Summary
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apartis among the PS5’s greatest titles. Many within the gaming industry agree thatRatchet and Clank: Rift Apartwas the first truly next-gen game, as it required unique technological advancements, namely the PS5’s SSD, to achieve its main premise, which saw the duo jump seamlessly between dimensions and points in space. Because of this, many gamers were surprised to hear thatRift Apartwould be the next of PlayStation’s titles to be ported to PC. With the port having been released this month, fans are discovering howRatchet and Clank: Rift Apart’s PC experience compares to that on PS5.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apartsees the iconic duo split between dimensions, after Clank gifts Ratchet a repaired Dimensionator to search for the Lombax race. Doctor Nefarious also seeks to get his hands on the device, in order to conquer multiple dimensions, with his first attempt serving as the kick-off to the plot. As Ratchet and Clank attempt to reunite, players are introduced to exciting new characters, particularly the female Lombax, Rivet.Rift Apart’s Dimensionator delivers the title’s core next-gen mechanic, and, because of its technical requirements, developer Insomniac Games claimed that only the PS5’s SSD was capable of running the title at the time of release. While it is now possible to get the game running on PC, fans will find a less impressive experience on the platform.
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How Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Can Run on PC
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apartis a strange choice to port to PC, as it was built for PS5 and is releasing at an unusual time. In order to run on PC, developers had to work around the title’s SSD requirement, a feature that was touted as essential to theRift Apartexperience. Much of the title’s marketing was used to highlight the PS5’s SSD and power, makingRift Aparta seminal PS5 experience. The final product on PC leverages a bold technology from Microsoft, in the hopes of overcoming the title’s staggering memory and GPU requirements.
Rift Apart’s PC versionleverages Microsoft’s DirectStorage 1.2 technology, which was initially launched as a way to stream data from solid-state drives to the GPU without a CPU slowing things down. The technology’s 1.2 version allows for GPU decompression allows games to offload the work needed to decompress assets to the graphics card instead of the CPU.Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apartis the first-ever PC game to support DirectStorage 1.2 on Day One, making it a considerable release on the platform. However, the resulting experience lends further validity to Insomniac Game’s original PS5 SSD claims.
How Rift Apart’s PC Experience Compares to the PS5’s
Thenews ofRift Apart’s PC port prompted PS5 mockeryamong parts of the gaming community. This mockery makes sense, to a degree, as the SSD’s essential nature was presented as a major selling point. However, the final product on PC is evidence that Insomniac’s original claims, while outdated, largely hold true.Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apartis able to run on PC, using advanced technologies that were only recently made available, but the experience’s overall quality is a considerable step back.
FansrunningRatchet and Clank: Rift Aparton PC, whether they utilize a minimum spec at 720p or max spec PC, will encounter noticeable visual and technical downgrades from the PS5 version. The PC version ofRift Apartsupports improved features including options for higher-quality ray-traced reflections and the addition of ray-traced shadows and ambient occlusion, but the quality of the reflections is highly inconsistent, resulting in visuals that are of lower quality compared to the reflections seen in the PS5 version. Most significantly,Rift Apart’s portal transitions on PC fail to deliver the seamless quality of the PS5. Portal jumps are slower and choppier on the PC, regardless of GPU and SSD configuration, failing to match the PS5 experience’s quality, even when directly configured to PS5 equivalent settings. Overall,Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart’s PC version offers a serviceable experience, but even the use of PC Gaming’s most cutting-edge technology fails to replicate the polish and seamless core mechanic of 2021’s original PS5 release.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apartis available now on PC and PS5.
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