Ratchet & Clank was announced at the PS5 event on June 11: Rift Apart was one of the most exciting games; fans have been waiting for a new Ratchet & Clank since a pretty decent reboot was released on PS4 in 2016! . (That same year also saw the release of the animated feature film Ratchet & Clank, but it's best not to talk too much about that.) In this game, intergalactic adventurers Ratchet and Clank jump from dimension to dimension, battling the forces of recurring villain Dr. Nefarious.
Fans have long awaited a new Ratchet & Clank game, especially through 2016, when a new game was released every year. However, unlike many other annual series, the Ratchet & Clank games generally got better with each new release. Ratchet & Clank Future Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time is one of the best action games ever released on the PS3, so when Sony decided to reboot the franchise rather than continue the story, fans couldn't help but be a little disappointed They couldn't help but be a little disappointed when Sony decided to reboot the franchise rather than continue the story.
But Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart may finally reunite two disparate stories. Watch the trailer:
In this game, Ratchet and Clank (who seem to come from the reboot timeline) jump dimensions, traversing swamps, cities, pirate ships, and even an alternate reality where perhaps Ratchet is not the last of the Lombax people.
The dimension-hopping setting does two very clever things. First, it shows how quickly the PS5 can load entire levels; one of the PS5's key features is its ability to process data much faster than the PS4 thanks to its custom SSD, and Rift Apart seems to take full advantage of that. In the gameplay demo after the trailer, we saw Ratchet and Clank jump through dimensional ports and almost instantly reach huge levels that would have been difficult to achieve on Sony's current hardware.
Second, Insomniac would provide a way to combine the reboot version with the original timeline if it so desired. While there is no guarantee that the dimension-hopping mechanic will be a backdoor into the original "Ratchet & Clank" series, it would be easy to go that route, especially as a mid-game dud or after-credits teaser. So far there is nothing wrong with the rebooted storyline, but perhaps many fans will be eager to see what happened to the version of Ratchet & Clank they have been following since 2002.
The gameplay reveal was pretty much what one would expect from a Ratchet & Clank game: in a small section of Rift Apart, Ratchet and Clank navigate a city crawling with Dr. Nefarious' minions, from little ankle-biting sand sharks to big gun-wielding goons. They make their way through the city. Ratchet uses his clever guns and gadgets to take them down and runs around the battlefield collecting nuts and bolts for currency. The dimension-hopping mechanics make the game a bit more unpredictable than usual, but it's easy to imagine that this will allow players to traverse the environment in a more exciting way than before.
Unfortunately, there is no release date for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and it will probably not be a launch title. (Don't forget, Insomniac is also working on "Spider-Man: Miles Morales," which will most likely be released at the same time as PS5.) So all we can do is wait for more news and hope that the latest installment in this popular series lives up to its legacy.
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