A few weeks ago, we lamented the slow trickle of exclusive 9th gen. software to test our PS5. At the time of writing that article we had reached the six month mark with only two heavy-hitters on the already-leading platform. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is the third and probably the best reason to choose PS5. A breathless romp across a huge variety of locales, each crammed with stunning audiovisual detail, Rift Apart dazzles and awes time and time again.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is also a superb entry in a series wrongfully overlooked when listing PlayStation’s most iconic franchises. It builds lore, adds memorable characters to the universe and expands on prior titles’ mechanics in the way that only the best follow-ups do.
A Pixar-like Adventure
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart opens with our titular heroes being celebrated for their previous heroic deeds. The grand parade is a visual and aural feast that is rudely interrupted by Doctor Nefarious. The Doc has acquired a Dimensionator, a device for opening portals between different dimensions. With this power, Nefarious looks to find the realm where he always wins – and he wants to take Ratchet and Clank with him.
The Doctor gets his way but not without tearing holes all over the multiverse. Ratchet and Clank become separated with Clank shacking up with another Lombax named Rivet.
Rivet is a bit of an anti-Ratchet, far more self-assured to a point of cocky with a touch of sarcasm never too far away. Rivet’s moveset is also infused with the exaggerated swagger of a lilac Lombax setting her apart from Ratchet’s seat-of-the-pants improvisation.
Many will enjoy Rivet’s back-and-forths with the sweet Clank during their time together – it’s fun dialogue to have a chuckle to in between gun fights or tricky grinding sessions. Meanwhile, Ratchet teams up with various creatures, bots and devices throughout the campaign so he isn’t all alone for large sections of the game.
A Class Apart
The game’s dimensional rifts are used to great effect in breaking up the action and adding variety. We also get a chance to meet a huge cast of supporting characters due to how often we are whipped off somewhere (or sometime) else.
The opening doesn’t give the player much time to settle in after the spectacular intro. The game seems to enjoy confusing the player and teasing a truth around the corner. By the time the nature of the dimension shifts has been established, players won’t be overloaded with story but rather bursting with questions.
Insomniac’s imagination with planet design and how they look and play in different dimensions is laudable. From pristine planets broken apart or dead wastes seemingly teeming with life, the contrasts are striking. A players may be in reduced gravity, floating between asteroids one moment or grinding a rail through a forest the next. When combined with the dense visual detail of each and every area, it’s awe-inspiring.
One area we visit a lot during the game is the dimension in which Nefarious actually creates his empire. Rivet is a freedom fighter, part of a group looking to take down the emperor. This realm is a child-friendly Blade Runner-style dystopia that serves as the game’s deepest dive into open-world gameplay.
Variety, Adventure and Pacing
While other realms and planets feature large areas to roam, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is a mostly linear affair. A player can visit any planets open to them as they choose. The game has a robust set of collectibles and rare currencies that will encourage a few players to revisit areas.
However, the levels are a little too large sometimes and heading back to clear collectibles sometimes felt like a chore. Your mileage may vary. Thankfully, there are dozens of unique areas to visit so players will always have the choice to push on to experience the new.
And Ratchet and Clank offers plenty of new. Players flit back and forth between Ratchet and Rivet with some Clank (and others) offering entirely unique gameplay sections. Clank has the best of the alternate level-styles.
The friendly tin bot has a Tron-looking, Lemmings-playing minigame in his Meta Terminals. These are fun, brain tickling puzzles that pop up just often enough to make them worthwhile but not often enough to outstay their welcome.
The other major departure is (very literally) eliminating computer viruses. In a form much like Watch Dogs Legions ‘Spiderbot Arena’, players navigate a brief maze, puzzle a little bit and blast infection away. These lack the sheer variety and challenge of Meta Terminals and some of you may find it becomes a chore.
Vehicle sections (especially the unstoppable kind) are scattered through the adventure. Like the Meta Terminals, there is enough variety here to keep them fresh and they are used frugally, often as part of a larger set-piece.
Speed has EVERYTHING to Do With It
Players will also use rifts in a more local sense during combat, puzzle and platforming sections. Pulling Rivet or Ratchet to a yellow rift will instantly transport them to that spot. The detail flying by is amazing and never ceased to amaze me. These instant moves add to the swiftness and agility that Ratchet and Clank games are loved for.
Rift Apart demands players master Ratch-vet’s wall-running, rope swinging, rail swapping and double-jump. The game’s early platforming sections focus on one or two of these skills and later will ask players to chain it all together. The level designs allow players to exploit their full set of moves to find little treasures, sneakily teaching a player along the way.
Similarly, combat rewards players for learning to exploit the expanded mobility of the characters as well as the huge array of weapons at their disposal. The game’s arsenal is bonkers. A child’s fever dream of doohickeys like burrowing missiles, a laser shotgun or one that pours foes from other PlayStation properties in to battle alongside you.
The imagination required to produce these designs, and the will and talent to follow through are both commendable.
Feast for the Senses
The immersive visual and audio presentation are also worthy of great praise. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart exploits PlayStation 5’s strengths to deliver something truly special. Each scene teems with detail. Every weapon, every crate and every pickup adds their own little particles, shading and lighting to already loaded environments. The vast levels and their backdrops stretch into the distance with little loss of detail. Insomniac took great care in applying lens aberration and various focus effects that heighten the cinematic
Despite the huge variety presented to players across the 12-15 hours runtime, each world is as dense and wonderful as the last. Each theme seemed like an opportunity for the devs to run wild and test PS5’s ability to throw data from its SSD to your eyeballs. An opportunity that they gladly and repeatedly took.
What particles, ray-tracing and raw data throughput do for the eyes, PS5’s 3D audio does for the ears. Each enemy and their weapon has their unmistakable din and with a pair of headphones on, you’ll know where they are. Each of our protagonist’s weapons have a slightly different sound to aid your direction-finding amidst the fray.
Like the graphical output, Insomniac seem to be testing the 3D audio here. Set-piece battles have dozens of audio cues fighting their way to your ears through the full 360 degrees. Sometimes, it can be a little overwhelming but it adds to the frantic feel of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.
A Little Lack of Polish
There are several long-platforming sections that are let down by sticky rail-grinding. There are other occasions when a player won’t stick to walls when hopping from rails. These might deal a player a few frustrating, pace-breaking deaths but don’t hurt the game overall.
When a player is let back to action from a few select cut-scenes, the camera is fixed. On some of these occasions, I couldn’t see my character and walked to my death. A couple of these particular instances happen near the beginning and took a little shine off the spectacular opening.
Later on, players will encounter various powerup boots with one allowing players to skate across levitating stones. That is, if they spawn at their intended pace – on more than one occasion I fell to my death while the while the road ahead slowly assembled itself. Yet when I restarted at the checkpoint, the roads were spawning in time for seamless traversal.
With such a vast set of mechanics, set-pieces, puzzles to incorporate, it’s perhaps understandable that their interactions with similarly vast and varied levels are sometimes not completely perfect. Overall, the experience is as polished and mechanically satisfying as Insomniac’s best.
Early Promise
Insomniac have crafted something that feels ‘next gen’ from the inside-out. It shows the wealth of gameplay experiences that are now open to 9th gen. console gamers, especially PS5 owners. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is a stunning display of PS5’s power just six months into its run. It’s also a show of how Insomniac have changed how games are played, not just how they look.
Rift Apart sets a new standard in terms of creativity and imagination. Not just in a artistic sense but in how the developers deal with the hardware at hand.
