Rift Apart brings ray tracing — and not much else — to Ratchet & Clank
The more direct way to put it is this: there is nothing in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart that I haven’t already done in various Ratchet & Clanks, not to mention other action games in recent years. This is one of the least ambitious, most repetitive, least memorable videogames I have played from a AAA studio in a long time. The same weapons, the same enemies, the same levels, the same barely interactive traversal gimmicks, the same breaks in gameplay for puzzles, the same half-baked approach to collectibles and replayability, the same insipid writing, the same joylessly juvenile attempts at humor.
There was a kind of magic in the early Ratchet & Clank games, and then a competence in the later lesser games. The frenetic onscreen chaos of wacky cartoon monsters, smashed crates, imaginative gunplay, and a swarm of bouncing coins was a true joy as we all discovered it twenty years ago. These days, it’s all on offer in a hundred different games. But without the magic or at least the competence, it’s just a flurry of sloppy colors and shapes, a whirlwind of ineffectual nostalgia, absent any innovation, creativity, confidence, or finesse. It took many years, but now that it’s being used to prop up a piece of hardware, Ratchet & Clank finally feels like the soulless corporate property it’s become.