Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

Listen to this post:

In the modern gaming industry, old franchises tend to die off, fossilizing in what we know as the Gaming Tar Pits. Often an old franchise will end up trapped in digital amber, and it’s popular in contemporary circles to extract DNA from those franchises and bring the back to life in a new, novel form. God of War was fused with Dad Game DNA from The Last of Us; Final Fantasy, meanwhile, got a little bit of DNA May Cry to create the character-action Strangers of Paradise. In rare cases, though, we bring back classic franchises in a fairly recognizable form.

That’s the case with 2021’s Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, the latest adventure in the duo’s series of shooters. Formerly a PlayStation 5 console exclusive, the dynamic duo has finally made it to the PC in fine form.

via YouTube

Catlike Lombax Ratchet and his robo-pal Clank are still galactic heroes! That’s pretty much permanent by this point, they’ve saved several galaxies enough times over that they might as well get used to hero-hood. At yet another parade in their honor, Clank presents Ratchet with a dimension-ripping gift that will allow the two to search for Ratchet’s missing species…and that lasts all of two seconds before the evil Dr. Nefarious shows up, does a steal and uses the device to separate Ratchet and Clank and install himself as the emperor of another dimension. It’s up to our heroes – as well as new, somewhat-grittier Lombax pal Rivet, who’s playable but not especially different from Ratchet – to deal with Nefarious, get the Dimensionator back and save everything yet again.

As expected for this series, Ratchet and Rivet will solve their problems through diplomacy and nuanced discussion. By that I mean, of course, that they’ve got a vast array of enormously destructive weapons that they’ll turn on the bad guys. You’ve got your giant laser, your gatling gun, your boomstick, your richocheting buzzsaw launcher, your, uh, taunting mushrooms…there’s something for everyone here. What’s more, all of these are upgradable with each weapon having its own skill tree, encouraging you to scour the levels in search of the Raritanium you’ll need to make your shootybangs even shootier and bangier. There’s armor to find and equip, Gold Bolts to scoop up and, of course, plenty of cash to stuff into your pockets and deposit directly into the nearest vendor for new guns.

You’ll want to do plenty of exploration anyway, of course, as Rift Apart’s environments, characters and presentation are given plenty of love and detail. You can then smash all that love and detail to bits in search of bolts. Since you’re going to be hungry for currency and combat, it’s good that there’s numerous sidequests hidden throughout each area to check out as well. These largely amount to a secondary branch of the level that you wouldn’t explore normally, but they’re worth doing all the same if only because the core gameplay loop is so solid that you’ll want more.

There’s the odd minigame and gimmick level to check out as well. You’ll control a hacking robot in brain-twisting cybernetic areas, for instance, and sometimes you’ll solve puzzles with Clank or ride around on creatures. These are a nice touch but I generally found them to distract from the run-and-gun gameplay that forms the core of the experience. Look, I just upgraded these guns and all I really want is another horde of goons to unload them into. Puzzles? The only puzzle I care to solve is “why is that guy over there not dead yet?”

The original 2021 release of Rift Apart was a spectacle showcase of what the PlayStation 5 could do. The transition to PC hasn’t dulled that sparkle – this is still a fantastic-looking game with gameplay to match. A high-spec PC can really make this game hum, and even mid-tier rigs could do worse. There’s two big concerns here: first, you’ll want to set up a PS5 DualSense controller for this one in order to get the most out of the game via haptics and such.

Second, you absolutely want to install this one on an SSD, preferably a speedy M.2 model if at all possible, as the original game’s rift-swapping zaniness relied heavily on fast storage to work correctly. Make both of those happen and you’ve got a pretty solid experience that, at the very least, ought to match what you’d play on PS5.

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart has just the right mixture of platforming, exploration, combat and customization to really showcase how to distill fun into a concentrated sludge you can then inject into your eyeballs. Add a cute if straightforward plot, plenty of appealing Dreamworks-style characters and some impressive areas to tear apart and you’ve got a winner on your hands. Check this one out if you missed it on PS5, and even if you’re coming back after two years, Rift Apart might still be worth a retread.