Ratchet & Clank is a multi-dimensional PlayStation 5 showcase

Delivering a pitch-perfect blend of cinematic spectacle and cartoony fast-paced action, while also providing the most impressive showpiece yet for the PlayStation 5 hardware, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart looks, sounds and feels like a truly next-generation game. That it does this while also offering the exact same high level of heart, imagination and endearing characterisation we’ve come to expect from Insomniac Games is just as impressive.

As with the 2016 franchise reboot, Rift Apart is decidedly old school at its core, mostly concerned with running, jumping and dodging enemy fire while blasting away with a ludicrous assortment of weaponry; from standard blasters and rocket launchers to a sprinkler turret that turns enemies into topiaries. And while that aspect’s as solid as you could hope for here, it’s all the elements surrounding it that makes the game truly special.

Constant explosions and effects make Rift Apart an incredible game to look at.

A dimensional cataclysm sees our heroes trapped and separated in a parallel universe, while rifts in space-time provide for some interesting narrative and gameplay twists. An alternate world means alternate heroes, and missions are divided between Ratchet and his doppelganger Rivet, who shares the same skillset and arsenal but brings a fresh perspective to the conflict with her lone wolf attitude and mysterious past.

Insomniac has delivered two stunning Spider-man games since the last Ratchet & Clank, and overall it feels like the studio is getting stronger with every release. The quality of the storytelling and characters in Rift Apart is a step above what you’d generally expect in such a colourful and ridiculous blast-em-up, relatively uncomplicated though they are.

New character Rivet provides more personality and a great new perspective, but plays identically to Ratchet.

Ratchet’s double anxiety at both being the last of his species, and of being potentially disappointed (or being a disappointment) if he does happen to find his people in another dimension, is handled really well. And their other-dimension counterparts get some satisfying emotional stakes too, both with each other and with the regular heroes, that adds some weight to the smacking and shooting.

The introduction of gender-swapped alternate heroes could also be seen as a diversification of a series (and genre) that’s typically been very male, and indeed it’s also notable that many more enemies speak with feminine voices this time than before. The benefits are subtle, but also important and pretty much self-evident. Aside from the fact that more people will easily identify with at least one of the heroes, battles feel fuller with personality and enemies feel less homogenous even where they’re physically and mechanically identical, and the narrative themes explored by Rivet, Ratchet and their mechanical buddies feel that much more universal.

Each planet has a totally distinct visual style, and its own challenges and treasures.

Each planet you travel to is open enough to provide a few hours of loot-hunting and secret-finding, but also focused and varied enough to keep things moving. From zooming over a savannah on rocket boots to infiltrating a pirate theme park, and from flying on dragonback in search of tasty stones to eliminating viruses as an overly neurotic nanobot, the settings and mechanics are constantly being altered. And that’s not to mention Clank’s mystical multiverse-deciphering puzzle journeys with an aligator monk named Gary, or optional soujourn’s to pocket dimensions to uncover cool armour and cheeky cheat-like bonus settings, that crop up between firefights.

And the battles themselves are full of imagination and surprise too, not just because of the ridiculous weapons or the ability to warp through nearby rifts, but because of the incredible and ever-bantering enemies. From the goofyness of the familiar goons and robot pirates to the hilariously wholesome evilness of Emperor Nefarious’ cybernetic squid-like soldiers, bad guys talk constantly about your tactics, weapon selection and even cosmetic upgrade choices, and they’re frequently very funny.

While an excess of particle and liquid effects, plus constant explosions, make the game a frenetic joy to look at and one of the most visually impressive games on the market, it’s also the first one that truly feels like it could only be executed on PlayStation 5. The clever DualSense controller tricks are there — you can hold the trigger half way or pull fully to access different weapon functions, which feels great thanks to the the adaptive tension — but it’s the speed of the solid state storage drive that really impresses.

Moving from one entire level to another takes mere seconds, while several sequences have characters blasting through rifts to fight across multiple huge environments with no loading at all. A couple of levels let you hit crystals to transition to the same area in a different dimension near-instantaneously, which is a gimmick we’ve seen before in the likes of Zelda, but it’s still impressive to see it happen at such a scale and at such high fidelity.

Like many of Sony’s other exclusive games, including Uncharted and Spider-man, this is a glossy popcorn adventure that strikes just the right balance between linearity and exploration, tight gameplay and emotive storytelling. But Rift Apart’s stunningly colourful worlds, wryly witty characters and ever-changing explosive gameplay make it a wonderful adventure in its own right.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is out on Friday June 11 for PlayStation 5.

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