Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Sometimes, two lombaxes are better than one.
Protagonist(s): Ratchet Clank Rivet Kit Genre(s): Platform Third-person shooter Platform(s): PlayStation 5 Release Date: June 11, 2021 Engine: Insomniac Engine Developer(s): Insomniac Games Publisher(s): Sony Interactive Entertainment Country: United States Series: Ratchet & Clank Predecessor: Ratchet & Clank (2016) Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus (main continuity)

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a third-person shooter platform game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment exclusively for the PlayStation 5. It is the sixteenth installment in the Ratchet & Clank series and is a follow up to both Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus and Ratchet & Clank (2016).

Why It Will Take You On An Interdimensional Adventure

1. Addressing the elephant in the room, the graphics are absolutely amazing, taking full advantage of the PlayStation 5's power, with lots of noticeable detail, such as Ratchet's fur and even the ray-tracing reflections on shiny walls and Clank himself, along with the high quality sound effects that make you feel like you are playing a Pixar movie. The game is also very smooth feeling, with "Fidelity" mode, despite being 30fps, absolutely does not feel like it, it feels more like 60fps, and on "Performance RT" you get 60fps (or 120fps with a 120HZ TV!) and it feels like 120fps even without it. It's also impressive that with the level of detail the game has, that it can hold a permanent 30fps on "Fidelity" mode regardless.
2. The gameplay is awesome, Ratchet and Rivet both feel amazing to play with, the gunplay is as smooth and satisfying as ever, because the game was designed to take full advantage of the DualSense's Adaptive Triggers and Haptic Feedback, with the triggers, if you press the fire button down half way, on weapons such as the Enforcer or Burst Pistol, it will shoot in a different mode. For the Enforcer, it fires a single shot, and for the Burst Pistol, it will fire slow, but accurate shots. When you press the trigger all the way down, it fires in it's normal mode, again with the Enforcer it will fire 2 shots, and the Burst Pistol fires faster, but less accurate, the triggers also vibrate based on the speed of the weapons' fire rate. For the Haptic Feedback, it vibrates to what you are doing, along with vibrating to the beat of music in Club Nefarious.
3. Speaking of Ratchet, he has had his personality restored to a mix of his old personality and his noble personality, so he is no longer portrayed as a wide-eyed good boy, but he's more argumentative and stubborn. As for Rivet, she is Ratchet's dimensional counterpart, who also has a fully fleshed out, sad backstory, where she is distrusting and socially awkward, both due to being a loner and her having her arm blown off by a warbot during a mission, resulting in her not trusting Clank until she looked through his brain. Clank also has to deal with the challenge of losing one of his arms, and trying to convince Rivet that he is not a warbot, and his dimensional counterpart Kit, who is a warbot that was created to kill, feeling awful about her purpose, not wanting to do it anymore, but hiding it by simply trying to warn Ratchet & Rivet that she is not a good partner, and after getting captured, she refuses to go back with Rivet due to being "broken", but she eventually comes back to help Rivet fight against Emperor Nefarious.
4. Rivet and Ratchet also have very balanced playtime, as both are playable in even amounts of planets, not making it feel like one of them are bogged down for the other.
5. Dr. Nefarious returns in this game, and he is still a hilarious antagonist, along with his dimensional counterpart Emperor Nefarious.
6. Some of the new and returning weapons are awesome, such as the aforementioned Enforcer and Burst Pistol, along with other new weapons like the Blackhole Storm and more.
7. The humor is a big improvement from the reboot and even A Crack in Time, having many funny jokes like "Can't anyone print instruction manuals anymore?!", "This is what I get for giving my assistant paid paternity leave!", Clank shouting a curse word, though it's censored, it's still hilarious just hearing "HOLY (BEEP)". And arguably the most famous of them all, Ratchet & Rivet arguing then immediately apologizing.
8. Because of the PS5's internal SSD, There are absolutely no loading screens when traveling from each planet, and when going through rifts, it takes only 15 seconds max to load.
9. There are quite a few scenes with emotional tension, such as Ratchet admitting that he fears the lombaxes will be disappointed in him or vice versa, Rivet finding out that Kit was the warbot that blew her arm off, and Kit reflecting on how she found a rebel in a forbidden area (Rivet) and tried to "stop" them.
10. Lots of Easter eggs to previous games in the series, you can even see Jak and Daxter as well as Sly Cooper.
11. The characters don't talk constantly anymore, making it far less annoying than some of the other games.
12. Strong voice acting, especially from James Arnold Taylor as Ratchet, David Kaye as Clank, Jennifer Hale as Rivet, Debra Wilson as Kit, Armin Shimerman as Dr. Nefarious, and Robin Atkin Downes as Emperor Nefarious.
13. The cutscenes are all in-game cutscenes, there are no pre-rendered cutscenes, but they all look absolutely stunning, and they all flow smoothly into gameplay.
14. The length seemingly strikes the perfect middle ground between Tools of Destruction and A Crack in Time, being around 11 hours long compared to Tools' 13 hours and A Crack in Time's 10.5 hours.
15. Platforming sections are a bit more abundant in this game compared to A Crack in Time, making it also feel like a "return-to-form" style.
16. Amazing attention to detail, an example being, if you wear a piece of armor that covers Ratchet or Rivet's mouth, their voice will be muffled, and both Ratchet & Rivet, when interrupting a character's dialogue, will say something like "Sorry, one sec!" or "Sit tight." and when you resume, they will say something like "Anyways." or "As we were saying.." and the interrupted dialogue will smoothly restart from its beginning.
17. The score by Mark Mothersbaugh is very good, having many epic tracks like the final battle against Emperor Nefarious.
18. One of the biggest problems with the 2016 game was improved here, the facial animations. Rather than Ratchet having a cardboard face that almost never emotes, or Clank having the same face, all of the characters actually emote properly this time.
19. The Clank/Kit puzzles are fairly straightforward and not super tedious. Even then, if puzzles aren't your thing or you find them too tedious anyways, you can skip them without penalty, and before you skip, it gives you the story details about what happens during it so you don't miss anything. (unlike some of the other games where skipping them disables achievements and/or bolts earned from them)

Bad Qualities

1. Dr. Nefarious, despite being hilarious, did get his personality dumbed down slightly, because he is not as hilariously hammy, feeling a little bit like a shell of his former self, he is also dumbed down to secondary antagonist in favor of his dimensional counterpart Emperor Nefarious, and most likely due to the series wanting to appeal more to kids, he no longer locks up and plays an episode of Lance & Janice when he gets angry.
2. Glitch & Zurkon Jr. can be incredibly annoying with their grating high-pitched voices for some players.
3. There are only nine planets in the game, and some of them are re-used for different events, such as Zurkie's being reused multiple times for meet-ups, making the game feel like it is relying too much on the alternative dimensions for the unique, exotic locations the series is often known for.
4. The twist with Kit coming back to assist Rivet, if you are familiar with Deus-ex machinas, could be seen from a mile away.
5. Fans of the Future series may be disappointed with the fact that most of the planets (save for Savali, Sargasso and Zurkie's) are still incredibly linear and small.
6. Strange difficulty spikes, such as the boss on Blizar Prime, which if you die, you respawn from the beginning of the battle, and you have to hear him scanning over the location, lifeforms, and protocol every time you die. There's also some spots where it can be a bit too easy.
7. The replay value is not as good as previous games, mostly due to the fact that Skill Points are absent, just like the 2016 game. Along with that, for the first time in the series, the Insomniac Museum is absent.
8. Insomniac made the strange move to fuse the continuity of the 2016 game with Into the Nexus' continuity. Not only is this confusing, but there is (preferably for some players) almost no acknowledgement of the 2016 game's continuity, apart from Nefarious' party crasher being his mech from the 2016 game, the Festival of Heroes using the 2016 version of Ratchet meeting Clank, and Qwark mentioning the Hall of Heroes (which did not exist in the original game).
9. Qwark's new voice actor, Scott Whyte, does not sound that good as him, sounding more like he's doing a mediocre impression of Qwark rather than actually sounding like him.
10. The ending is rather underwhelming. Ratchet asks Rivet & Kit if they want to make a "pit stop" on the way back to their dimension, when Rivet asks "Where're we headed?" Ratchet says "I think you know where", which is heavily implied to be the lombax dimension, but it's underwhelming because it's something that has been teased heavily, but never fulfilled. In a nutshell, it ends in virtually the same place as Into the Nexus.
11. Plot hole: If Kit has laser eyes (judging by Rivet's flashback of how she got her arm blown off by her) then why does she never use them when she becomes a warbot?

Reception

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart received generally positive reviews, having an 88/100 on Metacritic, a 5/5 on EGM, and a 4/5 on The Guardian.

Trivia

• Rivet has gained a lot of attention on the Internet due to being a female lombax, and having callbacks to Ratchet's original personality.
• Though Insomniac has said Rivet is Ratchet's dimensional counterpart, the Lorbs collectible possibly contradicts it.
• This is the first time Jim Ward doesn't voice Qwark and instead Scott Whyte voices Qwark due to the former getting sick from COVID-19, and being forced into retirement by it.
• This is seemingly the first Ratchet & Clank game to contain LGBT characters, as Pierre Le Fer is seemingly bisexual (due to him commenting on Captain Quantum's attractiveness, calling him a "tall drink of grog").
• Despite the generally positive reception from critics, this game is arguably the most polarizing in the series when it comes to the fans, as there are many Ratchet & Clank fans that still feel like the writing is too safe, that the humor isn't funny enough, or that Rivet was only there for a mental health narrative, while many other fans feel like it is one of the best in the series.

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