We are two years removed from the last time we saw Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart in action on the PlayStation 5. The lovable and always pleasant Ben Sheene wrote up a fine review of the game, and it’s a safe bet to say that our opinion of the ‘game’ hasn’t changed. The core gameplay is still darn amazing and gorgeous as can be. Of course, for the sake of words, we’ll be talking about some of that here, but if you want a more extensive write-up of the game, then check out Ben’s review.
Fast-forward to 2023 and the PC version of this wonderful game has arrived. What has changed? Well, the speed of the game is on par with the PS5’s lightning hardware, so nothing changed there. The gorgeous graphics that the PlayStation 5 has certainly changed…for the better, which is tough to believe, but any PC snob will scoff at the comment. And stability? Oh, my. We’ll discuss that soon. That last one is huge given that The Last of Us was released on PC with a sad whimper but soon recovered a few months later. Hey, still better than Cyberpunk’s timeline, amirite? Oh, I’m very accurate with that point.
Anyway, open that review rift, and let’s get cracking on Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
That gameplay is still primo
While Ben Sheene was hard at work reviewing Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart back in the early summer days of 2021, I was sitting in a beach house streaming it and enjoying the ride. It’s a tough life, I tell ya. The game wowed me in several ways, mostly in its ability to bring back the fun that is sometimes missing in 3D action platformers. Sometimes it is difficult to get a 3D platformer right, as I have seen and experienced some bad ones over the years, but when things go right, the game becomes an epic tale. And is the key to a good game. When you can hook your player and engage them, then you have something special brewing.
Telling a good tale
A good story can take a game a long way, and it certainly did wonders for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Breaking up the game’s protagonist (Ratchet and Clank – in case you weren’t up and up on the story) thanks to dimensional rifts brought on by Dr. Nefarious. The breakup of the band ends up being a good thing, as they are paired with new partners named Rivet and Kit. Together, the entire set of heroes must figure out a way to stop Nefarious from changing worlds in other dimensions and ultimately stop him from destroying the universe with his rifts. No big deal.
This isn’t just a shallow story set up with no payoff. The story is built around Ratchet’s feeling of isolation and need to find family. That one storyline turns this narrative into something more warming and heartfelt. The introduction of dimensional rifts opened the opportunity to bring in Lombax lore through Rivet and to draw him closer to someone that he can relate to and not feel so alone with. That’s on top of just a wonderful, whacky, prototypical 3D platformer crisis. That must be included. Anyway, the story is meaningful because of how it is built and what it is built with. And it’s one that shows how far a simple pair of 3D platforming characters can go when given the right reasons and world to grow within. This story is so far from a throwaway. It was built with a lot of love and care from Insomniac. I appreciate that very much as a reviewer, as I can walk away knowing it is worth my time.
You got your story in my gameplay, you got your gameplay in my story
That sweet, sweet story wasn’t created for your entertainment. Okay, well, it was, but it was also created with gameplay to complement it. The big who-hah in the game is the wonderment of dimensional rifts.
As you travel the 3D platforming worlds, you will occasionally run into dimensional rifts. They’re just not pretty during the adventure, they serve a transportation purpose. Ratchet or Rivet can hook them with a left bumper button, pull on them, and then transport them instantly across levels. What’s remarkable about that feat, especially when it came out in 2021, is that instantaneous teleportation was a gaming marvel at the time. Without loading times, the characters can pull the entire screen from that single rift, and they will land in the place that was contained within the rift. And that mechanic isn’t just a one-off deal to make people go, “OOOOOOO” and “AHHHH”, rather this was an actual mechanic in the game that could be done multiple times by the gamer. It could be done to escape enemies, to traverse seemingly inaccessible places or a little bit of both. Regardless, it was brilliant and mind-blowing for the PS5 to perform that feat. Most of that action could only be achieved thanks to Sony’s clever hardware design. The quick load in the background and instant graphical gameplay gratification was so darn cool. And it’s still cool on the PC. It works just the same way, which means that Sony’s PC software group figured out a way to translate that hardware miracle into a standard, randomly configured PC.
Now, outside of the rifts (or inside, whatever you prefer), the game also contained just a slew of different planets with different personalities and level design that was drop-dead gorgeous and still is drop-dead gorgeous. For example, there is a level in the game where you must go find a giant robot to repair a crystal for you. It’s a desert world that has multiple tiers to climb through. This planet featured creatures and NPCs that were personal to that planet. In addition, the action you got to see from that planet, especially when the giant robot awakens, was just jaw-dropping fantastic. Each planet that Rivet and Ratchet must go through to progress the story is full of life and pin-pointed personality. It feels like at times that you’re visiting an entirely new game every time you land on a different world. The amount of time that must have been spent creating these worlds to complement the story was time well spent. The loving details, even the throwaway details, just made everything in the story that much better. And Insomniac seemed like they wanted to bring the highest ‘A’ game imaginable when designing these worlds that characters and player visit. It’s all quite stunning. And all of this goes back to the story, where none of it exists or works without a cohesive and meaningful story. The planets follow along with the tale and nothing feels cheap or feels like an afterthought.
Worlds and rifts aside, one of the bigger draws for this game over the years has been the weaponry featured in the series. I think at some point the weapons became a bit more popular than the story, which is sad, but also cool. The weapons featured in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart do not disappoint. They range from an 8-bit pixelator to a giant drill, and even a nasty weapon that scatters electricity. There are a lot of weapons in the game’s arsenal, so you won’t be disappointed with the delivered goods in this area.
In addition to the large variety of weapons, the leveling for each is equally as impressive, as you open hexagon attributes on each weapon to unleash power, ammo capacity, and other capabilities. Each weapon has leveling ability and the sheer girth of this leveling will send you back to planets to go search for more currency and crystals so that you can keep unlocking weapons and upgrades. It all works together and the design for this is just exquisite. It certainly continues the tradition of the series, and then some.
On the character side of the tracks, they bring their piece to the story pie. As previously mentioned, you have Ratchet who is surviving his loneliness and isolation. You have Rivet, who is just trying to do right for her people and planet, while at the same time surviving. You have Kit, who is far more than she seems. And you have the ever-intelligent Clank, who is cute as he is important for everyone’s survival. The characters introduced in this game have their own space, problems, and predicaments to sort out. They also crossover well with the original characters, so nothing feels out of sorts or wedged in. They all move the way they should and have their own personalities during gameplay that separates them from each other. This is more than just cheap clones of old characters. These are good characters that drive the story and the gameplay.
Not all the shimmer is shining
There are some hiccups to the giddy-up in this game. One of the hiccups is the weapons, but it’s a quietly minor hiccup. Barely need water for it. Just a good scare now and then. Anyway, the downer to the weapons in the game is how much ammo you carry around with you and how accessible it is at any given point. There were more than a few fights during the game where all my weapons simply ran out of ammo. I had to find a more melee route to dispose of enemies, which isn’t difficult, but it can be when you have mid-bosses that are huge. I think that was my main frustration with Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s gameplay. It’s not a big deal because I just switched on my Resident Evil conversative ammo way of playing and used mostly melee while reserving the guns for more sinister beings. It did tame the gun-toting a bit, but it also made me play smarter. Still, it was a downer not being able to pixelate a baddie and listen to their 8-bit scream as they die. Who doesn’t want to listen to that all the time? Only weirdos.
The only other small knock I have against this game and its design is how easy it was to knock off baddies. You will get a lot of repeats in the game with enemies on each planet and the bosses aren’t too terribly difficult to overcome. I know this isn’t much of a complaint when it comes to keeping the story going and taming frustration, but I do wish there was a little bit more of a challenge. I’m not wishing for Dark Souls-like insanity, but going from one small to mid-enemy, then to boss, should be a bit more arc-y in the difficulty when it comes to a challenge. This is either true or I’m just good at games. It’s probably true.
Overall, the balance of a tremendously meaningful and heartfelt story mixed with gameplay that compliments it puts Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart as one of the best titles in the last five years to come from Sony’s family of developers. It’s nice to see a company give a shit about story and gameplay.
Now, about that PC translation…
Here we go
Oh, it’s good. No doubt, it’s good. While there may have been some concern about Sony bringing another hit PlayStation title to the PC in an unstable condition, don’t at all concern yourself with it. The game out of the gate worked well for the most part. As with any PC game, there were some minor hiccups, but nothing major at all. I reviewed this game on my PC that had the following specs:
- i7 – 12th Generation Intel Chipset
- 16gb – DDR5 RAM
- 3080 – RTX NVIDIA GPU
Oh, and it was a laptop. Just thought I might mention that as sometimes people frown on laptops. Anyway, it ran splendidly most of the time on the Very High graphic settings. When it did stumble a bit, and it mostly happened with audio, where it would get all garbled, but to cure that I just knocked it down to High. When I did that, I think I might have had two crashes in the span of 6-7 hours but smooth sailing otherwise.
Graphically, it did shine on the PC. The ray tracing and the amount of detail in this PC conversion were stunning. You can see hair on the Lombax’s face and ears, you can spot the shimmer on the robots from a cityscape’s neon lights, and when you get to that planet with the shiny, dirty city, you’ll probably want to go take a shower because it looks so real. The PC conversation of this game did wonders for it visually and it was pulled off nearly flawlessly. That’s a huge boost in Sony’s PC portfolio and it puts my faith back in the PC conversions they might be bringing down the road.
You never know what is next.
Anyway, I’m positive that most of you have a better build than me, so enjoy the hell out of this game. It’s quite the experience and maybe a good one for those PC snobs out there. Never thumb your nose at consoles again. Seriously. There are good games on them.
On that note, let’s wrap up.
Conclusion
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is spectacular on the PC. It brings the same great story with the same wonderful characters, as well as all the good gameplay elements that the series has been known for over the years. It has some very minor hitches in its giddy-up, but nothing too serious. It’s certainly one of the better PC conversions from Sony Interactive Entertainment.
