Synopsis

While Ratchet and Clank are celebrating their many adventures, the Dimensionator, a device capable of opening portals between dimensions, is accidentally damaged. The resulting rifts spread across space, separating the two heroes and gradually threatening the balance between realities.

Thrown into an alternate dimension ruled by Emperor Nefarious, Clank meets Rivet, a Lombax rebel who has long fought against his regime. Meanwhile, Ratchet sets out to find his partner and discover how to repair the damage caused by the Dimensionator.

Their journey takes them across multiple worlds and realities as the boundaries between dimensions become increasingly unstable. Ratchet, Clank, Rivet and Kit must join forces to close the rifts and stop Nefarious from using the catastrophe to extend his power beyond his own dimension.

Overview

Since its beginnings on PlayStation 2, Ratchet & Clank has relied on an almost childlike idea at its core: give the player an improbable weapon, a few enemies to aim at and enough space to find out what is going to explode. With Rift Apart, Insomniac Games keeps that energy but places it at the heart of a technological showcase built for the PS5. Dimensions no longer serve only as a narrative backdrop: they become a way to make one world disappear almost instantly and load another in its place.

The adventure begins when the Dimensionator, a device capable of opening passages between realities, triggers a series of rifts that separate Ratchet and Clank. That fracture primarily introduces Rivet, a Lombax from an alternate dimension ruled by Emperor Nefarious. Ratchet and Rivet then become the two faces of the same adventure, accompanied respectively by Clank and Kit.

The series does not suddenly change its nature, however. Rift Apart remains a very direct mix of platforming, exploration and third-person combat, supported by a deliberately extravagant arsenal. Rifles, launchers, weapons capable of growing plants or summoning allies turn battles into spaces for experimentation, while weapons gradually become more powerful the more they are used.

The real novelty lies in the way everything flows. A rift can instantly bring a distant point of the battlefield closer, a sequence can throw the character through several environments within seconds, and some planets directly exploit the idea of overlapping realities. Technology then stops being visible only through image quality: it begins to reshape staging and pacing.

Key takeaways

  • A PS5 showcase designed as a complete game. Rift Apart was built from the ground up around the SSD, DualSense, ray tracing and the capabilities of the PS5 rather than as a simple technical upgrade of a previous entry.
  • Rifts speed up movement through the levels. They are used both for repositioning during combat and for spectacular transitions between environments and dimensions.
  • Rivet expands the historic duo. This new Lombax brings an alternate reality, new characters and a different perspective on several familiar elements of the series.
  • The arsenal remains at the heart of the fun. Each weapon has its own behavior, progression and often its own brand of absurdity, while the DualSense adaptive triggers can change the way certain attacks are activated.
  • The formula remains deliberately accessible. Despite its technical ambition, Rift Apart is still an immediately readable action-platformer supported by numerous accessibility options.

PANACHES review

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart impresses first and foremost through its speed. Not only Ratchet’s speed or that of the hoverboots, but the speed with which the game can change ideas, environments and sometimes entire realities without forcing the player through the old ritual of a loading screen. In 2021, that fluidity gave a very concrete shape to what was still an abstract promise of the new console generation.

Insomniac uses that power intelligently, but without turning every rift into a revolution in game design. Many of them primarily serve staging, movement or transitions that would previously have been impossible. In the end, the game remains much more faithful to Ratchet & Clank than its technological spectacle might suggest. You jump, shoot, upgrade weapons, explore colorful planets and search for hidden objects with an almost familiar efficiency.

That continuity also works because the arsenal still carries the small dose of absurdity that gives the series its personality. Where many shooters pursue military or realistic coherence, Ratchet & Clank would rather ask what would happen if a weapon turned the battlefield into a garden, dropped objects from another dimension or simply unleashed something wildly disproportionate on the enemy. Mechanical precision and cartoon logic have never really been separate here.

Rivet, meanwhile, feels natural enough as an addition that she never comes across as an artificial replacement. Her relationship with Kit allows the game to echo the historic duo while approaching trust, loneliness and the fear of hurting those around us from a different angle. The story remains light and predictable in several places, but it generally understands why its characters are there.

Rift Apart is therefore less a reinvention of Ratchet & Clank than a demonstration of how far an already mastered formula can go when technology stops imposing certain limits on it. Its real achievement is turning that technical demonstration into a joyful, fluid game rather than a catalogue of PS5 features.

Good to know

  • Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was released on June 11, 2021 for PlayStation 5. It had been designed specifically for that console from the beginning.
  • A PC version was released on July 26, 2023, developed by Nixxes Software in collaboration with Insomniac Games.
  • The game is a single-player adventure and can serve as an entry point into the series: Insomniac designed it as a standalone story while keeping connections to previous entries.
  • Rivet is a Lombax from another dimension and one of the major new playable characters introduced in the game.
  • The PS5 SSD notably allows entire environments to be loaded rapidly during dimensional transitions. Rifts are also used for movement during combat and exploration.
  • The DualSense uses haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. Some weapons can use different trigger pressure levels to produce distinct behaviors.
  • PlayStation currently lists 24 accessibility features for the PS5 version.
  • The PC version adds support for ultra-wide displays, several upscaling technologies and additional ray-tracing options.