It's good, but I kind of can't help but feel like the genuinely incredible tech is making up for most of the game here. It's fun to play, but I don't think it's quite up to the level that I think A Crack in Time is for me still. The gunplay feels good (especially as a showcase for the DualSense controller and how alt-fires work for nearly every weapon), but might have my least favorite upgrade system of all of the recent R&C games for how little they feel like they change your weapons. Small nearly imperceptible percentage boosts suck for upgrades and I thought we had moved past this a long time ago.

The level design is fine, and I do appreciate an attempt at going back to the more open designs of older titles in the series, but the open areas tend to feel incredibly empty more than anything. They remind me more of Tools of Destruction more than the PS2 titles, especially because the game as a whole is still linear and isn't designed around multiple paths and backtracking like the old games do.

The story is probably the most interesting part, and is right up there with Crack in Time for me being the best of all the modern R&C games. It's still not on par with the PS2 games but I've come to accept at this point that we're never going back to those roots. Rivet is an incredibly interesting protagonist, more than the actual title duo are in their own game here who feel like they're just along for the ride and have very little to do or develop. The last act of the game kicks into high gear and I do like it a lot, but so much of it felt like too little too late by that point; Nefarious should have had more of a presence across the whole game rather than being brought in by the last several hours.

It's an outstanding tech demo, and a fine Ratchet & Clank game that at least reaches for the same standard of quality that A Crack in Time had.