I always enjoyed 3D platformers since I was a kid, and although I do own a PS5, because I had never played Ratchet and Clank when this game was released I was definitely interested in general because of how polished it looked but without any rush. I was interested in the many technologies they used to achieve the end result, especially because of Insomniac and their mastery of ray-tracing 60fps which I thoroughly enjoyed in Spiderman Miles Morales.
Years have passed since, and my excuse of waiting for the price to go down became worthless the moment it was announced on PC with even more technologies I wasn't only interested in, but had built my PC for. Graphics are not everything, but it's not a bad incentive to get into a new title while also benchmarking the hardware.

Out of Rift Apart, as a complete newbie who hasn't even seen an introductory video about the story, I expected nothing but a fun 3D platforming experience. Overall, the game satisfied me and gave me all I wanted. It's just the right length, exploring and the characters' mobility in platforming is fun, guns are great to use, and lastly, the Dualsense haptics and adaptive triggers enhanced the experience.

The story, while entertaining is simple, a bit like in Crash Bandicoot games, but I didn't expect more, although I must say during cutscenes I felt a disconnection between the mobility of the characters in-game and in-cutscene.
Don't get me wrong, animations in this game are a delight to see. Every detail and second movement part of their bodies, for example, when jumping, shows a level of attention to detail that is just breathtaking. That said, the characters in cutscenes feel more grounded and realistic than a double-jumping lombax. It feels like cutscenes have the same mobility Nathan Drake has in Uncharted, which felt out of place to me.
The progression in the game, new abilities, and collectibles were handled masterfully. For example, although there is an arena, you can't do all trials immediately which I was a fan of as I'm the type of player that would.
Compared to other games I played in the last period, Rift Apart also handles completion well, where mostly everything can be done whenever, and especially weapon-related achievements can be done in the arena in a controlled environment, which I don't take as granted after Final Fantasy 16 which forces you to do it in the overworld, with companions.
When it comes to bosses maybe there's a bit too much repetition after the first third of the game, but because of how fun fighting is while it wasn't amazing to have to fight yet another of the same giant robot, it wasn't too bad.

I was sad to see again, though, that challenges in the arena are affected by difficulty while offering the same rewards. I don't want to sound like an elitist or anything, but I'm always mixed when it comes to this because I like that choice is given to the player, but at the same time I think a challenge should be the same for everyone to also create a sense of community in who completes it. Rewards could have been given out either in other ways leaving the arena just a challenge or by rewarding them for a partial completion. That is the case for other parts of this game completism, where you only need 5 bolts out of 25 for platinum, for example. I just wish that like in many new Nintendo games - i.e. Koroks in BOTW and TOTK where you need 500-ish to max your inventory but there are 900 - or like the platinum of this title, the choice would be between completing or leaving it at the minimum necessary, instead of being between changing or not changing difficulty since the reward is the same.

I loved this time Sony used Nixxes for the PC port, and I would say overall it was definitely more polished than TLOU:P1 on PC just a few months ago.
The game on PC is not perfect, though. In my first hours of gameplay, I experienced many crashes, some just for equipping armors in the menu but this has improved since, maybe because of the patches that were released or because I progressed further.
The game also struggled a bit with clipping. Mainly some alpha textures that are layered incorrectly in some posters in the first planet and some 3D fish models clipping through the walls of an underwater tunnel come to mind. I also noticed with some armors the fur of Ratched and Rivet clips through, but I think that happens on console as well.
On PC the game is likely one of the most technically advanced ports to date, supporting ray-traced reflections, ray-traced shadows, ray-traced ambient occlusion, DLAA (and DLSS, FSR, etc.), and Direct Storage.
All things that as mentioned before, I was interested in testing on my new computer, built with them in mind. I must say, it was a pleasure to play with all these technologies and although they are quite heavy, the game handled it well for most of it, except for one moment towards the end where all the effects on-screen dropped it to 30 for a moment. Funnily enough, this happened to me in Miles Morales too on PS5, towards the end. Solid the whole way through, except for one moment of the game.
After watching videos comparing the PS5 to the PC version by Digital Foundry, plus my experience with the game, I must say I think the ray-traced reflections are the ones I would go without. It seems the equivalent of PS5 quality on PC would be high, but considering the resolution being halved I would argue the screen-spaced reflections and their grainy look might deliver a better result. I had ray-traced reflections at Ultra and there are moments in the game where there is a glass floor, and you see these awesome reflections on the floor that are wonderful to look at. That said, the game doesn't have a lot of glass surfaces and I am almost certain the ray-traced reflections are still being used on these opaque surfaces, which I think at that point is just a waste of resources. Maybe there was a smarter way to implement them, with a hybrid between ray-traced and screen-spaced reflections so that you don't use that much power for blurry opaque reflections, which, actually was the case when I had those frame drops. In Miles Morales on PS5, it happened in a glass room, as the boss was breaking glass. In Rift Apart I was in a wooden boat with some details of opaque metal. It might be the case that there is a hybrid application going on, but that doesn't change how heavy they are for how little result they yield. For these reasons, I would say a game like Spiderman is a better-suited title for ray-traced reflections and I think it would be better to use screen-spaced in this title. That said, the other ray-traced technologies work amazingly and I strongly suggest them. On the dinosaur bosses, the Grunthors, there were some issues with shadows, and I think it might have been the ray-traced ambient occlusion. It's a minor issue in something that adds a lot to the game so I would still keep it on.

In conclusion, I liked my time on the game. I liked it was just the right length and didn't overstay its welcome even while going for 100%. I liked the gameplay and while this is not the birth of a new passion for a new series, I will for sure be looking out for the next one with more interest than I had before.

7.5/10