I am VERY CONFLICTED about Rift Apart. It's an absolutely stunning showcase for the PS5 in every way, and it feels like a legitimate masterpiece most of the time. But then it just has to do something dumb every once in a while to bring the experience down.
First: The Good!
I've said it in multiple reviews before, but I really am in love with the DualSense. The haptic triggers, advanced rumble, and speaker (when used correctly) create a thoroughly engrossing experience that I will never not be a sucker for. The way that you half-pull a trigger for certain functions feels amazing, especially with the gentle little stop in the middle. The sounds and voices that come out of the controller throughout are just fun, and the rumble does a great job of making each weapon you use and each surface you walk on feel different. I love it!
Beyond the controller, the weapons feel great to use in and of themselves. I leveled each weapon up fully and spent all the Raritanium you can acquire in a single playthrough. In the end, there were very few weapons I didn't adore. I was a particularly big fan of the Negatron Collider. Big laser good.
I played this game right after finally getting a 4K OLED TV, and it's easily the most visually impressive game I've played to date. It's easy to take incredible graphics for granted, but I try to stop and say "wow" every once in a while, and Rift Apart probably got more wows out of me than anything I've played since Uncharted 4. And can you believe how good all that FUR looks?!?
Anyhow, missions are fun, characters are enjoyable, weapons great, visuals stunning, music solid, blah blah blah. Why didn't this end up clearing a 4/5 for me even though I was absolutely enamored with it most of the time?
The Bad!!
The Clank astral projection mini game is... fine. Just felt like puzzles for puzzles' sake, there was nothing particularly compelling there, I'm not sure if it's filler or a misguided attempt to break up the near-flawless Ratchet/Rivet gameplay, but I think the game as a whole would be better off without it.
The Glitch mini game is worse. A tiny cute spider robot shoots viruses? Okay that's kind of cool I guess, but... it's in a game that already has a lot of fantastic shooting. Why are we interrupting that for some bland laser-zapping? They try to give Glitch her own antagonist here, but it just ends up feeling pointless and hollow. Playing the Glitch levels felt like watching a bunch of 4-minute webisodes that spun off from your favorite TV show. The showrunners swear that these matter and are worth your time, but... are they??
Those are both downers, but they don't ruin the main third-person shooting and platforming. You might even argue that they make you appreciate the main gameplay even more by giving you something bland and tedious to compare it to! But, unfortunately, even the Ratchet/Rivet stuff ends up stumbling once you try to go for 100%. (And let's be real, if I'm enjoying a 3D platformer collectathon, I'm gonna collect every single thing) In the first Ratchet & Clank, levels are wide open areas which give you a variety of options for potential paths between any two points. Rift Apart mostly eschews this approach (with Savali being the main exception), instead focusing on segmented levels built around scripted set pieces. These make for some great and exciting scenes, but once you're trying to navigate a world like Sargasso or Cordelion without just following objective markers, you realize there's often one railroaded path that connects islands or rooms together, with deviation not often being possible. In a more open setting, exploration is a joy and wouldn't invoke the term "backtracking" at all, but completing most areas of Rift Apart feels a bit too much like repeating levels of an on-rails shooter, hoping you don't accidentally miss something because you'll have to begin the sequence of island-hopping again.
It really is a great game, and I'm glad I played it. But man, it's such a shame that it's not as consistent as it could've been.
First: The Good!
I've said it in multiple reviews before, but I really am in love with the DualSense. The haptic triggers, advanced rumble, and speaker (when used correctly) create a thoroughly engrossing experience that I will never not be a sucker for. The way that you half-pull a trigger for certain functions feels amazing, especially with the gentle little stop in the middle. The sounds and voices that come out of the controller throughout are just fun, and the rumble does a great job of making each weapon you use and each surface you walk on feel different. I love it!
Beyond the controller, the weapons feel great to use in and of themselves. I leveled each weapon up fully and spent all the Raritanium you can acquire in a single playthrough. In the end, there were very few weapons I didn't adore. I was a particularly big fan of the Negatron Collider. Big laser good.
I played this game right after finally getting a 4K OLED TV, and it's easily the most visually impressive game I've played to date. It's easy to take incredible graphics for granted, but I try to stop and say "wow" every once in a while, and Rift Apart probably got more wows out of me than anything I've played since Uncharted 4. And can you believe how good all that FUR looks?!?
Anyhow, missions are fun, characters are enjoyable, weapons great, visuals stunning, music solid, blah blah blah. Why didn't this end up clearing a 4/5 for me even though I was absolutely enamored with it most of the time?
The Bad!!
The Clank astral projection mini game is... fine. Just felt like puzzles for puzzles' sake, there was nothing particularly compelling there, I'm not sure if it's filler or a misguided attempt to break up the near-flawless Ratchet/Rivet gameplay, but I think the game as a whole would be better off without it.
The Glitch mini game is worse. A tiny cute spider robot shoots viruses? Okay that's kind of cool I guess, but... it's in a game that already has a lot of fantastic shooting. Why are we interrupting that for some bland laser-zapping? They try to give Glitch her own antagonist here, but it just ends up feeling pointless and hollow. Playing the Glitch levels felt like watching a bunch of 4-minute webisodes that spun off from your favorite TV show. The showrunners swear that these matter and are worth your time, but... are they??
Those are both downers, but they don't ruin the main third-person shooting and platforming. You might even argue that they make you appreciate the main gameplay even more by giving you something bland and tedious to compare it to! But, unfortunately, even the Ratchet/Rivet stuff ends up stumbling once you try to go for 100%. (And let's be real, if I'm enjoying a 3D platformer collectathon, I'm gonna collect every single thing) In the first Ratchet & Clank, levels are wide open areas which give you a variety of options for potential paths between any two points. Rift Apart mostly eschews this approach (with Savali being the main exception), instead focusing on segmented levels built around scripted set pieces. These make for some great and exciting scenes, but once you're trying to navigate a world like Sargasso or Cordelion without just following objective markers, you realize there's often one railroaded path that connects islands or rooms together, with deviation not often being possible. In a more open setting, exploration is a joy and wouldn't invoke the term "backtracking" at all, but completing most areas of Rift Apart feels a bit too much like repeating levels of an on-rails shooter, hoping you don't accidentally miss something because you'll have to begin the sequence of island-hopping again.
It really is a great game, and I'm glad I played it. But man, it's such a shame that it's not as consistent as it could've been.