Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart | Review
Another Fantastic Adventure with this Dynamic Duo
Another Fantastic Adventure with this Dynamic Duo
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is an exceptional game by just about every metric. The combat is fluid and responsive, weapons have variety and purpose, the writing for the characters and story are superb, environments and models are beautiful, the music is sublime and timely, and the voice acting is done with finesse. It’s part of a long-running franchise that Insomniac and Sony consistently make great games with, and Rift Apart is no exception. It’s fun from its beginning to its ending, and I can’t help but recommend it to you.
When you see it hit the right price, go for it. It’s got at least 15 hours (double that if you play New Game plus), and it’s fantastic for that entire time. The platforming and combat challenges are thoughtfully put together, narratives weave nicely through the linear portions of the game, and you’re always improving your weapons and even some abilities. It’s FUN. Buy it! Play it!
If I had to say anything negative about it, perhaps I would say that it is pretty “safe”. It doesn’t really break any new ground for the franchise, which isn’t necessarily bad. But it lacked a certain OOMPH that I’ve felt in previous Ratchet and Clank adventures.
Continuing that thought, I believe there are other entries in this series that are a little better. They push the boundaries of your expectations for the franchise. Some are a little longer, or a bit more challenging at their most difficult, and thus a little more rewarding. Some have slightly better narratives even, I’d say. Note that, I haven’t played these other titles for years, so maybe it’s rose-tinted glasses, but the feeling persists, so I have written it.
So now you might be thinking, isn’t this a bit contradictory to my previous statements? It’s not. These are minor, miniscule differences between games. To put a number rank to it to clarify, we’re talking the differences between 8’s, 9’s and 10 out of 10’s. For my PC players out there who have never played a Ratchet and Clank game, you won’t even know the difference. It’ll be phenomenal for you. Everyone remembers their first outing with these dorks, and in a way, I envy the experience you will have interacting with them for the first time. As I mentioned earlier, these games are consistently good. Nitpicking and comparisons is the only way I can bring up anything negative! An astounding feat in this day and age!
I’ve written a lot of reviews, the bulk of them long and drawn out to the point that I feel I’ve squeezed every inch of the game into a form that readers can really digest and feel compelled to purchase the game or not. To be honest, I’m having a strangely difficult time figuring out what more needs to be said. It’s a fantastic game, one that I loved playing, and plan to play again here shortly. But more details on how I might convince you, escape me. So hopefully this has been enough. Please experience it for yourself. And please do so on a controller (preferably with a PS5 controller so you can experience the FUTURE of controllers with the adaptive triggers)!
I should mention that my time was spent playing on PC, and there were a few random performance dips, but otherwise ran smooth as butter. I have a 3070 with a Ryzen 9 & 32gb of ram. Want to try playing on SteamDeck, since it’s verified playable there, may update my review if I have a different experience.
Overall, this is a super fun game that I think everyone should eventually experience. Give my initial paragraph another read through for some extra convincing, and then please consider playing Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.
Originally published at https://backloggd.com.