![]() With God of War’s resurrection in 2018, Sony Santa Monica overhauled almost all of the series’ familiar gameplay, making something new and better than before. Both God of War and Ratchet & Clank are old staples for Sony, character action games that started well over a decade ago. Throughout my time with Rift Apart, I kept thinking of Sony Santa Monica’s God of War (2018). Ratchet rides a mysterious creature through Nefarious City Image: Insomniac Games/PlayStation Studios But unlike Astro’s, Rift Apart is a full-length adventure. And showcase it does, implementing some of the same incredible PS5-only features that Astro’s Playroom showed off. More than just being a fun Ratchet & Clank game, Rift Apart also showcases the power of this expensive new machine that’s taking up a lot of shelf space in your home, if you managed to purchase one. ![]() Rift Apart is one of the first few games that’s exclusive to the PlayStation 5, resting comfortably behind titles like Astro’s Playroom, Demon’s Souls, and Returnal. The light shines around it, off the floats and the crowd, and the pieces of shredded paper lightly fall through the air. ![]() With a single whack of Ratchet’s wrench, the cannon fires hundreds of pieces of confetti into the air. But then I’m distracted by a confetti cannon. ![]() The game’s protagonists take an elevator to a float as the infamous Captain Qwark summarizes the story of the original game (very convenient for newcomers to the franchise). After some beautiful cutscenes setting up the story, I guide Ratchet and Clank out into a parade honoring them both. One planetary adventure, during which Ratchet skips between dimensions to make his way through a power station that’s derelict in one universe and buzzing with robot guards in the next, felt like an unexpected homage to Alien (and to Creative Assembly’s superb horror game Alien: Isolation), except with more humour and less peril.Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, the first new game in the Ratchet & Clank canon since the PlayStation 3 era, packs a high-tech punch mere moments into its opening. There’s a lot of obvious Star Wars influence here, but all filtered through developer Insomniac Games’ charmingly goofy Californian lens – one planet is home to a cuddly race of teddy-bear aliens, but they all have Minnesotan accents. Imagine if Dreamworks made Star Wars, and you’re close to the aesthetic. Rivet’s furry ears even flap in the wind.Įverything is colourful and gorgeous. But if you stop to look around, you’ll notice the attention that’s been paid to the animation and set-dressing. Rift Apart moves fast, and so do protagonists Ratchet and Rivet, especially when gliding around massive planets on jet-boots or grinding across city-spanning networks of rails. As a result, playing for too long feels like the video game equivalent of eating an entire packet of Haribo at once, or reading a book written entirely in all-caps. There’s not a great deal of downtime between all the fighting and immense action set pieces – one of the only relatively chill spaces in this game is a Mos Eisley-style bar, which itself is filled with dancing, chattering aliens and adjacent to a battle arena. Everything you do showers you with sensory feedback.
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