REVIEW – In recent years, Sony has ported several major PlayStation exclusives to PC. Successful ports like God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn have been well received, although there have been scandalous exceptions, such as the PC port of The Last of Us. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is the latest PlayStation title to make the jump to PC, fortunately avoiding the pitfalls that The Last of Us fell into, thus delivering a largely high-quality port for PC gamers.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is the latest installment in Insomniac’s long-running action-platformer series. The game, which originally debuted in 2021, was one of the few true PS5 exclusives at launch, leveraging the PS5’s lightning-fast SSD to deliver a graphical and technical experience the franchise had not previously seen. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart received rave reviews in 2021, and now the critically acclaimed game is easily accessible to PC gamers.

It Demands a Powerful Machine, But It’s Worth It

As you might expect, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a demanding game. Its recommended requirements suggest at least an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 graphics card, 16 GB of RAM, and an SSD, although the game did crash once on an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 with 32 GB of RAM and SSD while I was using the highest graphics settings. This hiccup aside, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart ran flawlessly during our testing.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart refines one of the best-looking games even further with maximum settings and the activation of various ray-tracing options. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s incredible graphics spin on a PC in a way never seen before. That’s not to say the game doesn’t look fantastic at lower settings. In fact, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart still leads most games in the graphics department, even when we scale everything down, but it’s almost a pity to play it on a machine that can’t fully exploit its potential.

Anyone looking to play Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC must ensure their system exceeds the recommended requirements to get the most out of it. They should also have a DualSense controller handy. Like most other first-party PlayStation games, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart makes great use of the unique features of the DualSense, so you’ll miss these features if you switch to mouse and keyboard. “The haptic feedback and adaptive triggers of the DualSense provide a significant experience in Rift Apart, and while some people see the haptic controller as a ‘gimmick’, others find it enhances the time spent in the game.

Splendid on Steam Deck? You Won’t Be Disappointed!

The game exploits the capabilities of the Steam Deck, ensuring captivating graphics and smooth gameplay on the portable PC. The game is optimized for the device, with all features accessible through the built-in controls. The game supports the latest resolution boosting technologies and hardware ray tracing. The game also includes an FOV setting, which is rare among third-person games.

The Steam Deck’s performance is impressively efficient; one test found the game runs relatively stable at 40 fps with medium settings, and even high settings don’t terribly degrade the frame rate. (Of course, 60 fps is hopeless.) The game still looks great on the lowest settings, and the Deck also supports the DualSense controller, allowing us to authentically enjoy the PS5 experience on Valve’s portable device.

The only problem some players reported was the game crashing under certain circumstances – for us, it froze brutally right at the start, during the intro, but luckily not for a long while after that. This is an annoying bug that hopefully will be fixed soon.

A Great Experience Everywhere

Regardless of how you play Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, you’ll enjoy it. Rift Apart is a traditional Ratchet & Clank adventure, combining breathtaking platform gaming with intense action, filled with spectacular explosions and a variety of creative tools for players to tackle waves of enemies. The dizzying pace of the game allows players to rush from one dimension to another in a blink of an eye, all wrapped around a character-centered story that engages Ratchet & Clank fans from the opening scene to the endgame.

Early in the story of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, our main heroes split up. Clank finds himself paired with Rivet, an alternate universe version of Ratchet, while Ratchet works alongside a female robot, Kit, who is Clank’s alternate universe counterpart. You don’t need to know the previous Ratchet & Clank games to enjoy the story of Rift Apart, but the game is full of nods to the titular duo’s previous adventures, which will add extra enjoyment for thse who have played the earlier games.

A Shame This is the Only Installment on PC

And, frankly, this constitutes one of the most significant drawbacks to Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC. For PC gamers who play exclusively on their rigs, there’s no real option to dive into the series’ previous entries on their platform of choice (barring emulator use). So while Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s narrative is accessible to newcomers, it’s not ideal that PC gamers can’t experience the story from the beginning, but have to jump in with the series’ ninth main game (or tenth, if we’re counting the 2016 Ratchet & Clank remake).

Those PC gamers who still decide to opt for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart may also find disappointment in the game’s brevity. Previous Ratchet & Clank games boosted their replay value with surprisingly substantial end-game and side content, whereas Rift Apart is relatively lean in this department. There’s stuff to do beyond simply rolling the main story, but hardcore gamers may feel they can blaze through 100% gameplay in no time. In fact, 100% playtime can be achieved in about 10-15 hours, without requiring excessive effort.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s relatively short runtime should prompt PC gamers to carefully consider their purchase before shelling out $59.99. If you take into account that Rift Apart has seen significant price cuts since its 2021 launch on PS5, and that it’s readily available on PS Plus Extra, justifying a PC purchase becomes a tougher proposition. However, for those without a PS5 and who don’t mind shorter games, they can be assured that the time spent with Rift Apart will be quality.

A Near-Flawless Port

The PC version of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a near-flawless port of the fantastic PS5 game, allowing PC players to experience the thrilling action sequences, the story’s humorous and emotional beats, and the stunning, cutting-edge graphics. This year we’ve seen several poorly optimized PC ports, but thankfully Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart bucks this trend and redeems the reputation of PlayStation-PC ports after the disappointment of The Last of Us Part 1. Indeed, the adventure of Ratchet and his little robot has restored the good name of Sony ports. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is now available on both PC and PS5. The PC code used for testing was kindly provided by Sony Hungary, to whom we offer our thanks.

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Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Developer: Insomniac Games

Style: TPS action-adventure

Release: 2021 (PlayStation 5), July 26, 2023 (PC)