Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, the preview after the State of Play
Ratchet & Clank
Sony has practically dedicated the new State of Play on April 29 to Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Preceded by the very short trailers of Subnautica: Below Zero and Among Us, the title Insomniac Games showed itself with an abundant fifteen minutes of gameplay that literally left us speechless. We already knew that the boys of Burbank were magicians, but the title coming out on 11 June could easily be their best work: it is really difficult to describe in words the images that have followed one another on our screens in absolute fluidity, so we leave you to admire the trailer below before reviewing all the information we discovered thanks to the comments of the creative director Matthew Smith.Ratchet's new adventure
The game sequences shown in the State of Play takes place at the beginning of the adventure, so they shouldn't be particularly ... spoiled, but if you really don't want to know anything about Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart until June 11, we suggest you stop reading right away. The guys from Insomniac, however, put together these fifteen minutes to art, excluding most of the narrative: we don't know how Ratchet got to the Nefarious City of this parallel dimension, only that Clank is lost and that he has to find him.The city is amazing. Thanks to the hardware of the PlayStation 5, says Smith, the Californian developer has built a credible metropolis, sprawling and full of life, between aircraft whizzing overhead and passers-by involved in their own business. It is a show that reminded us a little of the Coruscant seen in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, especially since there is an evil Emperor here too: the Nefarious of this reality, in fact, is much more dangerous than the one we know.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, the Nefarious City bazaar. In fact, Ratchet will come across some old acquaintances who have almost completely different identities in this dimension. In the trailer, we saw him meet Miss Zurkon, a gun dealer here, but only in appearance, as she spies on behalf of the resistance. At this juncture, Ratchet glimpses Rivet for the first time, a Lombax like him who has got his hands on Clank and who takes flight under his eyes aboard a small spaceship. There is a problem: Miss Zurkon warns Ratchet that leaving the planet is next to impossible, but that the infamous Phantom could help him succeed. Ratchet then has a new goal: to find the Disco Nefarious to meet Phantom. The trailer, however, completely skips this passage of history, limiting itself to showing us the city as the Lombax searches for the entrance to the nightclub. The plays of light and shadows are of a disarming complexity and contribute to making this moment of exploration even more spectacular.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Ratchet meets Miss Zurkon. Ratchet will come out of Phantom's club with a couple of new tricks in his arsenal. Rift Apart, in fact, pushes a lot on the ability to move: in addition to being able to hang and float with its anti-gravity boots, Ratchet can also run on the walls and shoot in mid-air. The latter technique was glimpsed in the recent trailer focusing on Rivet and now we know that Ratchet can also use it to move quickly in any direction, leaving behind a trail of after-images. It is not only a maneuver to be combined with all the others to explore the maps and reach the most distant platforms, but also a fighting technique that allows the Lombax to dodge the blows of the enemies. The State of Play trailer gave us a taste of it in the Baths of Nefarious, where Ratchet finds himself battling the robots of his archenemy.
At this juncture, we also saw the Fendilink in action, the tool that allows Ratchet to cross the interdimensional fissures that occasionally open in space: they allow you to move from one point to another on the map to escape to enemies or take them by surprise.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, the spectacular city of Emperor Nefarious. The game's creative director took advantage of this action scene to explain the importance of haptic feedback and adaptive triggers in DualSense. Insomniac made sure that every weapon in the game exploited these unique features in the best possible way. The Burst Pistol, for example, features two firing modes. Pulling the trigger halfway, the firearm detonates one shot at a time, slow but accurate. Squeezing it all the way down, however, fires a barrage of faster bullets but also with a wider range. The DualSense will make sure that the player feels the sensation of having fired every shot, both at the moment of the shot, and at the moment the bullet hits. The Punisher, on the other hand, is a kind of sawn-off shotgun. Again, by pressing the trigger halfway, you fire a single barrel, while holding it down a shot explodes that discharges both barrels: the damage inflicted is devastating, but the reload time is naturally longer. And haptic feedback comes into play to convey a powerful recoil sensation.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, the Punisher. The segment featuring Ratchet ends with a boss fight: our Lombax faces a Colossus of Nefarious, a massive fully armed mech that attacks him with punches and laser beams. Ratchet must dodge the enemy's blows, skip his energy broadsides and riddle him with shots, but at the same time he will be able to use the interdimensional rifts to move not so much to another area of the battlefield or to a special arena, but right in a completely different map that perhaps belongs to another plane. Loading is almost instantaneous, thanks to the speed of the SSD, and this trick makes the fights even more spectacular, frenetic and dynamic. It is unclear if the inter-dimensional fissures have a specific functionality in terms of gameplay, but they certainly show the muscles of the Sony hardware.
Rivet's turn
The scene shifts then on the mysterious Lombax that we will be able to play in this new adventure. Rivet and Clank, on the run from Nefarious City, crash into a planet that is actually the alternate version of a world already explored in the previous Ratchet & Clank, Sargasso. The scenery is amazing: a kind of jungle full of enemies and models moving all around Rivet. Smith, however, also breaks a lance in favor of sound effects which, thanks to 3D audio, make these locations even more dense and engaging. Meanwhile, in the game, Rivet decides to save his friends who have been taken to the gelatonium factory. It won't be easy, so Lombax stops at a Miss Zurkon to refuel. The virtual shop menu materializes in front of her as a kind of hologram: it is an ingenious and elegant solution, which allows us to shop in continuity. The arsenal includes both totally new weapons and weapons that appeared in previous episodes of the series that fans have greatly appreciated.Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, some stages are an alternative version of the planets explored in the past. Rivet chooses a new weapon called the Botanical Sprinkler; in this case, Smith illustrates the wacky haptic feedback that occurs whenever the player tries to throw a grenade, encountering trigger resistance. When the bomb has transformed the surrounding enemies into garden sculptures ready for pruning, the player will feel another type of feedback.
In this game sequence, Rivet is chasing a cockroach in order to ride it. However, the little creature will slip into a dimensional pocket, a parallel reality overlooked by some cracks. In this particular bag, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart becomes a kind of racing game as soon as Rivet jumps into the cockpit. The being moves at high speed and we will have to follow a path, possibly hitting every crate full of bolts in our trajectory. Back on Sargasso through the rift, the shooting will allow us to safely overcome the acid swamps of the planet and reach the gelatonium factory at the end of a reckless race.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, one of the lethal Minions-4-Money. Here Rivet will find himself facing the Minions-4-Money that Nefarious hired to get rid of Ratchet and Clank, and who ended up against their will in the parallel reality of Rivet. It's the perfect opportunity to experience another brand new weapon: the Shard Bomb, a kind of fragmentation grenade that deals massive damage to enemies caught in the blast radius. The haptic feedback, in this case, has been programmed to give the player a realistic shock with each detonation. The preview of the game then ends with the pyrotechnic clash between Rivet and Nefarious' henchmen, but Insomniac has dedicated the very last minutes of the State of Play to a roundup of content that we will find in the game.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Rivet is the new playable character. It seems that he will be there for all tastes. Vast outdoor areas to explore far and wide, puzzles to solve while controlling Clank in dimensional pockets, mini-games to complete as Glitch, arena battles, spectacular aerial combat astride alien dragons, hidden collectibles and, as we expected , numerous costumes to unlock: composed of three pieces each (helmet, bib and boots) these armors give specific bonuses that can improve our skills in combat but not only. Finally, the first photo mode of the series is unmissable: it will be possible to save an image and then customize it at will, adding decorations and changing various parameters.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, a dimensional bag. At the end of these fifteen minutes of State of Play we started throwing bills at the screen as in the most banal of memes, but to play Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart we will have to wait a few more weeks. The Insomniac Games title promises to be truly incredible both from a technical and content point of view: the variety of situations, weapons and scenarios is amazing and every element of the gameplay seems to have been calibrated to take advantage of the new Sony hardware as much as possible. That the era of PlayStation 5 is about to begin in earnest?
