Reviews from

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I am VERY CONFLICTED about Rift Apart. It's an absolutely stunning showcase for the PS5 in every way, and it feels like a legitimate masterpiece most of the time. But then it just has to do something dumb every once in a while to bring the experience down.

First: The Good!

I've said it in multiple reviews before, but I really am in love with the DualSense. The haptic triggers, advanced rumble, and speaker (when used correctly) create a thoroughly engrossing experience that I will never not be a sucker for. The way that you half-pull a trigger for certain functions feels amazing, especially with the gentle little stop in the middle. The sounds and voices that come out of the controller throughout are just fun, and the rumble does a great job of making each weapon you use and each surface you walk on feel different. I love it!

Beyond the controller, the weapons feel great to use in and of themselves. I leveled each weapon up fully and spent all the Raritanium you can acquire in a single playthrough. In the end, there were very few weapons I didn't adore. I was a particularly big fan of the Negatron Collider. Big laser good.

I played this game right after finally getting a 4K OLED TV, and it's easily the most visually impressive game I've played to date. It's easy to take incredible graphics for granted, but I try to stop and say "wow" every once in a while, and Rift Apart probably got more wows out of me than anything I've played since Uncharted 4. And can you believe how good all that FUR looks?!?

Anyhow, missions are fun, characters are enjoyable, weapons great, visuals stunning, music solid, blah blah blah. Why didn't this end up clearing a 4/5 for me even though I was absolutely enamored with it most of the time?

The Bad!!

The Clank astral projection mini game is... fine. Just felt like puzzles for puzzles' sake, there was nothing particularly compelling there, I'm not sure if it's filler or a misguided attempt to break up the near-flawless Ratchet/Rivet gameplay, but I think the game as a whole would be better off without it.

The Glitch mini game is worse. A tiny cute spider robot shoots viruses? Okay that's kind of cool I guess, but... it's in a game that already has a lot of fantastic shooting. Why are we interrupting that for some bland laser-zapping? They try to give Glitch her own antagonist here, but it just ends up feeling pointless and hollow. Playing the Glitch levels felt like watching a bunch of 4-minute webisodes that spun off from your favorite TV show. The showrunners swear that these matter and are worth your time, but... are they??

Those are both downers, but they don't ruin the main third-person shooting and platforming. You might even argue that they make you appreciate the main gameplay even more by giving you something bland and tedious to compare it to! But, unfortunately, even the Ratchet/Rivet stuff ends up stumbling once you try to go for 100%. (And let's be real, if I'm enjoying a 3D platformer collectathon, I'm gonna collect every single thing) In the first Ratchet & Clank, levels are wide open areas which give you a variety of options for potential paths between any two points. Rift Apart mostly eschews this approach (with Savali being the main exception), instead focusing on segmented levels built around scripted set pieces. These make for some great and exciting scenes, but once you're trying to navigate a world like Sargasso or Cordelion without just following objective markers, you realize there's often one railroaded path that connects islands or rooms together, with deviation not often being possible. In a more open setting, exploration is a joy and wouldn't invoke the term "backtracking" at all, but completing most areas of Rift Apart feels a bit too much like repeating levels of an on-rails shooter, hoping you don't accidentally miss something because you'll have to begin the sequence of island-hopping again.

It really is a great game, and I'm glad I played it. But man, it's such a shame that it's not as consistent as it could've been.

This game made me so happy! It took me back to the first game when I was a kid with my younger brother. I don't just mean the nostalgia, but the way the game felt, the way it was structured. It gives me hope for Sony's future.

The gameplay, running at 60fps, was beautiful and felt great to play. The colour palette and lighting as my enforcer lit up a room of goons-4-less was stunning. I haven't seen anything like it on the PS5. The game itself looks incredible, the graphics are stunning.

Rivet is a great character, and I can't wait to have a Rivet and Kit game. The story was basic, but hey, it's fun, and that's all that matters with Ratchet and Clank. One of the first games this year to make me excited about a sequel!

Honestly not sure what more you could want from a Ratchet game. The whole cast, new and old, are fantastic. The story was fun, engaging and higher stakes than ever. The weapons complimented each other well and felt great. The use of the PS5's controller really adds to the experience in a way I wouldn't have even thought of.

The game looks super pretty as you likely know, but it feels great too. I had so much fun just roaming around and, well, playing. The dimensionator allows for enemies and references to previous games from over the years, as well as a plethora of new content that I personally loved. The game's direction too is top-notch with even the on-rails level being a delight for once!

I 100%'d the planets on my first playthrough but need to go back for a couple clean-up trophies (bears, jukebox, 1 weapon-specific) which is a helluva lot more than I'd usually do in a game. In fact, in my 17ish hours of playing the only issue I encountered at all were some voice lines being triggered at strange times, and even this was only half a dozen times at best.

Overall, I've no idea where they're gunna go after this, but I'm excited for it. Especially if Rivet is involved, she's dope :)

Fair warning: this game is Steam Deck verified but at present it shouldn't be. I had several crashes, the screen was extremely fuzzy half the time, and more then once the environments forgot to load, including part of the ending cutscene. Probably the most "memorable" glitch came from how I completed a quest that gave me a schematic for the ultimate weapon... except I didn't receive it yet the quest was still completed. I then learn how to load backup saves on the Steam Deck, so I guess I have that to show for this incident. I've heard using a actual PC is more then fine, so maybe avoid this on any "diet PC".
Then again I've played Skyrim on PS3 for over a hundred hours, this kind of unstable game is nothing new to me, nor is playing a game on the worst possible platform (Oh Hi Bloodstained Ritual of the Night on Switch).

Ratchet & Clank is a series I hold very near and dear. A childhood franchise that I played to Hell and back in the day when getting a new game was a rare and exciting time. I loved every game I played: 1, Going Commando, Up Your Arsenal, Deadlocked, Tools of Destruction, and A Crack In Time. I've played each of them at least four times. I distinctly remember being so upset that our Tools of Destruction disc got scratched, and it'd be a crap-shoot if the next planet loaded or not. Despite all of that, Crack in Time was the last new Ratchet game I played. I can't remember the exact reason, maybe I was really into another franchise at the time, or maybe even back then I recognized that the newer games didn't look too appealing. I was going to play Rift Apart whenever I got a PS5, which still hasn't happened.
As mentioned, the way I played this was completely unideal, but I still was able to stick with it. Was it nostalgia for the older games? I don't think so since the combat felt pretty different. It felt more restrictive with going into this "battle mode" where you can only shoot relative to the camera rather then your character's direction. That messed with me more times then I'd like to admit, but wasn't long before I was able to adjust. They also added their own invincible dodge, which I was mixed at first. It felt a little too forgiving with being able to dodge right through attacks with pretty generous timing. Bearing in mind that I stuck to the hardest difficulty through the whole game, I did find myself struggling a few times in some of the more hectic battles. The game still keeps the strafe flips from the older games and it then hit me why they did this. The phantom dash is invincible, but you can't shoot and are committed to a direction. Strafe jumping is much riskier but your offense is unimpeded and have more control in mid-flight. These games have never been masterful in combat encounters, but this little bit of decision making added a lot to the fun of these shoot-outs. Especially since enemies are surprisingly very aggressive at max difficulty. Some may even lead their shots, so sometimes I'd be punished by not thinking how I'm dodging attacks.
It helps that, apart from a few too many scripted sequences, I feel this is one of the better paced games in the series when it comes to action. I was never left feeling wanting before we were back to fighting, something the Future games struggle with I feel. There's not a ton of extra game modes to contend with, just some light dimensional puzzles and hacking shooting games. Neither go on for too long, though I personally wish the puzzles were a bit more challenging. Then again, it does bring up something that may be harder for me to contend with: I'm not the audience to these Ratchet games. Not anymore, that is. More then ever did I noticed all the dialogue the characters exchanged during gameplay that felt very forced. Pointing out the obvious repeatedly for the mission objectives, not really giving the player much to think about where to go or what to do. I have a map, but it's mostly used for collectable hunting (to be fair, I did get everything in this game which was pretty fun). Character's talk to themselves all the time almost like I was a kid, but they are not talking to me, but to the main audience. I watched a video on this game where it was laid pretty plainly that this series has many different audiences, with no way to please all of them. The scathing commentary on capitalism from the first four games (well, Up Your Arsenal wasn't as prominent with that commentary) is pushed aside for their own themes of self-doubt. To some of the older fans this feels like a series that has lost its edge. And frankly it has, because it changed. But what would be accomplished returning to those themes? What else does Ratchet & Clank have to say about this exploitative system that we are trapped in that it, or literally every other story about capitalism, hasn't covered yet? Hell it's not like those are completely absent from the modern games in this series, in this very game I overheard a NPC saying "Only 40 hours till my next break". Some of that theming is still there, but that's no longer their focus. Because the team is done with that kind of story. You can only do the same thing for so long before getting sick of it.
Huge tangent aside, even for a younger audience maybe you could have had a option to tone down the tutorialization on what to do. They have done a great job with all the accessibility features and options given. I especially like the option to skip the puzzles, which makes repeat playthroughs much more smoother, so adding more options to cut out some fluff would make the ride more enjoyable. But once I accepted that I'm playing a game intended for younger audiences, yet still at the capacity to be played by all ages, I appreciated the story and characters more. I think Rivet is a great addition. I like the subtle differences between her and Ratchet where one is more of a hot-headed newbie, while the other is veteran hero who feels he's been out of the limelight too long to be relevant. I've heard a few people were annoyed that the two share the same equipment with no meaningful gameplay differences, and to be blunt I really don't care. There is a in-game explanation but it doesn't explain everything, and I really don't need it to. It makes the game smoother without limiting the player. Obviously I won't talk about them in detail, but I thought the plot twists and reveals were handle well. One way they handle a particular reveal was damn clever, even when you were expecting something to happen.
I have no good way to transition to this... but the platforming is probably the best in the series. The phantom dash combined with the hoverboots that feel intentionally over-tuned as well as a more forgiving wall-jump had me doing things that felt like I was cheating. There were a lot of instances of "This probably won't wor- Wait it worked?!" And that is a incredibly gratifying feeling that I haven't felt playing this series before.

If things smooth out on the "Diet PC" end of things then I'll bump this to a four, potentially 4.5 if they resolve everything. Or perhaps I'll bite the bullet on a PS5 or a actually good PC. Either way, I said earlier that this franchise has lost its edge, but I feel its gain something else to fill that void.

And they really had to lock the Bouncer weapon to New Game Plus, huh?? I can't tell if that's insidious or brilliant, I'm leaning towards the former

I'm so happy this game exists. It feels like it was made by a bunch of people who grew up on Ratchet & Clank and joined Insomniac specifically to work on the series. A fantastic love letter to the franchise as a whole, made me tear up a few times even. I'm too tired from heat exhaustion lately to write any smart thoughts about it (or even play games regularly, to be honest, which is why I didn't marathon this whole thing on release), so I'll just say: Rift Apart is wonderful and completely lived up to the hype for me despite a few nitpicks. Best $600 game I've ever played!

EDIT: Aside from the butter smooth controls and out of this world visuals, one thing that really impressed me about Rift Apart was its writing. Despite the story not being anything particularly special, I think the script isn't getting the credit it deserves. This game tackles mental health issues, particularly anxiety, in a superb manner that impressed me a lot as someone who struggles with similar problems in day to day life. It's not just a good message for the kids playing it, but a mature way to breathe life into these characters and connect them with the audience. Feeling seen like this by an entry in my favorite childhood series was incredible. The narrative is earnest to a fault and completely without cynicism, which is certainly a far cry from R&C's dark, satirical beginnings, but much like how that game's edginess felt fresh compared to other mascot platformers in 2002, the overt positivity on display here hits just right when so much of modern media is either painfully grim or engineered to be wholesome in an artificial way.


More like Ratchet & Stank: Ripped a Fart

It was better than that shitass remake but just like every R&C game in the last decade it lacks any soul whatsoever. Every character's personality is now reduced down to being a walking "quips" dispenser. Regardless it is still fun gameplay-wise though you'd have to try REALLY hard to make R&C basic gameplay loop not fun. Also the visuals are extremely good, I'll give it that.

One of the best uses of the ps5s powers there is

I keep telling my friends the funny joke that the only ps5 exclusive content I've experienced after owning one for half a year is FFVII Remake Intergrade, only to remember around roughly 30 minutes later each time that this game exists and that I bought and played it, which really goes to show how much of an impression it left on me.

Literally nothing made my heart sink more than when I switched to... Rivet? Is that her name? for the first time and her weapons and ammo were the exact same as Ratchet's was at the time. This game would have actually been good despite it's insanely boring story if only the two protagonists were different in any real and important way. Like, the fact they share one arsenal, first off, doesn't make any sense, and secondly, is probably the biggest missed opportunity in this whole series. It really did drain all my interest in the game immediately once I found that out. Usually games don't get ruined just by one mechanic or one design decision, but this one turned what was to begin with a mediocre Ratchet & Clank game into the worst one I've ever played.

Why even have two protagonists if you aren't gonna utilize it at all?

Also, within 5 minutes of gaining control, I got softlocked on the moving platform that takes you to the first battle of the game. Then, during the riding section, I keep going out of the intended play area and just had a blast trying to find the most glitchy piece of collision. This game feels so incredibly half-baked.

in a time when most video games are cinematic, prestigious, and hard to tell apart from one another, insomniac has dared to ask the question "what if there was a minigun that fired black holes"

I was never a fan of Ratchet and Clack. I played the original PS2 game, the first PS3 game and the remake on PS4 but those games never clicked with me... until now.

I don't know what it was, but I absolutely loved Rift Apart. I enjoyed the combat, the humor, the dialog and the action. The only thing I can say I was kinda disappointed is that the series is know for its whacky weaponry and it's not until NewGame+ that you unlock a couple of truly weird weapons.

On the technical side, the game runs and looks amazing. There are several moments in which the camera pans away and you truly believe you are still in a cutscene. The only technical issues are a couple of bugs I found during my gameplay.

Overall, I was surprised on how much I loved this entry, and I think I will keep an eye from now on on this serie

I came into Rift Apart not expecting too much but this was a ton of fun. The phantom dash alongside the hover boots and wall running make for some really nice movement options, and the weapons all feel really responsive (thanks to how well they implemented rumble and sound effects in the DualSense controller) and are a lot of fun to mess around with. If I had to nitpick, I would say that they could have used the rifts more or implemented that into combat somehow, and it was a bit short for the price. That said, it's a really pretty looking game that just feels fun to play and doesn't drag on or have much monotony to speak of, and I'll be gladly looking forward to any sequels in the franchise if they'll be this good.

There was a concern going into Rift Apart that it would be more of a tech demo for the PS5 hardware than an entry that stands on its own merits in the series, or that they had learned the wrong lessons from their 2016 R&C remake.

Thankfully, those concerns turned out to be largely unfounded, as Rift Apart is one of the finest games in the Ratchet & Clank series and a truly marvelous and gorgeous game in its own right.

While I still maintain that A Crack in Time is overall the best in the series thus far, that game doesn't have Rivet and Kit in it, so advantage Rift Apart on that front. But yes, the worlds and characters are as charming here as they've ever been, and while its story doesn't have the emotional depths or bite that ACiT does, it nonetheless provides a very enjoyable Ratchet & Clank adventure, something that honestly was sorely needed after the remake, just to right the ship at the very least.

Rivet and Kit, the main duo's alternate-dimensional counterparts, are very easy to root for and always fun to watch, managing to not just be gender-swapped versions of Ratchet and Clank but with their own strengths and flaws that are honestly reminiscent of the boys' personalities in the original game, which makes for a nice dichotomy between the four of them interchangeably.

The main attractions here, however, are the rift-jumping gameplay mechanics as well as the Dualsense controller feature integration. Both of these manage to stop short of just being gimmicks and become integral parts of the gameplay. Rift tethering helps with traversal and provides different vantage points in combat, while the Dualsense's adaptive triggers feed into the feeling of the weapons themselves, allowing you to be more precise than ever before with how you use them. It all feels incredibly intuitive and doesn't stop being fun to play around with from start to finish.

Oh yeah, and this game is GORGEOUS, and I mean constantly stunning, even in the 'uglier' locales you visit. I've seen it described as an interactive Pixar movie before, and honestly, that's not hyperbolic in any way. Insomniac truly are digital wizards.

Exploring the worlds you visit is perhaps the best it's ever been (which I've said for several games in this series now, but I really do mean it this time), thanks to new traversal methods like the aforementioned rifts and wall-running, combined with a much more tactile sense of what there is to uncover, thanks in part to the game's surprisingly deep accessibility options, which is always great to see.

However, as usual, the hacking minigame is a bit of a letdown. Granted, the unique character you control in these sections, Glitch, is super endearing and adorable, but the actual hacking just involves a variation of the shooting gameplay you were already doing before. It would have been nice if these sections were a different genre like past R&C games, but it's not that big of a deal as these parts are fairly few and far between.

The primary villains, Dr. Nefarious and Emperor Nefarious, are also lackluster, especially compared to the last non-remake game, Into the Nexus, which managed to give its villains decent depth despite the fairly short length of its campaign. Here it's just the same ol' Dr. Nefarious up to his usual tricks, but this time joined by an even more evil and superior alternate dimension version of himself. It's entertaining, to be sure, but not exactly thrilling.

Nevertheless, Rift Apart is still a fantastic Ratchet & Clank adventure, that brings new life to the franchise in more ways than one and delivers a decent enough story that does lack the sharpness of previous games, but is elevated by its continually charming cast of characters, new and old.

8.5/10

Hello my name is brandon. And my mom said im not allowed to play this game. Its because the fox lady has nasty artwork made about her.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart dares to ask a profound question: what if Tools of Destruction was good?

Fundamentally, this is the same approach taken by the PS3 and PS4 outings in the series: stripping out any pretence of social satire in favour of a modern Pixar/Dreamworks pastiche with almost overbearing earnestness, only executed with a degree of competence that those games sorely lacked. Rivet and Kit are cool characters who bring genuine pathos to the story through the discussions surrounding Rivet's prosthetic arm, though never enough to meaningfully put the brakes on this rollercoaster ride.

There's a few things holding Rift Apart back from greatness, and I think the lack of willingness to introduce friction of any kind into the experience is perhaps the major one. Drama amongst the cast is well-written and portrayed, but never lasts for long, and never affects the gameplay. Rivet and Ratchet both play identically to one another, and even play exactly the same with or without their robot buddies, making their partnership feel utterly superfluous in gameplay. You worked this out in the very first game, people!!! The shooting itself is fun and consistently pleasing, but one planet for each character aside, the dimension shifting gimmick never really evolves beyond a glorified grappling hook, and the arsenal all plays and feels very similalry, without any gun that makes me go "WOAH THIS IS SOME COOL SHIT" like the Visibomb did in the very first game.

Ultimately, Ratcher & Clank: Rift Apart is too determined to provide a smooth ride through it's extremely technically impressive worlds to really play with the interesting potential that's there, which is a shame, but it is also Gaming on the cutting edge. Ratcher & Clank is the ultimate showcase for the PlayStation 5: not just because it is jaw-droppingly pretty and silky smooth, but also because it represents the creative cost of a game with this much time and money behind it: all sharp edges sanded down into a completely smooth experience that leaves no mark on me.

As a Ratchet fan this is pretty much what I wanted.

Rift Apart carries on from Into the Nexus which came out in 2013, at the start of the game Ratchet even makes reference that he has been in retirement for years which amused me.

The story is pretty good with dimensional travel but what really makes it great is Rivet the new Lombax character. She is adorable and makes a great counter part to Ratchet throughout the story. There are some surprisingly impactful moments though I would have liked a deeper look into some characters and themes.

Presentation wise this game is pretty much the first real next gen experience. The graphics are gorgeous, great particle effects, details, lighting, crispness but what really brings it all together are the animations and loading leading to almost seamless cutscene to gameplay like you're watching a pixar movie at times. Rift Apart also really shows that crazy PS5 SSD. Hitting crystals and swapping between worlds in less then a second, selecting load at the menu and being in the game in less than a second. Just crazy good stuff. The options are great too and playing this at 60fps with ray tracing turned on is crazy for a first year title.

That said it does have a first next gen console game feel to it in some ways. It's pretty short, I got the platinum in two days completing everything and if you've played a Ratchet & Clank game before nothing here will really shock you gameplay or story wise much. Hard to really make that a negative though as it's what I wanted?

+ Amazing visuals and animations.
+ Insane loading showing the power of the SSD.
+ Play mode options (fidelity, Performance, performance RT)
+ Fantastic accessibility options.
+ Rivet is a great new character.

- Feels a little short.

I really want to like this game. It has the classic Ratchet gameplay that I've always loved since I was young, and Rift Apart's base combat is among the best in the series. The game is also a graphical showpiece for the PS5. Demon's Souls and Returnal look fantastic, but this game's graphics are on another level. The variety of locations really sells that graphical power, as you travel from bustling cities to bright mining facilities. Jumping between these locations with the new rifts is the first time I've been sold on this generation as a sizeable leap from the last. These aspects of the game do a good job of distracting you from several major flaws that are present throughout its entirety. Many of these issues aren't unique to this game, but a few of them are, and they really make me worried about the future of the series.
The biggest flaw is the enemy variety. This is at its worst with the bosses, but the regular enemies are guilty of this too. I couldn't tell you when I first realized I was fighting the same giant robot boss for the the fourth or fifth time because it happens so many times that I lost count. If you take out all the variants of bosses, there are only around 5 unique bosses in this game. The worst part is that none of these bosses are particularly fun to fight. It's so disappointing that a game so beautiful is stuck throwing the same robot and T Rex at you over and over again. In a game with such diverse worlds to explore, the bosses should reflect those worlds in some way. The regular enemies stoke similar feelings in me. I understand that this is a universe with an iron fisted emperor, but that isn't an excuse to make 3/4 of the enemies boring orange dome robots. This is one of the longer Ratchet games, and the lack of enemy variety really hurts when you're getting to the end of the second act. It all feels like they were playing it too safe with the enemies, and that feeling extends to every other issue I have with the game.
The more I think about the story in this game, the more it baffles me. It's a feeling similar to what I felt when I played the PS4 remake of the original game. It messes with a formula so simple that I was essentially rewriting events from the game in my head as they happened. It's so easy to see a world in which the story in this game could have been good, but not even the dimensionator could materialize it. Ratchet and Clank has always relied on the same basic themes of bonds the importance of friendship rather than the concept of "destiny". Rivet is introduced as an alternate universe version of Ratchet. She never met her universe's version of Clank, and there are so many interesting ways to take that plot point. You could explore how Rivet's life is a lot harder, but that she pushes through it anyway because of her unique ambitions. You could also go the opposite way, and show how empty her life is because of her solitary adventures. While Ratchet faces off against the buffoon that is Doctor Nefarious, Rivet lives in fear of the much more threatening Emperor Nefarious. I always think about the attic scene in Uncharted 4 when it comes to characterization in a video game. That scene shows a side of Nathan Drake that is almost entirely absent from the rest of the series. It's only when he's alone that these feelings get fleshed out. Rivet never gets a moment like this. You never get to see how Rivet lives, or what she believes, or what her deeper ambitions are. Her characterization reminds me too much of Ratchet's in the PS4 remake. She's just good because she's good and that's that. She doubts the honesty of Clank for like, one level, and then believes him instantly. Wouldn't someone like Rivet be a little more on edge when it comes to trusting anyone? This point is more of an issue with the overall plot. Ratchet and Rivet come in contact very early in the game, and this hurts their characterization and gameplay immensely. Once Ratchet and Rivet contact each other, all characterization is thrown out the window. The story becomes a checklist where characters are driven by the plot instead of the other way around. Before that happens, I was actually getting invested in Rivet and Clank's relationship. It reminded me a lot of the original Ratchet and Clank, and that made me love this series in a way I haven't since A Crack in Time. The story is at its worst when it comes to Kit, Clank's alternate dimension counterpart. First of all, I think this type of character shouldn't have been in the game at all. I think any way you slice it, Rivet would have been much more interesting without Kit. It feels like Kit herself doesn't even want to be in the story, as she continues to bring up this manufactured drama that ends in a pining to go back to her home planet. It reminds me of bad movie writing, and that makes sense when you look at the writers for this game. I love that two women were the lead writers, but it's incredibly evident from their portfolio and their work on this game that they tried to make their own bad comic book movie here. This is all ignoring the lack of character this universe has been plagued with since Deadlocked. A Crack in Time is my favorite game in the series, but even that game is missing the grime that the PS2 Ratchet games had. That was a world where everyone looked out for themselves, and people had motivations beyond "I'm good" and "I'm evil". I'm not saying Chairman Drek is a revelation when it comes to character writing, but he runs circles around Emperor Nefarious. As a final side not, I feel like Doctor Nefarious has stumbled his way into being the iconic Ratchet and Clank villain. To me, he's one of the weaker villains in the series, and he just happens to be in two of the strongest games. It truly annoys me how Insomniac insists on putting him in like every Ratchet game now.

I'd like to end this on a more positive note, and talk about Blizar Prime. Blizar Prime is one of the best levels in the entire series, and I would almost say sells the game by itself. A mining planet destroyed by machinery gone haywire, Rivet has to swap between the blasted off remains and an universe where it hasn't been destroyed. Seeing a planet enveloped by the void of space come back to life buzzing with energy is jaw dropping in a way few games are. There are levels like this in games like Titanfall 2 and Dishonored 2, but this one is on another level when it comes to true childlike wonder. It's moments like these that make Rift Apart worth it even with its flaws. The pure joy of shooting a giant laser through a crowd of robots is enough to almost outweigh any negatives.

I just spent a week staying with my parents back in Orkney. It's not accurate to call it my hometown, because my whole family have moved out of the main town of Kirkwall, to a bunch of fields half an hour outside of it. It always makes me a little self-reflective whenever I visit. How things have changed since I left, what I gave up, and why I couldn't picture myself living there any longer than I did.

After years of pitching the idea to my mum, my recently-retired dad has finally purchased an enormous 4K TV. A big 77 inch Sony OLED Bravia thing with HDR, VRR and all the other bells and whistles I couldn't hope to namedrop. No, he hadn't turned off Motion Smoothing, and sitting through a splined version of Kong: Skull Island was quite the ordeal, but I did get up early to tweak all the settings one morning. The Steam Deck can do 4K on older games, and seeing killer7 like that was quite extraordinary (even if I think the game's aesthetic pairs better with a CRT).

Much of my early interest in videogames was shaped by my older brother. I would be his Tails, his Skate, and less enthusiastically, his Gilius Thunderhead. He suggests he doesn't have a lot of time for games these days, but in spite of that, I know has sunk over 500 hours into the Destiny games, and he's spent a lot of money on fancy controllers with backbuttons. I don't fully know what he thinks of my ongoing enthusiasm for games, whether there's an air of "racecar bed" to it, but there seems to be at least a part of him that's a little envious of it. Like that was part of himself that he gave up for a family, financial security and a bunch of high-end home appliances that he doesn't get to use as much as he thought he would. Maybe he's grown up in ways that I haven't. Maybe we've just become very different people. Maybe time has made our differences more apparent. I first noticed it when I got a GameCube, and in spite of all the lawnmowing and housework we'd teamed up on to afford Resident Evil 2 on launchday, he wasn't making plans to try the Resident Evil remake when I told him how incredible it was. He was more focused on going to T in the Park and talking about how into Muse he'd become. [see note]

He was fairly insistent about bringing his PS5 around to our parents' house. I think he'd been looking for a good excuse since our dad got the new telly. He'd even left his braided HDMI 2.1 cable plugged in, in preparation. For all the talk about how he doesn't really have the time for games now, I know he never stopped investing in them. He has owned every PlayStation, and even bought one of those Dual Play 3D TVs that allowed each player to see their own full-screen image when doing multiplayer on Gran Turismo 5. He was pushing me to take the PS5 with me when we visited him on Monday, but it didn't come over until he brought it for the big family day on Saturday.

The PS5 didn't get as much of a look in as I think he'd been hoping. He brought two Dualsenses, and one fancy SCUF controller with the backbuttons, and those were eagerly held by his son and my sister's many, many children. The only local multiplayer game he had was Gran Turismo 7, and I was stuck helping young children navigate Kazunori Yamauchi's middleclass menus, while he sat with his increasingly drunk wife in the neighbouring kitchen. It wasn't even a full hour before they were asking about the new Mario Kart tracks, and my 1080p Nintendo Switch went on.

The following day, I was scheduled to leave. Poor weather conditions lead to my flight being cancelled, and I was driven back to my parents for another night. Everyone was exhausted. It was as if fate was prodding me to further explore the potential of Ultra High Definition.

I remembered my brother hyping up Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. I hadn't known him to play platformers since the Mega Drive, scoffing at Crash Bandicoot and Croc: Legend of the Gobbos in our subsequent PlayStation library, but I guess becoming a father has pushed him to chase more kid-friendly games, and knowing how enthusiastic I still am for Super Mario, I guess it seemed like a natural recommendation. I saw a digital copy had been installed on his console, and I gave it a shot.

I've been a vocal critic of the shift in direction Sony have taken since the PS3's later years. Shifting their chief base of operations from SCEI Tokyo to the SIE headquarters in San Mateo, California wasn't just a concern for weebs, but it marked a change in the company's values. The PlayStation brand had started as something to bridge the gap between high-end home entertainment and Nintendo-style videogames, with the project originally intended as a SNES with a CD drive, and many of its key developers following that legacy. While games retained the strong standard of mechanical design that had been established on the NES and SNES, they didn't have to follow the conservative family-focused intentions as dictated by Hiroshi Yamauchi. This lead to more adult themes in games like Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid, but also artier, experimental projects like Jumping Flash and PaRappa the Rapper. That was the PlayStation that I was a fan of, and one that Sony had shifted away from when chasing the surprising success of the Xbox 360. After a tough few years with the expensive PS3 hardware, Sony finally managed to eke out a success with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and every project they would invest in afterwards would seem influenced somewhat by its quick-talking, cinematic presentation.

Rift Apart is very much a post-Uncharted 2 Sony game. Nothing ever shuts up, and you never really find yourself thinking about anything. You're constantly force-fed setpieces, with little meaningful user input. Don't play it the way it wants you to, and it won't be long until a character repeatedly pushes you towards the correct answer with a looping instruction. Each environment is enormous, with elaborately detailed buildings and rock structures decorating every location, but they're mere facades. You can only explore what's on the pre-determined route, and there's no meaning to any of it beyond set dressing. Characters attempt to project a fun, wacky presence, but I didn't hear a single funny line of dialogue. The script comes off like a TV spin-off of a Disney blockbuster. There's no sense of sincere passion behind anything. It's just a lot of very talented people doing their job.

There's still a shadow of a real game in Rift Apart. For a lot of the younger players trying it, it's likely their first interaction with a twin-stick shooter, and the warping dodges and weapon options play a little like a kids' version of Returnal. Everything is slick as all get out, and presented attractively, but there's little sense of real depth. If you weren't playing it right, the game would bend itself backwards to put you on the correct path.

Seeing my nieces and nephews over the last week got me thinking about kids' games. The most engaged I saw them was when my 7 year-old nephew was messing around with Google Maps, laughing when he warped through a car that disappeared, resolving that he "blew it up", and finding shitty rundown buildings that he'd joke were my house. It reminded me of how I'd messed around with games and interactive CD-ROMs at that age. I wasn't really interested in how I was supposed to play. Kids don't want to be told how to play. It's instinctive. They try something basic, see the effect, and if it was funny or interesting enough, they dig a little deeper. It's why Minecraft and Roblox have become such massive, dystopian revenue platforms. I don't think games like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart have a lot to offer them, beyond a distraction. I never thought the Aladdin TV series or Timon & Pumbaa were ever any good, but the familiar characters and constant motion shut me up when they were on.

I think Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart contrasts very poorly against something like Super Mario Odyssey. A game full of fun, surprising moments that truly has a cross-generational appeal. Young kids can have fun discovering rewards from experimenting with every vertex of the levels, and running around the beach with the funny dog, while their weird Mario veteran uncle finds himself emotional at the implementation of the N64 triple jump and the grand celebration of the character's Donkey Kong roots.

Maybe that's it. Maybe my brother just hasn't been playing the right games. Maybe the Resident Evil remake was that Sliding Doors moment that made him the owner of a two-door fridge freezer, and me, the owner of a Steel Battalion controller. It's a little dispiriting to think he might see Rift Apart as the best that a PEGI 3+ can get. How we could have grown up playing the very same copies of games, and lead to such wildly different evaluations of the medium. I love my brother, and I want nothing but the best for him, but suggesting *I* was missing out by not buying Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart makes me very worried about a lot of things.

I put my PlayStation account on his PS5. Maybe he'll dig through my library and download the Resident Evil remake for himself. I think it's far more likely that he'll just keep my profile on there out of courtesy, uncurious about the doors I've opened up, just in case I ever end up playing his PS5 again. I don't expect I will, either. Maybe his son will try the Tony Hawk's I bought, though.


[note - He has not talked about Muse in a very long time, and it was unfair of me to bring this up.]

Ratchet: - Let's go Clank! We have to save the univers-
Clank: - HAVE YOU EVER HEARD ABOUT THE PLAYSTATION 5 SSD?
Ratchet: - What?
Clank: - YEAH, HE IS 100 TIMES FASTER THAN PS4 WHEN IT COMES TO READING AND WRITING DATA, THE LOADING TIMES ARE UNBELIEVABLE
Ratchet: - Are you okay buddy?
Clank: - THIS SHIT IS THE REAL DEAL BRO


The first perceived killer app for the PS5 falls a bit short of that title. This isn't Infamous Second Son level bland but there are a lot of unfortunate missteps here. Graphically, the game looks incredibly advanced and impressive with great models, animations, and reflections being the highlights. The story is inoffensive, it's fine it is sorta just there but unfortunately, the game is incredibly committed to shoving this story down your throat even though it frankly isn't really interesting. They also pull the animated movie cliche of "the two friends split apart near the end" in the most ridiculous way possible. The gameplay is pretty fun balancing ammo of a vast array of weapon types and seeing what takes down what enemy most effectively. The game is a fairly easy romp until the end where instead of coming up with unique enemy types or more interesting encounters, they throw 2 billion enemies at you. Do I recommend PS5 owners this game? Yes. However, this isn't the killer app for the PS5.

Wild how after two flawed (though enjoyable) budget games over the span of a decade as well as a couple of mediocre spinoffs, the next big Ratchet game Insomniac has made is easily the best game in the entire franchise


Easily one of the best two games in the series imo with Crack in Time being the other top dog. The visuals pop off the screen from the opening seconds to the very end. It’s like playing a beautiful top notch art design of a Pixar movie. The guns are too notch. Buttery smooth controls and gameplay. Brings back the best villians of the series and literally doubled down on it. The story is one of the two best in the series (again CiT is the other). Rivet and Kit are two amazing additions and please please let there be more of them in future installments. I honestly don’t know what more you could want in a Ratchet and Clank game but I can not wait for Insomniac to show what else they can cook up.

Ratchet & Clank is not a series I have played in a good few years (since Crack in Time) so I was excited for this one even though I only purchased it due it to being bundled in with my PS5. As soon as you boot up this game you’ll notice the incredible load times and plethora of options at your disposal before you start to play. Firing the game up and seeing the opening cutscene felt like I was in a Pixar film, and there is literally no difference between the cutscenes and the game environments. Firefights are clean and the gunplay is the best it’s ever been, and while the story probably won’t be all too memorable, it had some great parts and felt like a breath of fresh air for the series. I’d recommend this game to fans old or new as it has something for everyone and in my eyes this is a must-purchase for every PS5 owner.

Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart is currently the best looking next-gen title and also one of the only games that uses the PS5 hardware as a whole with its fast SSD, the dual sense features and offers high graphical fidelity. If you own a PS5 then this will be the best tech demonstration you can get for your system right now. The question is just, how remarkable will this game be in a few years?

If you put the visuals aside, rift apart ends up being a very bland experience. I pretty much have the same criticism here as with Insomniacs previously released titles. While they definitely nail the controls of their games, everything else from level structure to enemy types remains very repetitive throughout the entire game. Aside from one single enemy type with a shield, which pushes the player to get a bit creative, everything else is just “use everything you currently have freely”. The game doesn’t want you to push into a playstyle, but if the game doesn’t push the player into any challenge whatsoever, the game just feels forgettable and mindless. All boss fights in the game are sharing similar mechanics, mostly there is a laser beam you need to dodge with a side-jump or something similar. It doesn’t matter if you are fighting against a robot with laser beams or a dinosaur which throughs rocks at you, both are sharing the same mechanics gameplay-wise. Even the final boss of the game is doing nothing new.

Level design is also pretty bad, especially in the second world, where a lot of paths are getting blocked by invisible walls. The game also doesn’t implement further obtained upgrades into its level design. There is an upgrade in the game which lets you ramp up a lot of speed to traverse faster through the map and jump further. The upgrade is only really used in the level the upgrade itself gets introduced, afterwards its just an optional thing for combat. There was a lot of situations where I reached a place with the mentioned upgrade and then I realized afterwards, that this was not the intentional way I should get here.

The overall platforming was also reduced by a lot. There is not a single challenging platforming passage in the whole game and even the optional levels, which should offer a bit more of a challenge are offering laughable easy platforming. I wouldn’t even call Ratchet&Clank a platformer anymore if I’m being honest.

Sure, there are cool set pieces, the visuals are amazing and the gunplay satisfying, but the combat is mindless even on the highest difficulty setting, the story serviceable & the level design mediocre at its best.


An absolute blast of a game from beginning-to-end. One of the best showcases of what the PS5 is capable of, this game looks and runs beautifully. Jumping around fights, swapping weapons, and shooting enemies as madly as you can has never felt better. Simply put - this game is just fun.

As someone who has been with the series since the first game made its way to a GameCrazy shelf in 2002 (rip)...this is one of my favorite Ratchet and Clank games and the only thing keeping it from being my absolute favorite Ratchet game is that it feels about 1 or 2 planets too short and there was neither a level where we get to play as Dr. Nefarious nor an unlockable Dr. Nefarious skin via the Gold Bolts rewards. Could've been just a smidge more like ACiT is what I'm saying here.

An absolute masterpiece that takes all of the improvements that the PS4 game made in style and gameplay but then adds an ACTUAL GOOD STORY, with good characters.

This is the best RAC game in decades, probably since RAC3 and the Original.

Ratchet and Clank is a true next gen experience. Insomniac by now are a guarantee for visually striking and wonderfully crafted action games. If you are into scripted action events, the first party Sony studios are the uncontested champions. May that be Naughty Dog‘s insane set pieces with Uncharted or the tense and raw moments of The Last of Us. Santa Monicas extended battle sequences in God of War and beautifully animated enemies in Guerilla Games‘ Horizon. While Ratchet and Clank is not on the same level story-wise, it sure knows how to up the ante with the action sequences and the visual fidelity of the worlds you visit. In the center of it all, are the rifts, that add layers of literal dimensions for you to explore. From the ability to teleport through rifts as shortcuts, within the area, to the ability to hit a crystal and change the entire world around you within a blink, to one of a kind scripted sequences that hurl you through a multitude of detailed surroundings in the shortest amount of time - it’s unbelievable that all of this happens with a steady 60fps on a 400 bucks console, considering it’s one of the most beautiful games that has ever been released.
Gameplay-wise it plays it safe, besides the aforementioned rift mechanics there is not much that differentiates it from its predecessors. It’s still full of wonderful environments, full of crazy characters, even crazier guns to use and a bunch of cool platforming mechanics. The moment to moment gameplay is pure joy, there is nothing that gets tedious because everything is polished to the maximum. It’s not as innovative as the best of Nintendo, not as wildly creative as ‚It takes two‘ was this year, but it’s still a showcase game for PlayStation in general, for the next generation of games and for a studio that’s at its prime.