I suddenly realized that I've posted surprisingly little about the games I've been playing on my PlayStation 5. This mostly come down to two reasons. 1; I mostly only play games on my PlayStation 5 on the weekends when I get up in the morning. 2; It costs me extra calories to plug my USB-drive into the console to extract my screenshots.
It's time to change that so let's talk about Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
What is Ratched & Clank: Rift Apart?
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is the latest installment into the Ratchet & Clank series and it seems to pick up the story where the last one left off, according to writings on the internet. Personally I haven't played a Ratchet & Clank game since the PlayStation 2/3 era and to be honest I can barely remember anything about them outside the fact that they're a decent bunch of third-person action platformers. I don't even remember which games I've played. All I know is that I enjoyed them.
In terms of game play Rift Apart isn't much different from its predecessors. Its a third-person action platformer where you mow down enemies with a fun variety of weapons while platforming yourself around the different levels. As any good platformer should be it's loaded with secrets and unlockables as a reward for those players that take some extra time to explore. Like me.
As for setting the Ratchet & Clank series is very much set in a science fiction universe. This synergizes very well with the next gen graphics of the PS5 as they've designed these worlds really well. They're all stunning to look at and a pure blast to play through.
My thoughts
I've been enjoying this game a lot. I haven't finished it quite yet but I'm pretty sure I'm well over halfway through the game. Since I'm so thorough when playing my games this has taken me somewhere in the vicinity of 20 hours which means that the game has a decent length. So far there hasn't been any sections of the game that has felt drawn out or boring. Even while taking a lot of time to explore each map the game has a really good pacing.
I really like how pretty much all of the secrets are quite close to the main objectives while still requiring you to explore a little bit off the beaten path. It doesn't feel like they're trying to add to much artificial length to the game by hiding secrets annoyingly well which some developers often do. Every secret and unlockable is very accessible for players of all skill levels.
Another thing I like really well is the weapon variety. So far I've unlocked 13 weapons and there seems to be 16 in total. Out of the 13 weapons I've unlocked all of them feel unique and strong enough to be part of your loadout. Cycling between each weapon is quite easy and you can have 4 of them equiped in your loadout at any given time.
I've gone with a bit of a turret loadout where I deploy a sprinkler that stuns enemies, a turret that shoots and distracts enemies and a group of small robots that deals a ton of damage. For my fourth slot I use whatever gun has the most ammo but try to keep it to an electrified gun that deals quite a lot of area damage. This loadout works pretty well for both bosses and normal enemies.
The game is also a decent challenge. I'm playing on the hardest difficulty which means that enemies actually pack a bit of a punch. It doesn't get me stuck in an encounter for long periods of times but I might die once or twice which requires me to approach the encounter in a different way to beat it. I much prefer playing the game like this instead of mindlessly steamrolling everything.
As for the story of the game I guess it's alright. We go up against Dr. Nefarious as the main villain like we've done before in this game series. I guess it wouldn't be a Ratchet & Clank game without him. I'm not quite sure what shenanigans he's been up to before but this time he's managed to destroy the fabric between dimensions which has sown some chaos in the universe. We are now trying to fix it. That's the main plot.
At the same time we go down a story-line of Ratchet discovering the truth about his race, the Lombaxes. He's always been the last of his kind as far as he knows but this dimensional chaos has proven that's not entirely true. Throughout the game we play as both Ratchet and another female Lombax called Rivet who is basically Ratchet from another dimension. This whole thing is a bit of a cliche story but it does add some decent lore to the game.
Verdict
I'm having a lot of fun with Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. To me it doesn't really fall short in any areas. The combat is fun, the difficulties are well balanced, the world design is amazing and exploration is fun and not tedious. The story is perhaps the only thing that can be called a weak point. It's not bad but it's just ok. It's a decent story seeing as the target group of this game most likely isn't men in their 30s like me but instead a younger audience.
I'm going to see this game through to the end and will most likely put in the effort to collect all of the achievements. That doesn't seem to be to hard of a task seeing as around 20% of the people who have played this game has been able to do it.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is exclusive to the PlayStation 5 so unless you have one of those you won't be able to play it. I got it for free through my PlayStation Plus subscription. That subscription has been quite valuable seeing as this game costs a solid $69 at full price. I most likely would never had played this if it wasn't for that subscription.
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.