A great return to form for the series, easily the best since A Crack in Time on PS3.

Great hard hitting combat, striking art style with one of the best looking implementations of ray tracing I've ever seen, and a really propulsive main story campaign. It's really a great entry in the series.

The only thing this is lacking is a little more variety around the edges. The best games in the series are chock full of totally optional objectives, story bits, and minigames. Hell, Crack in Time has a whole wild space exploration bit at its top level.

Rift Apart, by contrast is really just the mainline. And that mainline is really polished and well-realized, but beyond it... there's really nothing to do other than the combat arena. The game needed a speedle racing minigame or something to liven it up a little bit. Just one or two more things to break up the story progression.

An unfortunate theme of the Ratchet & Clank franchise is that of wasted potential. Across the PS2 and PS3 Insomniac pumped out 10 R&C titles in just 11 years, an insane workload (even more insane when you realize they were working on the Resistance series concurrently) that meant the studio just never had the time to implement and refine the many ideas it had for the series over the years. Fortunately, Insomniac put in the work to finally curb its culture of crunch and it has paid dividends with Rift Apart, a game which shows that even after 20 years there’s still a spark of creativity in this series, even if it never erupts into a full-on blaze.

To start with the obvious, Rift Apart is an unbelievably gorgeous game with some of the strongest art direction in the series and a smooth framerate. This smoothness extends to the gameplay, featuring the best combat in series history. Very early into the game a dash ability is added to your moveset and this is a great addition that is a boon to both traversal and combat. Enemies are faster and more aggressive than ever and you’ll need to make liberal use of the dash if you want to survive. The old way of circle-strafing, side-jumping, and backpedaling isn’t enough to make it through each enemy encounter anymore, and the addition of the dash makes combat flow much better. The combat is also where the DualSense gets to shine, with most of the game’s weapons making use of the variable triggers, with a half or full press of the triggers doing different things. A half-press of the trigger on your shotgun will fire one barrel while a full-press will fire both, for example. It feels really good and makes me appreciate the DualSense a lot more than I initially did. A Rift Apart is just a really smooth experience overall, the excellent technical performance and lack of loading screens means there’s no significant breaks in the game’s flow, and Insomniac has also made sure you’re never too far from the next firefight or setpiece.

The biggest disappointment here has to do with the dimension hopping, the game’s central gimmick. It most commonly comes into play with these small dimensional rifts which you grapple onto to either gain positional advantage in combat or traverse areas outside of it, but all this really amounts to is a more visually impressive version of the Swingshot, a series staple gadget. There’s also these optional pocket dimensions, which are just small platforming challenges that have very little interesting going. Outside of two planets and few setpieces, Rift Apart doesn’t really do all that much with its central gimmick, and it’s a shame. Another disappointment is just how linear this game is. Previous R&C games had planets with multiple different pathways to explore and find secrets and optional objectives. Here though, with the exception of two planets, each planet as a very obvious main path with a few rooms or hallways off to the side. One planet is so small it makes me wonder why they even bothered with it in the first place.

As for the story, Rift Apart is serviceable. It’s nice to see both Ratchet and Clank have some semblance of a personality again after their 2016 outing, though they’re outshone by their alternate universe counterparts Rivet and Kit, who are both great additions to the cast and it would be an absolute bummer if they didn’t show up in the next game.

Rift Apart has easily and quickly become one of my favorite Ratchet & Clank games of all time, meaning it’s now one of my favorite first-party PlayStation games ever, but even now, with Insomniac working with more powerful hardware than ever before and more dev time than ever before, it’s still haunted by the specter of wasted potential, and that’s just a real shame.

I've played a couple of other Ratchet games but none of them ever really hooked me to the point of wanting to beat them. Except for some reason this game did hook me. I couldn't even tell you why, it seems to still follow most of the formula from the other ones but maybe just more refined. I do really enjoy the loop of gathering bolts to buy stuff and using weapons to upgrade them, the weapon upgrades are really fun since they can end up doing crazy shit.

Wish I could say the exact reason this game resonated with me but at the end of the day at least I was able to enjoy it and beat it.

Platform: PlayStation 5
Date Started: March 3rd, 2024
Date Finished: March 6th, 2024
Time Played: 11 Hours

"You think a crushing defeat is all it takes to stop me?"

Ratchet & Clank must be one of the most consistently great and enjoyable franchises I have played (minus the PS4 reboot thing), and Rift Apart is no exception! Continuing on the story and introducing a couple excellent new characters, this adds a lot whilst still maintaining the feeling of those PS2 classics!

The story here is an engaging one, although I'm not the biggest fan of "multiverse" style stuff, with the cast being the main highlight carrying it through. It creates plenty of huge set piece scenarios that are always fun, however I think that the rifts were ultimately kind of a gimmick. They, most of the time, just act as fancy grappling hook points or story set pieces, so I think more could have possibly been done game-play wise with their implementation. Additionally, you end up fighting the same types of enemies and mini-bosses throughout the whole thing, but, ultimately this didn't really impact my enjoyment all too much.

With a vast array of great weapons, slick gunplay, lovely characters and genuinely amazing graphics, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a worthy entry into the franchise, and a really great time from beginning to end!

I'm a childhood fan of the yellow lombax rat guy and I expected not to like this game simply because of how "clean" it must be (especially after ratchet 2016).

well. fuck me, it was REALLY damn good. probably the best gameplay in the series. the movement with the hoverboots gets particularly insane, I was flying through the game and skipping platforming or puzzles like it was nobody's business. the environments are drop dead gorgeous and give me enough of a reason to go back and immerse myself in this world. I always loved r&c world design and this entry does not let you down on that.

some negatives though: forgettable weapons, TERRIBLE sound effects, unremarkable soundtrack (david bergeaud my father I miss you so much), and that thing where characters respond all witty all the time like they're in a superhero movie.

I've never played any of the original PlayStation games, so I can't say anything about how well this games does in comparison to any other in the series.

That aside, it's a nice game, but not really my cup of tea. Gameplay wise, the only thing I really enjoyed were the arena fights, as they were somewhat difficult and needed the player to figure out which weapons are best used in which waves and against which enemies. That need to learn patterns and stuff is missing in the mainline areas and kind of a miss from my point of view, considering this game has a sh*tload of weapons and is probably the most outstanding feature of the gameplay.

Aside from that, I only other have two big negatives:
- I really don't like the camera in the game. So often in the fights the FOV is just horrible.
- Compared to similar games in the genre this game is missing interesting bossfight. There like 4 bosses, repeated over and over again. Even the final boss fight is just a repetition of the mid game boss. Compare this to like Psychonauts 2, where each level has a super unique and memorable boss.

As a kid, I'd probably fell in love with all these characters. I wonder how fans of the series feel about Rivet. The game is beautiful, colorful, well animated. Good thing is that this game doesn't waste the players time with stupid sidequests. Just an single optional quest per planet, some stuff to collect. That's it. Just a lot of story. The story and writing of the game - well something something Multi-Verse save everything. Whatever.

As this game is marked as a 3D-Plattformer: It's a negligible feature of the game, which is kind of sad. The game introduces some mechanics, but never really tries to develop something with them.

I still recommend this game: Well: First it's a really good port. No issues while playing whatsoever. Please give us more ports. For fans of the genre (say: 3D Action Adventure) you just get what you want. Fans of the story probably like everything that's happening. And some people - unlike me - most definitely gonna like the story, so give it a try and be a hero and save everything.

I'm curious how the originals play. I'll probably check some of the out.

Finally, a true next-generation videogame experience.
After that disappointing "Remake" of 2016 I was honestly worried about the future of the series, I mean, I was excited for this game but I couldn't help but be sceptical about it.

Having played the game now I'm actually happy with how it turned out to be, the humor is decent, some jokes do land well even thought there are still many of them that are... childish, the gameplay is actually very enjoyable, the movement is improved from the previous games with some cool additional mechanics that make it very smooth and fun to play, and the characters are actually likeable!

There's way more exploration this time around, every planet has some secrets to find, and even pieces of gear to unlock which you can wear to change the way the character looks. There are also minigames as well which I tried out but they're just okay, nothing special.

Although the main story is not really memorable, it's just another adventure where you have to save the world, I did like how the rifts played a role in it, and the mechanic of how you can traverse the rifts is impressive, the way all various worlds load instantly and they also look gorgeous really shows the high quality of the game, and the effort that was put into making it.

The puzzles are alright but damn they really slow down the pacing, and there are actually many of them, not too many but more than enough.

And even with all the improvements on the movement, the additional quality of life mechanics and the brand new protagonist, at the end of the day it's still a Ratchet & Clank game and it plays very similarly to the previous games, the shooting doesn't feel fresh, and I honestly think this could've been fixed if Rivet had different weapons and play-style, it would make the game less repetitive and more rewarding.

This game is honestly a blast, it's not anything new but it does feel like a next-generation game in many ways, the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers enhance the gameplay, and the instant teleportation helps with the fast paced action and beautiful cinematic set-pieces.

It might be quite short but it's still very much worth trying out, it's just a fun little adventure, and most importantly, as of right now it's one of the very few games that actually showcases the technology of the PlayStation 5.

Final Rating: "Great" ~ 8/10.

What a frustrating mess of a game. On the surface this appears to be a nice modern version of Ratchet and Clank, but I think underneath the veneer you’ll find a husk of what it used to be. These games used to have an edge to them that’s all but lost in the modern iterations as it feels like everything has been filtered through a Marvel Lens. The combat is fine, although it’s weird to me that Ratchet and River share the same inventory. I think it would have been more interesting if they had access to unique equipment. However, the real issue I had with this game is how bugged it seems to be. So many times I would jump against something and get stuck in a wall having to reload a safe, or even worse were the times I would just fall through the map. I did not have fun with this game, which is a real disappointment since I was looking forward to it

Not only is this an insanely gorgeous visual experience that takes full advantage of the PS5, but it is also one of the best games of it's genre that I ever had the pleasure of playing. Every single aspect of solid 2016 game is done so much better in every way possible. The gameplay is a pure joyful blast from start to finish, it never gets old and they always know how to keep things fresh and interesting. Both combat and platforming are in perfect sync to each other as a game like this should be.

But what really surprised me in all of this was just how lovable the characters are, both Ratchet and Clank have a lot more to work with which is great to see, bur Rivet and Rit are the absolute standouts and I loved them so much. I can't see a new game of the series without them now so don't you dare to do any stupid thing, make the four of them a team forever. I absolutely adore "Rift Apart", it is a must play in every way. A joy to play for every minute on screen and a powerhouse of what the PS5 can do. It doesn't matter if you're new to the series or not, just make sure to don't miss this one, and I'll be sure to revisit this more times despite already having the Platinum trophy.

mmm yes I love perpetually pressing jump and dash as I circlestrafe around and hot swap between all my guns, almost as much as the platforming sections I get to autopilot through inbetween even, puts me right into the FunZone™, but there's no Mick Gordon OST that sounds like someone ripping a fart so I'm afraid I can hardly recommend this GPU benchmark to my fellow topfragging fiends, letterboxd kino connoisseurs who enjoy works such as Into the Spider-Verse or Zootopia will find a lot to love here though.

This is an interesting one 2021 was kind of a dead year not a lot came out because of the pandemic, as such a lot of the games I played from that year are just "yeah that game was alright" instead of "holy shit this will be remembered for years". This is effectively a Ratchet & Clank (2016) sequel, a lot of the same weapons around the same graphics, I will say Rift Apart does look better but not by much the new story they are trying to tell in this universe is interesting I will give them that. The new SSD tech they used with the ps5 is also pretty cool to load new levels and areas seamlessly. Ultimately I wouldn't choose to grab this above some other games but its worth playing probably on discount.