Man, I really wanted to LOVE this game. Don’t get me wrong, by the end I DID like it, but I wanted to adore it and I didn’t.
There were just a bunch of small little things that annoyed me.
You know the phrase ‘too much of a good thing’? That’s how I feel about the visuals. They’re no doubt very impressive… but MAN is it a visually noisy and annoying game. Even in just the opening. It’s a big celebration for Ratchet and Clank. And there’s hundreds of people in the audience all animated and moving around, then there’s confetti and particle effects everywhere, and then they throw all these enemies at me and there’s so much debris and bolts flying around and I get hit by enemy bullets because there’s too much fucking shit on the screen!
Oh, and in the second part, there’s a city being attacked, and the citizens are EVERYWHERE. There’s so many people that it was hard to focus on the Goon-4-Less (love those Gooners) guys attacking me and I’d just get hit by them because I can’t FOCUS on them. The lighting doesn’t help either. It’s very impressive, but I think it usually makes the colors stand out less and everything blends together a bit.
It’s just too much. I think about how simple the original PS2 games are. Sure they’re less impressive and detailed, but everything reads a whole lot better.
And the writing. It’s the main thing I like about the Ratchet series. Not that the stories are incredible, but the characters usually had such strong, over the top personalities. But by this point, R&C has just lost a lot of the bite it had before. Everyone’s just so… NICE to one another all the time. It feels like anytime Ratchet talks to Clank, it’s like “don’t worry bestest friend of mine, I got your back, because you are THE most heckin important dude in the world to me :)” and it’s just…. Not funny anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s SOME good jokes, and it’s not like it’s AWFUL, but man, what happened? I felt the same way about the 2016 remake, but at least that had a horrible movie to blame. Rift Apart doesn’t really have that.
There’s other small things here and there, but what DID I like? Well the gameplay is still just so super solid, just runnin’ and gunnin’. By the end it was really fun seeing what weapons worked best together. Throwing out the Topiary Sprinkler and a Mr. Fungi while I took out anyone else was fun, as was combining the Cold Snap and the Warmonger to just absolutely tear through bosses.
I think the levels are kind of a mixed bag, I was a little annoyed at what seemed like multiple desert or barren stages in a row with no real unique ideas to them. But stages like the Scarstu Debris Field or the WONDERFUL pirate level Ardolis, there’s still some really good stuff in there.
And while I ragged on the writing earlier, it’s still a world I want to be in with characters I enjoy. Rivet and Kit are both likable, Emperor Nefarious made for an interesting, new take on the good doctor, and while at first I was a little annoyed that I was just meeting up with alternate universe versions of characters (if it’s gonna take 5 years to get another Ratchet game, I want to meet up with the REAL Skidd McMarx, god DAMN YOU), by the end I thought it was pretty neat the way they handled some of them.
So yeah, I wanted to really adore this game, and I didn’t. But I DID still enjoy my time with it by the end. Ratchet and Clank has changed a lot from the series I once adored, but hey, as long as I can still have a good time with em, that’s good enough.
There were just a bunch of small little things that annoyed me.
You know the phrase ‘too much of a good thing’? That’s how I feel about the visuals. They’re no doubt very impressive… but MAN is it a visually noisy and annoying game. Even in just the opening. It’s a big celebration for Ratchet and Clank. And there’s hundreds of people in the audience all animated and moving around, then there’s confetti and particle effects everywhere, and then they throw all these enemies at me and there’s so much debris and bolts flying around and I get hit by enemy bullets because there’s too much fucking shit on the screen!
Oh, and in the second part, there’s a city being attacked, and the citizens are EVERYWHERE. There’s so many people that it was hard to focus on the Goon-4-Less (love those Gooners) guys attacking me and I’d just get hit by them because I can’t FOCUS on them. The lighting doesn’t help either. It’s very impressive, but I think it usually makes the colors stand out less and everything blends together a bit.
It’s just too much. I think about how simple the original PS2 games are. Sure they’re less impressive and detailed, but everything reads a whole lot better.
And the writing. It’s the main thing I like about the Ratchet series. Not that the stories are incredible, but the characters usually had such strong, over the top personalities. But by this point, R&C has just lost a lot of the bite it had before. Everyone’s just so… NICE to one another all the time. It feels like anytime Ratchet talks to Clank, it’s like “don’t worry bestest friend of mine, I got your back, because you are THE most heckin important dude in the world to me :)” and it’s just…. Not funny anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s SOME good jokes, and it’s not like it’s AWFUL, but man, what happened? I felt the same way about the 2016 remake, but at least that had a horrible movie to blame. Rift Apart doesn’t really have that.
There’s other small things here and there, but what DID I like? Well the gameplay is still just so super solid, just runnin’ and gunnin’. By the end it was really fun seeing what weapons worked best together. Throwing out the Topiary Sprinkler and a Mr. Fungi while I took out anyone else was fun, as was combining the Cold Snap and the Warmonger to just absolutely tear through bosses.
I think the levels are kind of a mixed bag, I was a little annoyed at what seemed like multiple desert or barren stages in a row with no real unique ideas to them. But stages like the Scarstu Debris Field or the WONDERFUL pirate level Ardolis, there’s still some really good stuff in there.
And while I ragged on the writing earlier, it’s still a world I want to be in with characters I enjoy. Rivet and Kit are both likable, Emperor Nefarious made for an interesting, new take on the good doctor, and while at first I was a little annoyed that I was just meeting up with alternate universe versions of characters (if it’s gonna take 5 years to get another Ratchet game, I want to meet up with the REAL Skidd McMarx, god DAMN YOU), by the end I thought it was pretty neat the way they handled some of them.
So yeah, I wanted to really adore this game, and I didn’t. But I DID still enjoy my time with it by the end. Ratchet and Clank has changed a lot from the series I once adored, but hey, as long as I can still have a good time with em, that’s good enough.