At this point in the franchise, I have to ask - who likes this? From where is the directive coming to keep making these games? What do the developers want from this franchise? How did it sustain fans through the PS3/4 era so much so as to be part of the marketing push for the PS5? What are people possibly latching onto during the PS3 era that would make them ask for more… of this?

I ask this question because, as with every Ratchet game past the second one on the PS2, the setting and continuity of previous games are treated as light flavoring agents instead of narrative foundations. Ratchet & Clank are working on a prison transport ship??? Guarding a woman best described as Tim Burton’s The Scarlet Witch???? Every personality and relationship is remixed to fit terrible cliched writing that is somehow different and incongruous with previous terrible cliched writing, presented in an overall story that is so poorly paced as to be nearly incomprehensible.

I enjoyed the two preceding spin-offs more than this game in a way that made me realize novel gameplay helps me overlook inconsequentially bad writing. But Into the Nexus unfortunately has few merits that help me gloss over the many annoyances I have with it. Like the fact that Ratchet’s Female has been upgraded to near romantic lead status for Ratchet? Or that two annoying robot dudes, who’s inclusion in multiple Ratchet games has continued to baffle me, fucking die so that Ratchet can have pathetic manpain about “needing to do this” (???) “alone” (???) to avenge them? Instead of fixing them, because they are robots, and he’s a mechanic? Or used to be?

It’s frustrating, because even bad Ratchet games like this one have at least one new concept that teases a fun game. In this one, it’s space jumping between surfaces in 3D, reorienting the concept of “down” to floors or ceilings. Unfortunately, instead of providing interesting puzzles designed around the concept, Nexus only uses space jumping as frilly window dressing on linear level designs that are glorified set pieces. Some of the new weapons are some of the most interesting variations of concepts in the series, but only a handful of the same enemy types are recycled across the game’s handful of levels. There just isn’t enough content to enjoy the elements that obviously had real care poured into them.

But all of my complaints pale in comparison to the feelings I have about Rift Apart. Into the Nexus was merely a prelude to cringe, a guide to all the faults I wrongly hoped the series would recover from after a long sabbatical. I don’t have the energy to lambast a title as inconsequential as this when Rift Apart would render its story again worthless and double down on everything I hate enough for me to dissect them. A contemptible but fitting end for the franchise.

Reviewed on Dec 16, 2022


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