Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart Review _Buy_ Wait for Sale_ Never Touch_

 i'm carrick this is acg no sponsored reviews they're not two minutes long i buy the games even though the devs give me a code which sony did let's start ratchet and clank riffs apart it's a platformer no surprise it's from insomniac that's why you're here let's begin let's talk about it i think it's very difficult to dislike ratche and clank overall now sure there's a couple people who may not like the characters but when you look at it it's hard to

dislike a character like this he's a mix of ronald mcdonald size 20-inch gunboat feet and then some kind of dog fox thingy and a human smashed together they like to put guns together in the summer experiments that you and i used to have between school season and then go out and attack people in a sci-fi game world that to me is the secret of the success it captures youthful indiscretions so elegantly it's like those days when you were a child and you grabbed that distributor cap and you put it on the end of a pipe and you thought it was gonna make a gun and all it really did was get you a very cool grounding from your dad that to me is the summer indiscretions that this game captures it's also robotic best friend backpacks we've all had that friend or one of them who was the fat kid who couldn't keep up with the rest well here no big deal you put them on your back best friends forever speaking of friends

i got to say this jason rubin on behalf of naughty dog lent ratchet and clanks design team they're injured when the very first games of this were made

tell me that's not some kind of summertime moment where everyone got together in a tv show and rivalries are squashed and they just watched some friggin ace

fireworks speaking of ace fireworks let's talk about some graphics for a platformer ratchet and clank easily one of the best looking games ever grace consoles as well if it was on the pc there it's notwithstanding that it's got some issues however wholeheartedly ratchet and clank is on another level at least when it comes to graphical sheen presentation and style graphics matter in games like this the color work matters it has to end up transporting

you to various different locations especially when the entire game is built around dimensionality or different planets the dimensional hopping in this game it's almost instantaneous it pops off this reality snap into another world as you use your rift whip between dimensions for puzzles combats boss fights

exploration it's really quite incredible what they've done with the hardware that they've got especially when you look at this ratchet and clank have never really been poor looking games ever in fact many times they push the envelope of animation if not just characterization and animals robotic and alien digital muppets that they all throw on the screen and somehow make them all feel like they're from the same game world switching between worlds here gravity

booting across some deserted surface or riding a giant bug like a six-legged jet ski across poison lakes to get to the next big bad moment of the game

is the name of the game it's on spyro reflections ray trace lightinganimations they all work together and they make every part of the game world feel

like one particular thing let me describe a moment in this game you're fighting dr nefarious at the very beginning and you realize the entire scene of the parade opening that you're in is reflected back from his green murky ass dome of his helmet that makes everything feel like it's in the same world even if it's  not on the same screen or the condensation and dirty differences between air temperatures that you notice in the jukebox in the space bar

and graphics aren't everything if it were sega saturn would still be a rousing success because a sewer shark instead of an eventual demise like waving to a hot girl on the road and then crashing because you weren't watching where the you were going but my god now while the discussion of the riffs themselves this is a combination of smart graphical processes and using the changing hardware within a playstation 5 to load new locations almost instantaneously

that's going to be the talk of the town but for me it wasn't necessarily world shattering now that's because we've seen it a lot and the game doesn't

necessarily go out of its way to change up exactly what you've seen in any of the trailers sure there are different uses of it that you see a little bit later but there are times where you're in control and that's fantastic there are other times that you're not that's a little bit more bothersome especially in the dimensional tunneling because ratchet and clank steals control from you in a bid to show you just how awesome it can look more than the expected number of times especially in that first half of the game so just be aware of that but regardless of those times whether you're in control or not the animation the character work the characters themselves just look fantastic the battle the way the guns work with you flint between the enemies exploding them and as they tear apart into violent pinatas you realize that every one of them informs you via some natural or useful color change or shading change to give you some data which matters a lot especially in these battles where it can be a little bit hard to parse what's going on when there's so many enemies on screen and so many levels of verticality that you'll end up finding whether it's the guns the grenades are going to other dimensions the game looks stellar regardless of one or two small issues one of those can be in long draw distances you will see a bit of pop in regardless of which of the three

settings that you end up running the game on now those three are 60 fps performance mode 1080p 60fps cap performance mode with ray tracing at a little bit lower resolution and dynamic and 30fps 4k mode this has every setting on the graphics and draw settings post-processing lighting it's just all god tier at that point with the performance modes both actually saw a couple fps drops especially in busy areas or in those areas where all these unique effects were occurring during battles or during exploration where you're seeing ray tracing hitting multiple different locations off of water and off of somebody's

helmet 30 fps fidelity mode that was surprisingly solid no real drops whenever there were drops it was tracked via software and then i also manually

counted the lowest i got was like 57 and that was in the ray tracing mode and it was very very rare one thing you will notice though while you're switching these is that the ray tracing performance mode does seem t drop that resolution a bit and sometimes you'll notice that drop it just depends on how sensitive

you are to resolution changes now while any settings perfectly playable and unlike many titles 60 fps in a ratchet game isn't necessarily required even on the hardest difficulty i personally would say performance ray tracing mode is probably where you want to go what you lose or may lose in resolution

at times you will gain in that speedy flicky fast movement reaction time being better and a lot of ray tracing effects regardless ratchet and clank riffs apart is one of the best looking uniquely driven games that's been released on any system ever i'm commander shepard and i approve of this game's graphics

but what about sound music and voice after all these years flowers let's discuss sound first because it's a big deal in this game 5.1 2.1 headphones

via the playstation 3d i tested them all yes especially when the first rift starts pinging and everything goes nuts very much it sounds like the star wars guitar throne explosion win obi-wan's chasing jank ass fed or whatever his name is in star wars those impactful sound effects are pretty much played throughout the game and their 3d tracking is phenomenal you hear some examples here what's magnificent also is the tail end you're going to hear in some of these attacks where they're bouncing around in open courtyards o the more meteor but punchy heavy metal on metal sound as you hit an enemy with the hammer and you can see that and hear it actually reverberate through the enemy but the best part the most noticeable bit of excellence here is when you're traveling through dimensional portals into the same world during a battle with the entire soundscape transitioning smoothly left and right and behind you even if only momentarily changing as you're now above the enemies that were above you shooting down at you now shooting up great audio work through and through it may not equal return just because of the way return on soundscape had to work but i gotta say amazing work here especially when it comes the

environmentals and the way everything just comes together and speaking of coming together let's talk about this music [Music] [Music] so mark allen mother's bot thor ragnarok soundtrack creator the groods and a little band known as devo he leaped into the game full force i think usually games of this type

double down on the more theatrical and expected instruments and arrangements cutting those up into sections for the gameplay in the battle so it all has an overarching cinematic tone to it but sometimes it can feel a little bit familiar mark's experimental background here allowed for something a little bit different especially with the mixing of the scent the natural instrument samples to excellent effect are played out you have moments that feel like hollywood movies especially at the ratchet and clank watching some devastation of massive platforms and cities being destroyed by the careless havoc of enemy attacks but then those will slowly change to a rhythmic almost frantic battle tune that's one half amazing underlying synthtone and the other half a quick battle drum march if it was played by a band that fell into a vat of cocaine fast but perfect timing it lays out as you end up sneaking behind enemies and fire up one of your weapons and then as the last enemy falls and you run into some moodly lit underwater habitat that music crunches down around you and actually changes into something that is far closer to a horror theme i also have to shout this out mark's ability to use stingers is so good they drive home moments of epic change in environment status or the arrival some underwater thing that's been without food for entirely too long and yes we'll eat

a ratchet the diegetic music that you notice coming from a nightclub vertically far below you and to the left becomes instantly familiar as you move around the game world and changes tonality as you do so an excellent soundtrack before we go into gameplay we got to talk about voice i think voice matters so much especially in a ratchet and clank game which is basically like a playable cartoon you have a lot of the same voice actors doing the same characters and a

couple surprises but i don't want to ruin them and sony has requested no spoilers on a lot of this i will say this ratchet and clank has almost never missed a beat since its conception with voice acting and i would say riffs apart no different from that if there's anything it would be that the story does focus on this particular group in their fight with dr nefarious and while it spreads out a little bit they have a lot of the tried and true characters that you expect any of the side characters that you meet just don't necessarily grab me like i was hoping that they would especially for a game that is built

around traveling to different dimensions but that's a little bit like claiming that my emerald boxes are too tight so at some point who gives a

but one thing we all care about is gameplay and story and at least it starts out really interesting ratchet and clank they're brothers to the bone so to celebrate their brothers to the bone-ness what's going on they're having a parade where people are celebrating just how cool they are when they do so clank tells ratchet he's got a gift for him and he gives him an item that will allow him to go to other dimensions to find the rest of his family of course dr nefarious attacks right then like a friggin larger-headed green goblin from the spider-man movie and suddenly ratchet clank and dr nefarious and some others are teleported into another dimension at this point that's the storyline you basically have these moments where you're teleporting to various different locations as well as flying your spaceship around to the different planets the focus here is perfect it's that ability for you to understand what it's

like to be a youth who's well out there basically with a bunch of scientifically cool guns but you get my drift as a third-person platforming shooter

ratchet is gonna play somewhat as expected you have various different weapons most of these weapons will leave enemies in some unique state comparable

to the weapon itself whether shocked and malfunctioning and arcing electricity to other enemies are frozen into a large block of ice sliding around the world and becoming portable walls to hide behind sometimes they just turn into dinner when you summon two dozen biting mini clank robots that leap onto the enemies and bite them as you traverse the movement is handled either with normal jumps or double jumps as pretty much expected as well as a dash move with a large amount of rail sliding as we've been seen in the past games as well as the trailers all of these can be mixed up to move you forward in various different planetary locations however as with most ratchet games it's the shooting that i think sees center stage and a good deal of the time that's what matters though don't get me wrong you do have the hammer you have the ability to take out enemies up close you can combo them smash them into the ground and later throw it like the world's hairiest cosplayer it's always the guns i think and the weapon wheel that's gonna attract your ratchet players here we have grenade launchers that shoot out sprinklers to make plants grow overtaking the enemies and rooting them in place or the full-on freeze rays or digging explosives that look like hermit crabs all of these including electrical shotguns spraying out tesla arcs into the enemy groups well there are a large number of them i'm going to admit right now none of them really grab my attention like the prior games you got the ice ring the electrical gun and a couple

summons you can do they're excellent they're very useful and they probably have the coolest overall look and feel to them but nothing wowed me in this arsenal in particular a good solid weaponry base for sure but one that i was actually tempted to go back and continue to experiment with not so much luckily upgrading them not hard at all this is done via resources you're gonna find around the game world where buying them is actually solely based on money though you can find one or two in the game world itself each weapon has a large number of upgrades usually tied into a tree within a tree setting this is sort of a hex grid you may have five upgrades just regarding the amount of ammo that drops another four for the speed of the shot and another three let's say based on how much ammo it can hold however you can see some upgrades sitting there that you can't tell what they are but if you buy the upgrades around them they unlock these upgrades are actually substantial you end up getting them they can be improvements to damage crowd control or some other useful element for that particular gun also speaking of the guns themselves almost everyone has some kind of specific trigger use for the dual sense like quick throws versus aiming for me they weren't that shocking those particular uses that they threw in there even on the experimental setting were about what i expected but they'restill cool if you like that kind of  thing you can hot tab some of the weapons to the digital pad which is very nice especially when you have so many of them now moving between the enemies and trying to find a spot to fire is all about control especially without getting pelted to death that's the name of the game one great thing about the ratchet difficulty settings for the majority is that while they only impact aggressiveness damage and health of the

enemies the later difficulties crank that aggressive nature to the max while you won't see them perform some kind of delta 3 movement or bust in through a window or build some kind of shack and kill you like fortnight they do rush you they flank you they consistently make every place you thought was safe

just as safe as every other place you just ran out of because you also thought that one was safe you can of course use the dimensional whip as well when there are gateways nearby this lets you move around the battlefield more quickly it does not work as seamlessly as i was hoping it would many times it's going to result in you behind enemies and have to actually twist around to hit them of course appearing right in front of them would offer its own hazards but i would for clarity of combat and smoothness have really liked them to possibly confuse the ai for a moment or have them lose lock-ons versus many times appearing behind the enemy and having to turn it just didn't feel as good as it could have another thing that felt a little off was there was some softness in the controls i wasn't a huge fan of the double jump itself the timing is not exactly perfect i could ignore that though some jumps and getting

ratchet to latch onto a ledge was more troublesome than i feel like it had any real right to be another thing that felt off was the burst dodge move i love this move itself it's quick it gets you out of trouble it basically offers iframes as you dart through enemies or attacks or you extend a jump however it has a delay before you can attack with the hammer afterwards and this may sound like a small thing but it impacts that flow of combat a bit it still works it's just a little bit cumbersome what is not cumbersome is the accessibility kudos to the developers it's outstanding they've got everything from the options for contrast to gameplay settings to adjustments to how the game even fires off shots or works a combo with one button or multiple ones just through and through excellent though i would suppose that they could have thrown in a couple more audio cues for the people who would have needed that but in the end still pretty damn awesome the game's handling of these huge set pieces while still framed in a heartfelt moment i think lets that micro and macro story reflect itself very well you can be helping a single person out on a small quest that seems pretty inconsequential then you give heart to a massive robot who has the worst depression symptoms ever and almost all the planets have at least one memorable hazard or other thing that's gonna make them stick out in your brain at least for a little while there are some collectibles in the game but be aware it's not an open world collect-a-thon nor are all of the locations open to a ton of exploration some of them are actually fairly tunnel driven point-to-point to point-to-point and that's something i want to talk

about right now ratchet and clank riffs apart it does an incredible job with the rifts mechanic the work and the platforming the new locations in combat

you can feel it through and through but it is razor focused for the most part on that particular element and a good deal of the game there's no real

surprises on how it's handled more and i feel that there was some stuff there that they left on the table speaking of leaving it on the table let's talk about the money digital deluxe edition contains armor sets stickers for the new photo mode and items to upgrade weapons which sort of sucks but having the various different things that you get with the different digital modes unfortunately here it is and speaking of unfortunately let's talk about the fun factor it's just joking can you imagine if i'm just it's not fun at all no it is a blast also subscribe i almost forgot subscribe to the channel now the game is a blast it is very fun it's just got some issues if a place is known for amazing seafood do you show up and order spaghetti probably not unless you're a dumbass everybody who gets into this title probably knows what ratchet and clank is going to be what insomniac is going to be offering which is very good platforming and combat and gameplay and here the rifts mechanic and the worlds but i think it is plausible and i think most would argue that people are going to get a hold of this game and be enamored with the graphics to the exclusion of a closer look at the game's actual core gameplay which does have a couple issues and feels a little bit pulled back compared to what i expected certainly when it comes into some of those gun and the gun play designs just this is one of those titles where it is an absolute blast to play but at the same time while you're doing it especially later on in the game you're always wondering what if so as you guys know i rate games on a buy weight for sale rent or never touch it again rating system 70 bucks is it worth getting yes it is worth getting it is enjoyable as i said in the fun factor section is very fun to play the combat is good the gameplay is good the ai especially on the higher difficulties really does offer a fun challenge that i liked i liked having to use that verticality but i will say that especially in the first half maybe the first three-fourths of the game whenever you saw a rift you were just like well is that really just a teleportation location from me to the higher plateau to fight the enemies yes it actually is however almost every planet has  major boss battle or a major moment where you are traveling to different dimensions or transferring the planet into some other climate or some other atmosphere some other way in which it's presented

those are fantastic moments through and through and absolutely noticeable it always just feels a tiny bit pulled back and a tiny bit less than what i expected it's still more than what almost anybody else is delivering so anyway that's it for me i hope you guys liked the review if you did give it

a thumbs up if you didn't give it a thumbs down subscribe it helps the channel really seriously subscribe to the damn channel it's awesome if you do so you're going to see some cool reviews from me some more interviews we've got some nda stuff that's coming up in july that's going to be very fun

e3 content peace out oh we've also got the podcast on fridays 10 30 on twitch 10 30 a.m friday on twitch see i didn't even i don't sell myself very

well as you can tell i didn't even tell you what day jesus acg on twitch 10 30 a.m a.m pacific standard time acg on twitch yeah there you go anyway that's it for me i hope you guys all have an absolutely awesome time if you get the game enjoy it peace out you