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The Dreadzone
Imagine flying through space, minding your own business and suddenly your ship gets boarded and the crew gets kidnapped! Your taken to a place where you must battle for your life in a series of adventures which cover the galaxy all for the entertainment of the people at home! Welcome to the Dreadzone where only the toughest can survive, and it seems, an alien cat...
Ratchet Gladiator is my favourite of the Ratchet and Clank series and this is the title which takes you to the Dreadzone, the toughest tournament in the galaxy! A show's not a show unless someone dies! The Ratchet and Clank series is full of these deadly tournaments but none offer the depth that we see in the Dreadzone, it truly provides our hero with a challenge! The tournament started, supposedly, when two guys were fighting over a breakfast burrito and evolved into the illegal killing sport that's enjoyed by the whole family! How hard were these guys fighting? It's like when Shmeagle killed the hobbit for the ring in Lord of the Rings except the ring was playing on Shmeagle's mind, this was a breakfast burrito! Gleeman Vox is the friendly shark-face of the operation and runs it behind the screens but also appears in the advertisements, especially those related to merchandise.
Each tournament pits the contestant against thousands of Gleeman's forces. For a contestant to advance to the next tournament or planet they must get enough Dread Points. With an entire planet Ratchet could just hide from Vox, right? All contestants are fitted with Dread Collars which activate when the contestant gets too far from the tournament zone or when the contestant breaks a rule. Over the course of the show's history Vox has accumulated 6 trillion fans! Many children and families! However, to keep the show interesting Vox sent his army to capture famous space superheroes to compete, and who better than the hero of no less than 3 games?
Want to be a contestant? Here are the rules: if you're inactive or boring you will be executed. If you try to enter another contestants suite you will be executed. Tampering with your Dread Collar will result in execution. Contestants who don't make it through the Qualification Round will be executed. Tampering with the tournament shuttles will result in execution. Use of drugs will, you guessed it, send you to the Gauntlet of Doom! So now that you know what you can and can't do why not get to know the guys in the big league? The Exterminators sound like a Dalek boy band but are instead the name of the ultimate contestants. The ones who you, Ratchet, are forced to fight throughout the tournaments!
First you have Ivan Von "Shellshock" Shellshocktonberg, an ex-soldier who loves taking out the sissy's! He's the first Exterminator you face and therefore the easiest to battle. All you do, pretty much at least, is avoid his missiles. He was a glorified war hero but it's up to Ratchet to turn him into a smouldering pile of nuts and bolts! Next up is the Eviscerator, a savage brute who was also mute! To say no he would rip a security bots arm from its socket and to say yes it would disembowel a security bot! He may have been kidnapped by Vox but he certainly became a fan favourite! Third up on the chopping block is Dull "Reactor" Bookworm, a former maths teacher robot with a nuclear reactor in his chest! He rose to fame after falling in love with pop star Courtney Gears through their shared love of cafeteria food... it's no surprise why that didn't last long. Finally we meet the big cheese of the Exterminators: Ace Hardlight! Superstar Superstud Ace Hardlight was out adventuring in the Solana Galaxy before getting kidnapped by Vox. During his term as a contestant Hardlight forged a friendship with Vox and was granted the role of leader of the Exterminators. He went on to kill many, many contestants in the arena too. This orphan was adopted by a powerful group named the Sonic 6 after they destroyed a planet, you know, accidentally, and want to improve their public images!
Once you've fought your way through the Exterminators and brought an end to the Dreadzone you'll have to face the real big cheese: Gleeman Vox! Team Darkstar, Ratchet's team, has journeyed to the the heart of the Dreadzone, defeated the Exterminators and shut down the TV show! Defeating Vox will finally free the surviving contestants but also bring about the destruction of Dreadzone! You're gonna want to get off that rock quick! Vox provides the best boss fight in the game and ties not only the game but also the entire series on the PS2!
