Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart launched as one of the first (and few) PS5 exclusive games, and only made it over to PC a few years later in 2023. Since I’ve never owned a Playstation, it was the first chance I ever had to try out the series, as every other game remains exclusive to Sony platforms. I finally took the plunge this year and was well pleased. 

Story

Thankfully for myself, one doesn’t need to be familiar with the series to get a grip on what’s going on here. Ratchet, the last known lombax creature in the universe, and his robot buddy Clank are celebrating their past adventures when their old enemy Dr. Nefarious shows up, bringing trouble with him. He’s stolen the dimensionator, a tool Clank built for ratchet so they could search for his family lost in another dimension. As you might expect, he uses the tool to cause chaos, risking a dimensional collapse.

Ratchet and his bud decide to take him on, but find themselves in another dimension… where Dr. Nefarious has already won. They pair up with Rivet, another lombax who is the dimensional counterpart of Ratchet. The three of them set out to save the universe, traveling to various planets and finding themselves in many wild scenarios along the way. The rest is yours to experience! 

I didn’t find the overall story to be incredibly deep or interesting, but it was satisfactory. Characters often had developments that were carried out in haste, without much time to let them ruminate or state their thoughts. Their emotions would go from complete despair to joy and acceptance after only a minute of somewhat cheesy dialogue. This was in part remedied by in-game interactions where characters would talk as you’re running around, but overall I think more trust should have been placed in the audience to follow along with the story instead of forcing things to move along as quickly as possible.

Gameplay

Ratchet & Clank has traditionally been a platformer mixed with shooting elements, and the same is true here. However, I felt that shooting took priority while platforming had the backseat, and judging from what I’ve heard online, others would agree. However, this focus on guns means that they put a lot of effort into making the shooting really, really enjoyable. 

There are a total of 20 various weapons to collect, most of which feature over-the-top designs and capabilities. Some of Ratchet’s guns are almost as big as he is, and pretty much all of them fire huge shots that inhibit your enemies in every manner possible. You’ll be exploding them into bits, freezing them in ice cubes, and even turning them into nice little topiaries. The phrase “Doom Eternal for kids” is thrown around a lot when talking about this game, and I can see why. 

All the guns can be leveled up with experience and upgraded with the currency “raritanium”. However, ammo is limited, so you’ll often find yourself forced to switch between a few different weapons during a battle once you start running low. This encouraged me to try out more different weapons than I would have otherwise. Still, the fact that experience is involved at all means that I sort of felt like I had to stop using a weapon as soon as it was maxed out, since I was wasting precious experience points that could be going towards lower-level weapons. 

Yet, the shooting was not what drew me to buy this game in the first place. A big part of this games’ identity is allowing the player to travel through different rifts and dimensions. This was to lean into the PS5’s fast memory (short load times) meaning the player will often find themselves flying through rifts that take them into a completely different world, sometimes instantly.

The game utilizes this in a handful of clever ways, sometimes trying together opposite sides of a level via a rift that connects the two. Other times you get to tether yourself to rifts, making quick moves across the battlefield to avoid enemies. It never got old! 

Do note that the hardware you play this on will definitely impact how enjoyable these sections are. Machines with slower memory might encounter stutters or awkwardly long load times when interacting with rifts. The effects remained mostly intact for me, but if you want the best you’ll probably have to play on PS5. 

Graphics

Yeah, the graphics of this game are awesome. It might have the most impressive lighting I’ve ever seen, and even though I had the visuals set to mid-tier, I was continually pleased with many spectacles before my eyes. Some sections get really creative with their layouts, such as when you’re using magnetic boots to walk on walls and make jumps across outer space. There are many, many particle effects that differ between weapons, and when you get into big fights you can expect the screen to turn into a fireworks show.

Unfortunately, there is one big issue that is exclusive to the PC port of this game. There seems to be several performance issues affecting people, such as how the game decompresses assets and might even leak graphical memory (some possible fixes have been posted here). I suspect that my game was leaking memory, as performance would get worse the longer the game was running, even when I left it in a menu for an hour. I found that I had to restart my PC after about 60 to 90 minutes of gameplay, which was a huge bummer.

It’s definitely something to look out for, although it may not affect people who play in shorter sessions. But if you want to sit down and play for two hours straight, you might find yourself encountering serious stutters and possibly even game freezes. This is the sort of thing I would expect to be fixed in a patch, but the Steam version has been available for over a year and no fix has arrived, so I’m not sure it ever will. 

Faith Perspective

One of the recurring themes in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is doubt. Ratchet is doubting his worthiness to meet others of his kind, and Ritchet doubts the competence of her allies. Throughout the game it’s made clear that doubt can be severely limiting. When characters refuse to push their limits, when they stick to what they’re comfortable with, things do not go well. It is only by working through and overcoming these doubts that they are able to recognize their full potential. It is not only beneficial but necessary if they wish to save those who they love. 

Such a story reflects the human condition more than you might realize. It was through doubting in God’s goodness that man fell from grace with God, and it was only upon Mary’s complete rejection of doubt that the Savior of the world arrived to save those whom He loves. Overcoming doubt is a necessity if one wishes to flourish and be who they were meant to be. Let this game serve as a reminder of that. 

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