Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

“It doesn’t get any better than this.”

That’s what I thought in 2007 after playing Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction.

I had spent most of that winter season delivering pizza so I could have the cash to buy a PlayStation 3 on Black Friday. For Christmas my grandparents got me–per my request–Tools of Destruction and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. What a pair.

Weeks before Black Friday, I had played a demo of Tools of Destruction on a small plasma HDTV at Walmart, my neck tilted back because they had decided to put the TVs about seven feet off the ground. Weeks later, I downloaded the demo on my own PS3 and played it to death on my cathode ray tube TV. Whether in high definition or standard, I felt like I was playing a Pixar movie turned into a game. The graphics were so detailed! The action smooth and buttery! How were there so many things happening on the screen?! Those explosions!

Time makes fools of us all.

After beating Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart I took a short journey down memory lane and watched footage of all the past games in the series, from the PlayStation 2 roots to the 2016 remake. Throughout the years the lombax and his metal companion have been stalwarts of the PlayStation brand, blowing up aliens and robots with aplomb. I remember many of those games fondly, enjoying their zany sense of humor and laughably insane weapons. But now? Now they feel so slow, so dated.

Ratchet & Clank on PlayStation 5 is a revelation. With every new world, every new crack in the dimensions I was taken aback. This is a game bursting with life. Its thrilling action complimented by groundbreaking technology that feels like we are truly ushering in the next generation in a new way. Rift Apart shows what the PlayStation 5 is capable of, paving the way for old favorites and new ideas to exponentially transform and evolve.

Rift Apart doesn’t act as a soft reboot of the series. In fact, the game begins assuming players have at least some idea that Ratchet and Clank are kind of a big deal. The pair are being celebrated at a hero’s parade featuring massive floats of their likeness (Captain Quark included!). But don’t worry if you haven’t played a game in the series in several years or at all, Insomniac Games doesn’t want to drown the uninitiated out. After all, this has been the first Ratchet & Clank game in five years, there’s likely going to be newcomers.

The celebration is interrupted after goons hired by Dr. Nefarious–another series mainstay, don’t worry–attack. Trouble arises when Dr. Nefarious gets his hands on the Dimensionator, a tool that can be used to open up portals into other dimensions. Clank had created the Dimensionator as a way to help Ratchet seek out other members of the Lombax race, who have remained one of the series’ core mysteries and constantly teased in multiple narrative threads. Of course, things can’t be that easy and Ratchet and Clank find themselves separated across dimensions after the Dimensionator malfunctions.

What makes the story of Rift Apart interesting is temporarily stripping away the dynamic between our two core heroes. It’s been done a handful of times in a few of the games but here, players are introduced to Rivet, a female Lombax that teams up with Clank. Insomniac could have dropped the ball by making Rivet a near carbon copy of Ratchet, just with a different coat of fur and a new voice. But what I liked most about Rivet is that we meet her in a dimension where Dr. Nefarious is actually Emperor Nefarious and has ruled with an iron, mechanical fist. In her world, Rivet is not a hero, just a rebel struggling to hold together a meager resistance group.

Frustratingly, Rivet is nearly mechanically identical to Ratchet in terms of gameplay. She uses a hammer instead of a wrench, uses the exact same weapons, has an identical moveset, and possesses all the same equipment without much of an explanation as to how she got it. The same argument can also be made for Ratchet’s gameplay. But for the sake of fun, I’m fine with keeping all my hard-earned upgrades. But I’m curious as to why Insomniac chose not to give Ratchet and Rivet one unique weapon for themselves or a gameplay hook that the other didn’t have. It would make sense considering the planets each character visits aren’t playable by the other, meaning there would be opportunities for exclusive Ratchet and Rivet moments.

But that issue only slightly dulls Rivet’s overall impact to Rift Apart‘s narrative and the Ratchet & Clank universe as a whole. Rivet and Clank team up early in the game, giving players the chance to warm up to Rivet by teaming her up with a familiar face. Players learn that Rivet has suffered through traumatic events, her mechanical arm being the most obvious sign. She has a mistrust of robots, indicated by her cold attitude towards Clank. Voiced by the always incredible Jennifer Hale, Rivet has a surprising amount of depth and we see her evolve as a character throughout the game. I think players will bond with Rivet because she is heroic like Ratchet and has attained that strength through different means.

Ratchet’s personality is already fairly concrete and it should be after this many games. His cocky moments are usually earned and he’s friendly and trusting of newcomers. Honestly, the entire cast is likable, feeling like a Saturday morning cartoon ensemble. Expertly voice acted, bouncing with color and personality, and just being plain funny, it’s hard not to enjoy the vibrant world of Rift Apart. I laughed multiple times at the simplest of jokes and felt tension just at the right times because Rift Apart is dripping with charm.

While the overall story may gravitate towards the simpler side to appeal to the broadest audience, I applaud Insomniac’s ability to infuse a game with morals and commentary on friendship without being cheesy. As jaded as life may have made me, it still softened my heart to watch characters fight through their problems even when things got hard. Let’s be honestly, no one needs or wants a gritty Ratchet & Clank adventure. Where would the fun in that be?

Did someone say fun? Because let me tell you, Rift Apart is a blast.

Guns and weapons have always been the focus of Ratchet & Clank and Rift Apart is no different. With around 20 weapons to use over the course of the game, players will find a satisfying and deadly arsenal that meets their demolition demands. Firing weapons and defeating enemies will level up each weapon, increasing their efficiency and opening up upgrade nodes that can be unlocked with Raritanium scattered throughout the worlds. The system is simple, yet effective and allows players to focus on what weapons they are enjoying the most and turning them into tools of absolute destruction.

However, it’s hard to talk about favorites and not mention the DualSense controller, one of the key ways Insomniac has taken advantage of the PlayStation 5. Most weapons take advantage of the DualSense’s adaptive triggers, having a firing mode or function with a half and full pull of the R2 button. The Blast Pistol is the first gun players get and pulling the trigger halfway will fire precise shots at a slow rate; pull the trigger completely down and the gun fires rapidly but the bullets start to spread. Or what about the Blackhole Storm, a gatling gun that can wind up with a half pull and then shoot out a barrage of hot lead? But it gets better. With the haptic feedback, the DualSense will vibrate as the gun delivers its payload while the trigger will slowly start to resist itself being fully pushed.

Rift Apart becomes a more immersive experience because of the DualSense, becoming a showcase for what the controller is capable of. I loved the way sounds would play out of the speaker, from the tiny jingle of bolts to the blast of hoverboots. Feeling the controller vibrate first left then right to imitate the movement of Ratchet and Rivet’s footsteps might seem like a gimmick but it really isn’t. It’s such a subtle touch that further draws players into the action.

Guns have even more personality because they have a unique feeling thanks to the triggers and vibration. Multiple weapons will show their throw arc when the trigger is half pulled. I’ll be honest, it took me awhile to become acclimated to how sensitive the trigger was to a “half” pull but eventually I found the balance. It still didn’t keep me from randomly tossing a Mr. Fungi out to help me in battle or a Topiary Sprinkler to freeze a boss in place for a few seconds. The Void Reactor, a later favorite gun, would deploy a shield in front of Ratchet and Rivet that would block enemy fire (and eventually be upgraded to deploy those projectiles back). Players could keep the shield up by half-pulling the trigger; a full pull shoots out a damaging blast. It was tough to keep the shield up at first, considering how sensitive the triggers are. Eventually I got the hang of it.

Remember how I mentioned that all the old Ratchet & Clank games felt slow after playing Rift Apart? It isn’t just that Rift Apart‘s pacing is a kind of thrill ride. It’s that the game’s action has this breakneck quality to it. Something is always happening in Rift Apart. The screen will explode will particles as enemies flood in from dimensional rifts out of nowhere. A normal rail grinding section will cascade into chaos as a monolithic robot called The Fixer tries to attack Rivet, tearing apart every inch of playable space. Ratchet will fall through a dimensional hole onto the back of a dragon and players won’t even realize they are in control, thinking they are in a cutscene.

Rift Apart feels powerful. It feels like a PlayStation 5 game.

Since I’m not a developer and have little to no knowledge as to how games work, I’m sure there is some technical trickery Insomniac could have used to make the game work in some way on PlayStation 4. But I can’t imagine a scenario in which that vision wouldn’t be compromised.

Before I elaborate, let me just say that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is not perfect. In many ways, it acts and feels like a game from the PlayStation 2 era. Players will jump into invisible walls, get temporarily stuck in the geometry or between a building and an NPC, or have to restart part of a boss fight because they slipped off a ledge. For some, these problems may be annoyances and for others they might be charming relics of a mostly bygone era. But ultimately, they don’t compromise the technical feat this game is.

During my entire playthrough of Rift Apart, it felt like my senses and the screen were being constantly barraged by things happening. And the whole time the game never stuttered, never faltered. I couldn’t notice a single discernible dip in the frame rate when playing on fidelity mode, which utilizes ray tracing, 4K visuals, and 30 FPS gameplay. The sheen on metallic surfaces would reflect the world. Boxes would explode while enemies would show signs of damage. I had Topiary Sprinklers, Mr. and Mrs. Fungis, bullets, robot dogs, NPCs, rockets, more bullets, and what felt like a thousand other things going on. All the while Ratchet and Rivet would jump and dodge over laser blasts and pirate swords.

There were multiple times where I held my breath, tense from a gun fight or on the edge of my seat after jumping between dimensions in the deep of space. Breathtaking is one way to describe it. But the game is a visual and technical feast. The sheer density of a new planet will cause players to stop for a moment and take in the countless things buzzing about or happening off in the distance. These worlds are detailed like they never have been before and it’s hard not to argue that the PlayStation 5 is responsible for a lot of that.

Interestingly, Rift Apart controls and plays nearly identical to its brethren. There are collectibles tucked away in far corners, mild platforming to get from one place to the next, and a few bridges that need to be activated by twirling the wrench around in a circle. But Rift Apart feels so different from those other games because of how alive it is by comparison. In Tools of Destruction I was speechless in the opening moments when Ratchet and Clank are grinding down a rail circling outside a building and that building suddenly started to crumble. 14 years ago destroying a piece of the environment during gameplay felt like a technical feat. In Rift Apart, buildings are crumbling, enemies are pouring into the world, and helpless citizens fleeing for cover.

Rift Apart is alive. There’s no easier way to put it.

Dimensional cracks are a narrative element and a clever gameplay tool. Who needs darkened rooms in a corner for goons to appear in when they can literally fall into the world from another place? I’m not sure how to tell what’s being loaded into the game in what way but the PlayStation 5’s SSD is doing some heavy lifting here. Not only does it keep all the action seamless, it makes teleporting in and out of scenarios a breeze.

Ratchet and Rivet can use a rift tether to grapple onto a piece of space and nearly instantaneously be there. In some scenarios it acts just like a grapple hook. In combat it’s meant to get out of trouble and get the jump on the bad guys. I didn’t use rift tethers too much outside of when the game required me to but found the act of being in one place and then the next to be impressive.

The most impressive use of switching dimensions are the handful of worlds that can literally change at the whack of a crystal. The first time players experience this is on a mining colony. Rivet and Clank arrive to the colony to find it completely destroyed. There is little gravity, meaning that jumps go higher and traversal is done through magnetic boots. Upon encountering a shining purple Blizon crystal, players can hit it and instantly find themselves in the dimension where the mining colony is thriving and intact. Hit it again and players are back into the other dimension. No loading at all.

Without a doubt these moments are showpieces of Rift Apart, proving what can be accomplished without loading. Players are taken into an almost entirely new world at the flick of a weapon without skipping a beat. Ratchet and Rivet burst into a new dimension or playable world like Leon Kennedy walks into a new room in the Raccoon City Police Department building. How is it done? I have no idea. Is it amazing? Yes.

Players will encounter no loading screens and the time between hopping onto a ship, traveling to a new planet, and moving around on new ground is a matter of seconds. There are likely a few tricks to mask loading screens but it’s all incorporated in such a clever, artistic way. I do wish there was at least one more planet with a host of unique creatures to fight. As it stands, Rift Apart is a satisfying length at around 20 to 25 hours to see and do almost everything. Upon completion, a Challenge Mode can be unlocked that offers more upgrades and double the bolts. I played the game on the hardest difficulty my first go round because why not? It felt challenging and made the chaos of combat even more intense.

Rift Apart is truly a game built with love and attention. The Mark Mothersbaugh soundtrack captivated me with its layers going from whimsical synths to throbbing battle music that made me think I was watching an Avengers movie. I loved listening to this game from the score to the sound effects to the voice acting. Surfaces shined beautifully and reflected the world back at me. Heck, I’m not one for frame rates but even at 60 FPS the game looked nearly immaculate. Even the puzzles which some might not appreciate never wear out their welcome or can be entirely skipped. But you would miss out on even the tiniest bits of character arcs that writers took the time to develop. Without a doubt, it’s dizzying how wonderfully detailed everything is, showing Insomniac Games is capable of crafting a universe that would make Pixar blush.

At the end, I just wanted more and more but was excited at the narrative threads left hanging. Without a doubt, this is not the end of Ratchet and Clank and definitely not for Rivet and these new characters we’ve encountered. I can’t wait to see where these weird rodent aliens all named Mort with a Canadian accent will go. Or what mysteries the albino lizard guy named Gary keeps about the Lombaxes. Hell, there’s multiple dimensions with multiple planets to explore now. It’s up to Insomniac to figure out where to take the series next. And I truly can’t imagine it getting any better than this. But I’ve been wrong before…

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a showpiece for the PlayStation 5 and an incredible game on its own right. Players who only have a passing interest in console mascots should find plenty here to entertain them. The sheer spectacle of combat and destruction in Rift Apart will impress any action fan who wants a brisk, compelling journey across multiple unique and beautiful planets. There’s something for everyone here but, more importantly, it makes a case for what this new hardware is capable of. Clever DualSense utilization, instantaneous loads, and dizzying amounts of stuff will leave players dazzled. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a must own game for anyone who wants to experience something truly different.