Virtual 100 – Game 1
It has begun!
The Virtual 100 is here. This time around, I’m not bothering with some silly gimmick like the Backlog Bingo I did a while back. That thing broke me. The random number generator I was using to “randomly” choose which games to play turned out to be not-so-random, and it became more of a chore to deal with than fun. Nothing fancy this time around, I’m just picking a game from my backlog and playing it through. I will use some discretion, of course. For example, I’m not going to tuck a small, relatively short experience like Planet of Lana behind a game like Far Cry 6. It’s best just to play it and get it out of the backlog rather than have it languish away while I grind out on a 30 to 40-hour experience. And trust me, there are plenty of 30-40 hour (and more) experiences on my list.
But enough about that. Let’s get down to the reason we (myself and the cat) are all here.
The first game to fall under the Virtual 100 initiative was Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart. This was the first Ratchet and Clank game I’ve actually finished. Not the first I’ve played, and in fact, the remake of the original Ratchet and Clank that released on the PS4 years ago is still sitting snugly in the backlog, to be tackled at some point in the future. But it is the first I’ve actually played through from start to finish.
First off, I gotta say, the graphics are amazing. I realize this was a showcase game for the PS5, but a lot of times those types of games don’t seem to hold up in the long run. That’s not the case here. The game really does look good. I haven’t played God of War or Horizon Forbidden West yet, so this is really the first game on PS5 that I’ve played that really looks like a current gen game. But I am not as impressed by the dimensional portal gimmick as I thought I would be. I realize there’s some great technology behind it, but after the first few times you go through one, your brain just kind of accepts it as something that happens and it’s just normal after that. Still it’s a cool tech, it just doesn’t really impact the gameplay as much as I thought it would. Especially when they’re at pre-determined locations and Portal let us make our own, like 15 years ago. Where the game really shines is just it’s overall graphical presentation and art direction.
The writing is on point. Dr Nefarious is freakin’ hilarious. I thoroughly enjoyed watching him every time he was on screen. I love the fact that he’s a typical bad guy, tired of being constantly defeated by the hero, and then suddenly finds himself in a universe where he actually won. Watching him revel in his dimensional counterpart’s success was fun, and I couldn’t help but wonder, during my playthrough, if the real Emperor Nefarious would show up and be like, “what the fuck is this?” And of course, spoiler alert, he does.
That said, I wasn’t a huge fan of the combat. Despite all the weapons, I found myself sticking to a handful, as it seemed like the others were basically just padding out the gun rack. Some of them are relatively useless until you’ve spent some Raritanium to upgrade them, and you can only upgrade them so much. You have to use them in order to level them up to upgrade them more. But if they suck, I don’t want to use them. There’s a secret “super weapon” that you can unlock by finding all the Spybots in the game, and they give you proper warning when you hit a point of no return in the story (which I appreciated) so I went back and found the few that I had missed, and it’s a fun weapon, but it also can be upgraded, which obviously I didn’t do since it was the end of the game.
My main problem with the combat though, was that the camera is so close to the character. It’s one of those things that a lot of third-person shooters and action games suffer from. You want to be close enough to the action for it to be engaging, but at the same time, you also want to be able to see what’s happening around you. It can get a bit frustrating when things start getting truly chaotic and you’re trying to focus on what’s happening in front of you while also getting swarmed and attacked from off-screen. Later in the game, when the action really does ramp up, it can get frustratingly cluttered on the screen, especially when all the bad guys swarming you blend in with all the gunfire and debris and currency and ammo all swirling around the character as they pick them up. I even walked off a platform or two when all this was going on, simply because I didn’t know where I was in relation to anything else.
Which brings me to another issue, Ratchet and Clank also does a thing that a lot of action games do, and it bugs the shit out of me.
There will be something in the sky, like a flying enemy, or a creature or something. Usually during a boss battle, where you, the player, will have aim your gun up to the sky. But then the creature or boss will have minions, or shoot out missiles, or destroy parts of a platform, or something that requires the player to see the ground. And now you’re forced to look at two things at once, that you can’t possibly do. It’s not a problem exclusive to Ratchet and Clank, I’ve played more than a few first person shooters do this same thing, and it’s annoying every single time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked off a ledge because I was shooting at the boss in the sky while also trying to dodge missile strikes. Or I took damage from minions on the ground because I didn’t know they were there. It’s frustrating, it’s not fun, and I really wish developers would stop doing this.
Action is the main draw here, and it’s fine. Aside from the aforementioned camera issue, I didn’t have a problem with it. Some of the weapons were a bit too unique and quirky for my personal tastes, so I essentially stuck with a small handful of the ones that clicked with me. I get that’s a “me” thing though, and the series is known for its wide arrangement of wacky weapons. I knew what I was getting into here.
Another thing, and I also get that this is a “me” thing, is that there are still remnants of the “collect-a-thon” generation still holding on here. This is a weird situation where my brain switches off. I am a sucker for checklists in games. Capture X outposts, Find X pieces of the map, etc. Games like Far Cry are a guilty pleasure because of this fact.
But there’s something about having to find collectibles in a game like this that just makes my brain shut down. I think it may come down to the platforming.
If I have to blow up 10 Supply Depots, I’m there. But if I have to figure out how to get up on top of that ledge to get that secret Golden Coin, I’m out. There’s just something about it that clicks my brain over into apathy mode. I just can’t be bothered.
The conflict comes in when these collectibles affect the gameplay. Such is the case in Rift Apart where the player can earn pieces of armor by completing tasks or finding them hidden throughout the maps. There are also crystals called Raritanium that are used to upgrade Ratchet’s weapons.
While the Raritanium didn’t ever really seem all that rare, the armor pieces sometimes had me feeling like I had to find them because of the benefits they provided. I really just wanted to play through the game for the story, but kept finding myself compelled to locate these armor pieces. Not because it was fun and I wanted to, but because I felt like I had to. I honestly didn’t even like the look of the armor suits on the character. I actually would’ve preferred he just look like himself.
I really liked the character of Rivet. I felt that Insomniac managed to create a female character that was both strong and vulnerable, who was extremely capable, yet willing to rely on others for help. For whatever reason, that seems to be a really dificult thing for writers to do these days. I’m personally getting tired of the super edgy, chip on her shoulder, has to do everything herself female character that seems to be a dime a dozen now. It brings to mind the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy from a few years back. She was fine in the first two games, but in Rise of the Tomb Raider, they tried to make Lara Croft a flawed character by having her make a crucial mistake that had, literally, cataclysmic consequences. But then they push her into this headstrong “It’s my mistake I have to fix it” mentality, where she’s constantly pushing away her only friend, and by extension, me — the player. Because they went so far beyond “character flaw” that they essentially just made her a bitch. It was that simple. Lara was a spiteful, arrogant and stubborn pain in the ass. And I didn’t like her.
But I’m getting sidetracked. That aside, Rivet fortunately doesn’t have any of those traits. And it would’ve been really, really easy for them to fall into that trap. The first time we are introduced to her even, she’s doing the badass “Spy” thing, in disguise and trying to steal an infobot (or something). I’ll admit, I groaned a little, because I thought I knew what was coming. I was happy to be wrong.
By halfway through the campaign, I really liked Rivet. The dynamic between her and Clank was awkward, and I felt it worked. I do think it worked a little better than the one between Ratchet and Kit. I get what they were trying to do with Kit, but eh, I’m not sure it landed. And I get that Ratchet is the archetypal “hero” but I do kinda wish he would drop the boyscout attitude for a moment and show a little bit of an internal struggle. Kit pulled a gun on him and 5 seconds later he was over it. I mean, I get it, but man I would’ve loved to see Ratchet carry an on-going uneasiness around his new partner. Like, he needs her to help him complete his goal, but at the same time is also aware that any false move and she might blow his head off. I wanted to see that play a little more into the relationship, but it never really materialized.
Likewise the team-up between Rivet and Kit was a bit more strained, for reasons that are explained over the course of the game, but it all still felt a bit convenient. But hey, it was attempt at a character arc so I’m not mad at it. It made for some brief conflict, even if it was ultimately pretty predictable.
Okay so that’s a whole lot of negativity I’ve been spouting out about this game. But the truth is, I enjoyed it. A lot of these gripes I have are nitpicks at best, and some of them are about some general game mechanics that aren’t exclusive to Ratchet and Clank, but are characteristics of the action platform genre itself. I used to love those mechanics, but as I’ve gotten older and lazier I’ve been finding that I just don’t have the patience to hop around an area for twenty minutes trying to find the way atop a high ledge or across a chasm.
When Rift Apart allowed me to run n gun, I really dug it. I admittedly have not played much of the Ratchet and Clank series, they just never really appealed to me, though I do have the remake of the original that released on PS4. I played about halfway through that one before I began to get bored with it due to the same platforming collect a thon mechanics I’ve already mentioned. I have it on my backlog list, and I will get to it eventually, but probably not any time soon.
There are some really nice set pieces in the game, such as a rail grinding section while being attacked by a giant robot, and another when Rivet takes the to sky on the back of a flying dragon thing to take down some enemy ships. They’re very cool and really sell the scale and spectacle of what’s going on. I just wish they didn’t occur so late in the game. There were points in the game, when Ratchet and Rivet were just planet-hopping, that I really had a difficult time staying invested. I was happy when the action and pacing really started to pick up in the second half of the game, but man it took its time getting there.
I tend to get impatient with games these days, when they go on a while after I’m ready to move on, and I realize that is one thousand percent a “me” thing. I imagine it’s the same affect as a reviewer who has to be finished with a game by a certain deadline, and they have to cram to get it done as quickly as possible, and it actually detracts from their enjoyment of a game. I am completely aware of this, and will say with almost absolute certainty that this was the case here; I began playing this as Diablo IV released, and I’ve been wanting to finish the story campaign in Diablo while also playing through games in my backlog.
It kind of turns out to be a “grass is always greener” situation, where I’m playing a game, but thinking about Diablo. Then while I’m playing Diablo, I’m thinking about other games. It’s a first world problem for sure. But that doesn’t make it any less real, or annoying.
Luckily, I powered through a bit of a drag in the middle part of the game, where it just kind of feels like you’re going down a planetary checklist, and reached that point where the story really started to pick up and push the player forward. The sense of urgency comes through as the situation gets more and more dire. Once Emperor Nefarious starts wreaking havoc on the dimensional stability of the universe, I felt compelled to see it through to the end.
There is a bit of convenience at play here, and how Clank can solve a few puzzles inside a rift and suddenly understand how to fix the dimensional stability is kind of a reach in logic, but we’re talking about anthropomorphic animals fighting against an army of space robots, so logic isn’t really something I should’ve been hoping for in the first place. You just gotta kinda go with it.
There is one small gripe that I had with the story, and it’s a bit of a spoiler alert so… fair warning. Ready? Okay. The entire reason the Dimensionator was created in the first place was because Clank wanted Ratchet to be able to find his long lost race of Lombaxes. His meeting with Rivet triggers an internal conflict for him on whether or not he actually wants to meet them. After the events of the game, and the successful defeat of the Nefariouses, everything is right with the multiverse again, and it’s implied that Ratchet has finally come to the decision to track down his people.
And then the game ends.
It’s then followed by a Pixar-esque credits sequence with some really nice artwork, and I don’t know, maybe I’m just used to mid-credits and post-credits scenes that the Marvel movies used to tease upcoming stories, but I was expecting something here. It really, honestly felt like they were gonna squeeze in a scene or two. But then, nothing.
I wanted to see the Lombax homeworld, dammit.
I get it, they’re teasing a sequel. I mean, there have been like, five or six Ratchet and Clank games over the past several console generations, but man I really don’t feel like hanging around for another game. When would that even be?
Insomniac has to be sitting right next to Obsidian as one of the most efficient development companies around today, but even they have to be stretched kinda thin with Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine in development. Assuming a Ratchet and Clank game is in the works, would it be getting developed concurrently, or are we waiting? That’s a long time for a cliff-hanger.
Anyways, those are my thoughts on Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, and that’s the first ten bucks into the Virtual 100 Virtual Piggy Bank. Until next time, keep on a-keepin’ on.
