![]() Players barely have a chance to answer that question before the universe butts in to ask it in more urgent terms. ![]() And lest franchise newcomers fail to understand the implications, Ratchet’s in-game bio spells it out: “After spending so much time in retirement, he has begun to wonder - does he still have what it takes to become a hero?” “Rift Apart” opens in telling fashion: With Ratchet and Clank being honored as part of a massive parade celebrating their years of service (and showing off the PS5’s horsepower with a glimpse of the busy spectacle that will come to define the game’s hyper-stimulating environments). It’s a mission that “Rift Apart” manages to accomplish by the end of its 13-hour (or so) journey, though not without encountering some curious wrinkles along the way. That parallel worlds can co-exist, and potentially even save each other. The result is a relentless and unambiguously next-gen experience in which players jump, fly, grapple, rail-grind, and slug-ride (really fast) through the very fabric of space-time in a do-or-die effort to prove that the future doesn’t have to come at the expense of the past. Rather than reinvent “Ratchet & Clank” for the PS5 and future-proof it against the seemingly infinite number of new dimensions that have have rippled through modern gaming, the Sony-acquired studio invested its considerable resources into an intergalactic adventure about Ratchet and Clank’s fight to save the only reality they’ve ever known. Insomniac decided to go in another direction. Players were left with the impression that the Lombax and his little metal buddy had gone as far as they could go, and were ready to retire to the Hall of Heroes unless someone was able to reinvigorate them with the kind of visionary moonshot that Miyamoto Shigeru has frequently used to save Mario from certain death. After releasing too many installments in too small a window, Insomniac’s vision for the series appeared to stall out by the time it premiered on the PS4 released alongside a wretched companion movie, 2016’s “Ratchet & Clank” re-imagined the original game in a way that seemed like a creative stalemate. ![]() Over the last decade, the “Ratchet & Clank” franchise has become an ironic emblem of that uncertainty. Video games may be more varied and experimental now than they’ve been at any point in the past, but - for better and worse - the promise that console gaming as we know it will still exist tomorrow has never felt shakier than it does today. 'House of the Dragon': Everything You Need to Know About HBO's Upcoming Series 'The Matrix Resurrections' Review: The Boldest and Most Personal Franchise Sequel Since 'The Last Jedi'Ģ021 Emmy Predictions: Who Will Win at the Primetime Emmy Awards? New Movies: Release Calendar for December 22, Plus Where to Watch the Latest Films It says: “ Video games are mutating in all sorts of unpredictable directions and evolving at a rate that seems almost cosmically unsafe, but the pure sense of fun they used to give you isn’t going anywhere.” It says, in the gentlest terms possible: “Nobody knows where this industry is going, but we promise there will always be room for what you love about it on the journey there.” The sly grin and eye-popping cartoon graphics of a “Ratchet & Clank” game reassures people that there’s still a lot of future left in their nostalgia. In other words, Ratchet and Clank have become the closest thing that Sony has to its own Mario and Luigi: a family-friendly team of mascots whose old-school adventures can be tweaked to showcase fresh technology. And there’s a very good reason for that.Ī staple of the PlayStation lineup since 2002, the irreverent series of action platformers about a humanoid space lion (or “Lombax”) and his robot sidekick has often been used as an inviting welcome mat to a new generation of console or handheld gaming. From the moment that “ Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart” begins - and, in all likelihood, from the moment that it was first conceived - the latest entry in Insomniac Games’ signature franchise is anxiously preoccupied with its own relevance.
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