaving them wide open to attacks. It never gets old to watch a giant screen-filling T-Rex pulling off some cheesy dance moves or a whole room of enemies all perfectly choreographed doing their best John Travolta impression.

However, the best device is a robot called Mr. Zurkon. Acting as a glorified bodyguard, he destroys anyone who attacks either himself or Ratchet and is very entertaining with his range of witty put-downs and bad attitude. It's hard not to like the little fella, even when the player is the subject of his taunts.

Wit and humour are also in abundant supply when it comes to the game's story and dialogue. The lead duo have their fair share of one-liners as do the vast majority of NPCs. Some of the sea shanties sung by the villain Captain Slag are laugh-out-loud funny in places, with their references to women with slack panties. Watching Ratchet and Clank openly snigger at the lead bad guy when his real name, Percival, is revealed makes the player chuckle and engage with them even more. The game never takes itself too seriously and manages to keep the light-hearted tempo up until the end.

Throughout the game, the player collects bolts which are released when crates, enemies - in fact, just about anything is smashed to pieces. This becomes the de facto currency of the game in as much as you use bolts to buy ammo, weapons and devices. The tasks required to gain bolts aren't terribly taxing and don't require a great deal of thought, as you concentrate on laying waste to yet another area full of enemies. Another collectable is Raritanium. Dropped by larger enemies, it can upgrade weapons to almost ridiculous levels of firepower. What helps balance that power is that each subsequent upgrade costs even more Raritanium, which results in careful consideration of which weapons will be favoured, as you have to balance upgrades across the whole spectrum.

For all the triumphs elsewhere, SIXAXIS control is a mixed bag. Although implemented with far more care than other developers have managed up until now, it still has that feeling of almost succeeding but falling short at the final hurdle. For every triumph, like controlling Ratchet as he flies gracefully through cityscapes using the robo-wings, there's a clumsy section like the rock-cutting of the geo-laser. This leaves the SIXAXIS implementation shifting from feeling natural to being shoehorned in when some restraint would've served these sections far better. The only true success comes in the form of the decrypting puzzles. Tilting a ball bearing into gaps on a circuit board allows the current to reach its final destination on the board and solves the puzzle. As the game progresses, they become more fiendish and can provide some tricky moments. The fact that you can turn them off indicates that even Insomniac doesn't have the greatest of faith in this control method.

For the wealth of features and elements that make ToD such an attractive proposition, it has a strange duality at its core. All at once it feels very familiar and yet fresh. Indeed the visual clarity really does help propel the game to new levels of artistry but on the other hand, it feels like a game played many times before. Regardless it never stops being anything less than great fun to play and hugely engaging. The almost pathological lust for bolts and new collectables bundles the player along with great enthusiasm.