Ratchet & Clank: Rift apart on the PS5 received star billing on the Gamescom Opening Night Live 2020 stream. This turned out to be a smart decision, as of all the next-gen games we’ve seen so far, Rift Apart remains one of the few titles that can almost certainly not exist on a console for today’s genes. In an extended gameplay demo, we saw the titular duo fighting goons, upgrading bizarre weapons and, perhaps most impressively, grabbing dimensions in just seconds.
While the Gamescom Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart demo was not very different from what we saw at Sony’s Future of Gaming event in June, we learned a few interesting things about the title, including where it fits into the Ratchet & Clank: Rift. Clank chronology, how it will benefit from the DualSense controller and when it comes out. (Spoiler: It’s not a launch title, but you may get it sooner than you think.)
Ratchet & Clank: Rift apart gameplay
First of all, if you have not yet seen the Rcomet & Clank extended gameplay demo from Gamescom, you can check out the whole thing here:
As mentioned above, it’s a longer version of what we saw back in June. In this piece of gameplay, Ratchet and Clank find themselves in an enormous city under attack by returning villain Dr. Nefarious and his Goons 4 Less Handlangers.
Those who know the Ratchet & Clank gameplay loop already know what to expect here. As Ratchet and Clank dispatch different pistol-controlled lizards, sand sharks, and robotic dogs, they can switch between four different weapons: the proven Burst Pistol, the Shatter Bomb effect area, the turret-like Topiary Sprinkler, and the Double Barrel Enforcer. Weapons level up as you use them, and you can collect various nuts and bolts as you destroy the enemies, chests, and objects you find scattered across the large, colorful levels.
Dedicated, Ratchet and Clank have been doing it all since 2002. The PS5-specific part of the experience came later, when Ratchet began grappling through dimensional sheds, instantly crossing parts of the city while completing new sets of enemies , cars and bystanders materialized. for him.
However, the really impressive application of the sheds came at the end of the demo, when Ratchet jumped between a good four or five different sci-fi worlds through rift after rift. Whole levels, filled with complex platforms, deadly enemies and many destructible objects, are loaded in their entirety during Ratchet’s two second journey through the various sheds. This is almost certainly a feature of the PS5’s fast charging SSD, which Sony has attracted hundreds of times faster than the PS4’s more traditional hard drive.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift apart DualSense and story
While it is impossible to convey how a controller feels during a livestream demo, Insomniac developers talk briefly about how players can expect DualSense to feel during gameplay. While the DualShock 4 (and earlier PlayStation controllers) could deliver different levels of vibration when Ratchet and Clank launch bullets, bombs or rockets, the DualSense will allow subtler haptic feedback. One specific example is that players can push a trigger down a bit to fire one Enforcer child, or all the way down for a double barrel blast. Different weapons will presumably create completely different haptic patterns, meaning that firing the Burst Gun could feel radically different from firing a Shatter Bomb, in ways that go beyond vibration intensity.
One last piece of news that is sure to please longer fans is that Ratchet & Clank: Rift will pick up where Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus left off, back in 2013. This means it will not pick up on the well received Ratchet & Clank reboots from 2016, as the abysmal animated film from the same year. (Although, since the game deals between dimensions, who’s going to say that Insomniac will not find a way to bind the timelines in any way?)
It seems too early to predict much about the story of Rift Apart, but there are two key elements we have observed so far. The first is that Clank encounters a mysterious female Lombax in the gameplay demo, who has already become a popular character online. You will be able to play at least part of the game as her, so maybe Clank will partner with the newcomer in the search for Ratchet.
The second piece of information is that Dr. Nefarious apparently is back in a life of crime after his possible change of heart in Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One. Tawiisd, Dr. Nefarious has been a villain-villain in almost every one of his appearances, so the chances are good that Ratchet and Clank will face some greater threat at some point along the line.
Ratchet & Clank: release date for Rift separately
Finally we learned when Ratchet & Clank: Rift will come out separately – sort of. While Insomniac would not commit to an exact date, the developers claimed that the game would be available in the “launch window” of the PS5. This in itself is a somewhat nebulous term, but historically includes a “start window” games that come out at any moment up to three or four months after a console launches. That means we could see Ratchet & Clank: Rift separately in November, or we could see it in March, depending on when the PS5 launches and how long the game takes to complete development.
In the meantime, Ratchet & Clank: Rift apart is one of the first games we’ve seen that seems to take advantage of the PS5’s technical capabilities in big, flashy ways. We will have more information about the game as soon as Insomniac releases its next update.
