I’ve recently been able to play yet another PC port of a previously PlayStation-exclusive game; this time, it’s Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and it’s absolutely beautiful.
I’ll keep my thoughts on PlayStation porting games to PC short; KEEP THEM COMING.
Even though my review of TLOU PC was plagued with issues, I want these games to continue to come to my chosen platform cause when they get them right (note to the reader, the PC port of TLOU is now mostly lovely), they are a joy to experience with all the features that I love. Ultrawide, high refresh rates, keyboard and mouse support and everything else that PC gaming allows you to change is what I am looking for, and I’m happy to report that Ratchet and Clank is a great port, although not without issue.
In 2021, Insomniac Games created a third-person shooter platform game called Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Sony Interactive Entertainment published it exclusively for the PlayStation 5. This game is the ninth main instalment in the Ratchet & Clank series and is a sequel to Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus. The game was announced in June 2020 and was released on June 11, 2021. In 2023 Nixxes Software released the Windows version on July 26, 2023.
To introduce you to the story as it is, after the events of Into the Nexus, Ratchet and Clank were hailed as heroes during a parade organised by Captain Quark, Skid McMarx, and Rusty Pete. At the parade, Clank revealed that he had repaired the Dimensionator, a powerful device that could open rifts to other dimensions. The purpose was to help Ratchet search for the Lombax race and his missing family. However, things take a turn when Doctor Nefarious unexpectedly attacks the parade and attempts to steal the Dimensionator. In the chaos, Ratchet accidentally shoots the Dimensionator, causing rifts to open randomly. The incident sees Ratchet, Clank, and Dr Nefarious being sucked into an alternate universe. To make things worse, the Dimensionator explodes, causing damage to the fabric of space-time and separating the three. From here, you take control of both Ratchet and a female Lombax named Rivet while you take control of both and try to rebuild the Dimensionator and fix everything that’s gone wrong.
PC players might not be familiar with a lot of the characters in play, but even with this, it never caused me any issues. It’s easy enough to get a good understanding of what all the characters are about, and the overall story is exceptionally well done. This is a well-written and delightful 3rd person action action-adventure game that’s well-suited for younger players while also being great for older gamers at the same time. It also pushes a lot of expectations for how games should look and is a fantastic example of us getting closer to being able to play games that look as good as the brilliant Pixar movies.
Gameplay is a mix of gunplay, melee and platform traversal elements. The said traversal elements are heavily tied to using a fast SSD storage device. Much has been said of this across the world of gaming, and without getting too deeply involved in this, you’re going to want as fast an SSD as possible. Although you can play the game on older and slower devices, your experience will be compromised if you’re not on something relatively modern and quick. During certain sections of the game, you move through rifts (quickly moving from one point in a world to another, and even at some points changing game worlds completely), I’m playing on an SSD quite a bit slower than that in the PS5, and it’s been mostly fine. Still, I have encountered slight slowdowns and drops in performance. Nothing that would stop you from playing the game, but also not the most optimal performance available.
Playing on PC gives you many options to customise performance, and the game runs exceptionally well on my relatively high-end system. At least until Ray Tracing is introduced. Playing with all settings at ultra-high and 16x Anisotropic Filtering, my 12-hour story play-thru averaged about 126fps. This was a mix of mainly playing at 3440 by 1440 ultrawide and a tiny bit of 4K play. This made the gameplay unbelievably smooth and responsive. However, after RT was enabled on AMD graphics cards with a recent update, replaying just the opening level dropped this to 70fps. Still good performance, but again makes me realise just how much RT costs in terms of performance on modern games. Ray Tracing looks excellent, but for me, the extra performance on offer without will continue to be my primary way to play (for anything outside of photo mode and screenshots, at least).
Even without RT, the game is a banquet for your eyes, and alongside Cyberpunk 2077 and Plague Tale Reqium, it’s a showcase for what is possible in visuals in modern games.
Gunplay is solid, although not game-changing, but the different weapons available really add to the game and are fantastic fun to upgrade. This adds a good level of replayability to the game as if you don’t max them out in your first play thru, it’s still a fun time to play again and fully upgrade them next time out. A personal favourite of mine was the Pixelizer; the sound and visual effects are excellent and unique, and leaving enemies in a puddle of pixels never got old for me. You’ll also use melee attacks to clear groups of bad guys, but this was usually the last resort for me rather than my primary way of play.
What pulled me in the most was the story of the game. I truly enjoyed getting to know the characters involved, and the voice acting is done incredibly well, and Rivet, voiced by the oh-so-talented Jennifer Hale, could really be doing with her own solo game! The story was so good it’s left me keen to jump into some of the older games and get more involved in the history of the characters, and I hope, moving forward, more Ratchet and Clank games come to PC.
PC options are well covered; DLSS 3, FSR and XeSS all feature alongside a handful of other options to customise your gameplay. I’m a big fan of FSR, but you will definitely lose some clarity using this option. I turned this option off, and going with DRS helped with cleaning up a lot of image issues I had.
I don’t often write about game controller options, but please play the game using a Duel Sense controller if you can. I’ve moved between keyboard and mouse, Xbox controller and Duel Sense during my time with the game and due to the way weapons work, the half-click options on the Duel Sense make it almost essential. The rumble of the Xbox controller was incredibly intense and put in a great showing, but losing the function of the half-click on the Duel Sense was a nightmare and ruined a lot of the feel that made weapons handle so well in the game.
At launch, the game had a few issues, graphical and even a few crashes. Now after a few patches, the game runs like a joy. You will want more modern hardware to get the best out of it, but it scales pretty well, even on older parts. As I noted earlier, this will affect your experience, but even with this game is a joy.
The game is a shorter adventure than some games nowadays, but that’s not something that should be held against it. This extremely well-written game has fantastic controls and looks on another level compared to most other games in a similar space. Insomniac Games are on another level compared to most other developers; their hit rate is fantastic. Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart takes everything that they learned on Sunset Overdrive and Spiderman and uses it all to produce something stunning. This is a game that I recommend to anyone, young or old.
-BigGP