Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

When Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart first landed as a PlayStation 5 exclusive, it was a manifesto for the SSD era. Insomniac Games used the title to showcase a future where loading screens were relics of the past, leveraging high-speed storage to blink players across dimensions in real-time. Now that the title has made its way to Steam via the porting specialists at Nixxes Software, the conversation shifts from hardware-specific wizardry to whether this high-octane formula holds up on the chaotic, unstandardized landscape of PC gaming.

The narrative picks up with our titular duo at a celebration that quickly spirals into a cross-dimensional crisis. The Dimensionator—a device capable of opening portals to alternate realities—is stolen by the perennial loser Dr. Nefarious, leading to a fractured multiverse. This narrative conceit serves a dual purpose: it allows for the introduction of Rivet, a Lombax resistance fighter who carries the emotional weight of the story, and it provides the mechanical justification for the game’s most impressive trick: the Rift Tether.

For two decades, Ratchet & Clank has occupied a specific niche—the “playable Pixar film.” Rift Apart is the fullest realization of that ambition. It’s a lavish, big-budget production that balances slapstick humor with genuine heart, all while maintaining a mechanical depth that belies its family-friendly aesthetic. In a market often saturated with grimdark open-world slogs, Rift Apart feels like a concentrated shot of pure kinetic energy. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, nor does it demand a hundred hours of your life. Instead, it offers a polished, focused experience that prioritizes player delight over engagement metrics.

• The Rift Tether: A high-speed traversal mechanic that pulls the player through dimensional tears, effectively repositioning Ratchet or Rivet across the battlefield instantly.
• Dual-Protagonist Narrative: The introduction of Rivet provides a fresh perspective on the series’ lore, offering a more vulnerable, gritty counterpoint to Ratchet’s veteran optimism.
• The Arsenal of Absurdity: Features creative weaponry like the Topiary Sprinkler, which turns enemies into decorative garden hedges, and the Negatron Collider, a high-intensity beam of destruction.

The core of Ratchet & Clank has always been its weaponry, but Rift Apart makes the combat a sophisticated dance of area denial and mobility. It isn’t enough to just pull the trigger; success on higher difficulty settings is built around a constant cycling of the arsenal. The intended loop — leading with the Topiary Sprinkler to freeze a mob of goons, switching to the Mr. Fungi for automated fire support, then finishing the job with a charged shot from the Headhunter — is exceptionally tight, with every explosion and impact designed to feel tactile and earned.

The Kinetic Language of Combat

The movement set has seen a significant overhaul. The Phantom Dash introduces a dash of invulnerability that changes the tempo of encounters, allowing players to phase through projectiles rather than just hopping over them. When combined with the Hoverboots, the game takes on a momentum that rivals modern high-speed shooters. Players are skating through environments, chaining rifts to stay ahead of the enemy’s line of sight. This fluidity is where the design truly shines, transforming the traditional platformer into something far more aggressive and rewarding.

Interdimensional Narrative Flow

While the “multiverse” trope is currently being milked to death by various film franchises, Rift Apart uses it with surgical precision. The dimensional shifts are integrated into the level design. One moment players are platforming across the neon-lit rooftops of Nefarious City, and the next, a crystal hit triggers a shift into a desolate, mining-ravaged version of the same space. These transitions are built to be instantaneous, and the design keeps the pacing at a fever pitch, preventing the environmental fatigue that plagues many titles in this genre.

Rivet herself is a thoughtfully written new character. It would have been easy to make her a simple “gender-swapped Ratchet,” but Insomniac gave her a distinct history of failure and isolation. Her interactions with Clank—who finds himself separated from Ratchet—provide some of the game’s most poignant moments. The writing manages to be genuinely funny without the cynical edge that often infects modern “meta” humor. It respects the characters’ history while making the world accessible to someone who hasn’t touched the series since the PlayStation 2 era.

The SSD Question

On PC, the “instant loading” narrative faces its toughest test. While the PS5 had the advantage of a unified architecture, the PC version must contend with everything from SATA SSDs to the latest PCIe Gen 5 drives. Nixxes’ port is built to scale across that range, with the dimensional shifts designed to stay fast even as hardware varies — though older storage is the most likely bottleneck during the most intense transitions. That this experience exists at all on the PC platform speaks to how far storage technology has come.

Visually, Rift Apart is dense with detail. The level of detail in character fur, the ray-traced reflections in rain-slicked streets, and the sheer density of particles during combat are staggering. It is one of the few games that justifies a high-end GPU. On PC, the addition of DLSS 3, FSR 3, and XeSS ensures that even those without a flagship card can enjoy the spectacle. The implementation of ray tracing is particularly noteworthy, adding a layer of material realism to the cartoonish world that makes every scene look like a pre-rendered cinematic.

The transition to Steam brings the expected suite of PC-centric features. Keyboard and mouse controls are supported, though this is a game designed for a controller’s analog precision. With a DualSense controller, the PC version supports the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers (when wired), which adds a level of immersion—like the subtle vibration as a weapon charges—that other controllers simply can’t match. The “Very High” texture settings demand significant VRAM, which may punish cards with only 8GB or 10GB; a 2D-styled game of this scope it is not, and the full visual package is aimed squarely at high-end hardware.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a rare example of a technical showcase that doesn’t forget to be a game. It is a loud, colorful, and relentlessly fun experience that justifies the hardware required to run it. While its brevity might frustrate those looking for a “forever game,” the density of quality found in its short runtime is a refreshing change of pace. We rate it a confident recommendation — a strong port of a PlayStation standout that feels right at home on the PC, with real reservations about its hardware demands and modest length.