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.]
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.]
5 Comments
Fuckin Muse
I love reading your reviews, they're so well written. I hope to be able to up my writing to these standards one day.
@euanmatthews Very kind, thank you
Yuggy
3 months ago