Ratchet and Clank are back in the latest title in the franchise by Insomniac Games. The PS3 exclusive has been somewhat overlooked, predominantly owing to its October 27 launch – falling directly between two of the year’s most anticipated releases: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Despite the competition, the title sold one hundred thousand copies in its first week on shelves, and Insomniac has repeatedly stated they aren’t worried, asserting that the Ratchet and Clank series is a staple for many gamers. They have an audience, and they believe that gamers who may have been distracted during the game’s launch won’t wait too long to revisit the Ratchet and Clank universe – but should they?

Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter is a game similar in spirit to its new, younger brother, Scribblenauts, but it is not nearly as ambitious (or flawed) as that now-famous game. While Scribblenauts is concerned with providing an outrageously large sandbox of words and characters for players to mess about in, Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter is a more controlled, directed experience. It is, to put it simply, a platformer, and it is not a terribly revolutionary or brilliant platformer. It’s the world that the players create around themselves that makes this game special.

Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure is a tough sell. It’s a remake of a Taito “classic” that I haven’t played. Apparently the original was something of a spiritual sibling of Bubble Bobble. You can see the resemblance: Towering Adventure follows an upward action similar to Ice Climbers, an inverse of Bubble Bobble’s descent into a pink-and-blue pastel pit of peril. Instead of little blue and green dragons who jump incredibly slowly and shoot bubbles along a horizontal axis, Towering Adventure features two vanilla white dudes who jump incredibly slowly and shoot rainbows along a horizontal axis. This is where the familial resemblance ends.