Ratchet & Clank v Jak & Daxter v Sly Cooper: Which Is the Best Series?

Time to answer that long-debated question.
ratchet clank jak daxter sly

Most Villainous Villain

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Ratchet and Clank’s villains have been sort of scattered across the board. While the first three games boasted pretty good ones in the form of Chairman Drek, Captain Qwark, and the amazing Dr. Nefarious, they’re been less successful going forward. Deadlocked’s Gleeman Vox didn’t really have a presence– if anything, he got undermined by his henchman, Ace Hardlight. Tools of Destruction’s Tachyon was theoretically cool, given his connection to Ratchet’s origin, but again got overshadowed by secondary villain Captain Slag. Perhaps the best villain as far as the PS3 games are concerned would be Into the Nexus’ Prog twins Neftin and Vendra Prog, who both had actual complete arcs.

Sly Cooper’s first two games are centered on two different gangs. The Fiendish Five, responsible for orphaning Sly as a child under the rule of Clockwork, a robotic owl that’s spent centuries killing off members of the Cooper bloodline, were the basis for the first game. Sly 2’s Klaww Gang stole Clockwerk’s parts and put them to different uses before being rebuilt and used by a Klaww Gang mole named Neyla. After her defeat in the second game, the third game focused on reclaiming the Cooper family’s vault from twisted scientist, Dr. M, and 2013’s Thieves in Time had the French villain Le Paradox traveling through time to erase the Cooper line’s thieving history as payback for his own family’s bad string of luck as thieves.

Jak and Daxter’s debut game had two villains in the form of Gol and Maia, who just wanted to fill the world with Dark Eco to reshape it to their own vision. Jak II’s Baron Praxis kidnapped Jak and experimented on him for two years with Dark Eco, ruling Haven City as a tyrant. But it turns out that the real villain of the game is the nice old man, Kor, who is in actuality the leader of the Metal Heads, a race of monsters set on killing Jak and the Precursors. Jak 3’s villain is just Praxis’ henchman, Errol, from the previous game made into a cyborg. Combat Racing and Lost Frontier’s villains were lame, so no more needs to be said about them.

Winner: Ratchet & Clank

It can’t be said enough just how great Dr. Nefarious is. He’s competent in his goals but his ranting seals the deal, especially when he gets angry enough to freeze up and start picking up soap opera signals. It’s easy to see why he’s the recurring villain they keep bringing back, and Armin Shimmerman nails it as the evil scientist.


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Author
Justin Carter
Justin was a former Staff Writer for Twinfinite between 2014 and 2017 who specialized in writing lists and covering news across the entire video games industry. Sometimes a writer, always a dork. When he isn't staring in front of a screen for hours, he's probably reading comics or eating Hot Pockets. So many of them.