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dkirschner's Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (PS5)

[January 17, 2025 12:26:21 PM]

This is the nth Ratchet & Clank game and the third one I’ve played. I don’t really remember the other two, but they were like 10-15 years ago. I honestly don’t have a whole lot to say about it. It’s fun. It’s cartoony and arcadey. It’s pretty easy. It’s colorful and loud and has creative art. My favorite part is using all the different guns and trying to level them all up. There’s a mushroom bomb that spawns mushrooms that attack enemies, another bomb that spawns little robot dudes that attack enemies, a “topiary grenade” that spawns a sprinkler that turns enemies into shrubbery (funny), which freezes them in place and makes them vulnerable. There is a ricochet gun that you fire, then press R1 a bunch to bounce the bullet at the enemy. There’s a gun that freezes enemies in blocks of ice, which you can smash with your wrench. There are all the standard guns you expect (pistol, shotgun, rocket launcher, sniper, etc.). There is a gun that shoots dogs at your enemies. It's wild.

The coolest thing aside from the guns is the rifts. You find these purple crystals that will switch dimensions so that you can explore two versions of many areas. There are other rifts that you can use to traverse larger distances quickly, and others you can open to find secrets in hidden sections of the world. It’s neat to find areas within areas and to see the contrast between wherever you are and some ruined version of it. After not too long though I quit exploring these so that I could get on with the story. Whatever collectibles you find in the rifts (or anywhere else for that matter) aren’t that useful because, as I said, it’s an easy game. There are golden screws (no purpose as far as I can tell except to find them), armor pieces that do give stacking bonuses, spybots that are like encyclopedia entries for lore, and so on. The most useful thing you’ll find when poking around is definitely the crystals that let you upgrade weapons.

Those purple crystals and rifts are related to the story, which is good enough to drive the action along. The big bad guy is upset that his plans are always being ruined, so he travels to an alternate dimension where another version of him rules the galaxy (and then you follow him there and ruin both of their plans, of course). There are the Clank puzzles again, and they are neat, but simple, and reminded me of the game Humanity because he has to route clones of himself to an exit. There are also little action shooter areas for a new character (because Ratchet has an alternate dimension person too). So yeah, fun, but probably will not remember!

Oh yeah, the PS5 controller has a super cool feature (aside from tons of varied pulsing, vibrating, audio effects, etc.) where you can, depending on the context, pull a trigger halfway for an effect and pull it the whole way down for a different effect. For example, hold L2 to aim and hold R1 halfway to shoot a gun in its slow and accurate mode, or hold R2 all the way down to change to machine gun fire. Returnal was doing this too, but I haven’t played much of it. Ratchet & Clank used it all the time for a lot of guns. This controller is awesome!