Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
A new Ratchet & Clank game has been out for nearly a year, and I still haven’t played it.
Anyone who knows of my gaming preferences can tell you that Ratchet & Clank is one of my favorite intellectual properties. I’m talking in the same echelon as Zelda, Metroid, and those kinds of classics. I LOVE Ratchet games. The graphics, the music, the shooting mechanics, it’s just all amazing. I’ll play them like a gosh dang addict until I’ve upgraded every weapon, found every secret, and satisfied every skill point. I even managed to get my wife on board with Ratchet: Deadlocked and we both had a really good time eking out everything that game had to offer.
So, you’d expect that I would be on board with a new release on day one. And in some other scenario, maybe I would be. The problem is, I don’t have a Playstation 5 and I won’t, at least not for a long time. I can’t even blame it on console shortages and scalpers buying up the few that are made. I wouldn’t buy one if shelves were stocked everywhere.
I don’t do anything as an early adopter, least of all consoles. Usually, I’m not really interested in launch titles anyway. If I did pre-order a console, there wouldn’t be any games on it that I’d be genuinely eager to play. Why waste money on a first gen console that I don’t really care about, when I could save money on sales later, for often upgraded or slimmed down hardware? I’ll get it when I get it, you know?
But with the PS5, I’m not completely sure that I WILL get it. I got a PS4, and I very rarely play it. I probably still got my money’s worth out of it, but that is the console that I play the least of. My Nintendo Switch gets booted up almost daily for either me or the kids to play. We have so many more games on the Switch, and I’ll usually go for third party games on Switch even if those versions aren’t as good. The Switch platform is just so convenient, and it fits my use cases so much better.
So we have a first party exclusive game that I’m really interested in, on a platform that I may never adopt. For a while, I had hopes that Sony might do the same thing that Nintendo did with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It was originally going to be on the GameCube, but they pushed out the release date and ported it to the Wii with some upgrades. I got the GameCube version, because I didn’t have a Wii at the time, and I still got to experience the game without some of the bells and whistles.
The difference is that Twilight Princess was originally for GameCube, but it was pushed back. Rift Apart was intended as a PS5 launch title from the beginning. It was made on PS5 developer kits, with the performance of the PS5 in mind. Nobody at Sony intended for Rift Apart to be available on PS4, or at least that’s how it seems to me. And cutting down on some of the resources or throttling the framerate would hurt the experience of the game. I’d still play it, but I can’t say for certain that many other people would.
If it weren’t for the Ratchet & Clank series, I could pretty definitively say I wouldn’t bother with a PS5 ever. None of the other Sony exclusives are interesting to me, and my Switch works fine for third party titles. But I love Ratchet games, and I really hate to opt out when they’re actively making new games.
You know what we need? Console rentals. I would rent a PS5, cram every bit of Rift Apart that I could manage, and return the whole thing. Even if I didn’t get credit for the Platinum trophy, I could still say I played the game. Alternatively, I would just borrow a friend’s PS5, but most of my friends are still having difficulty even buying one for themselves.
I’m hoping that one day I can play Rift Apart. Whether they port it to PS4, somebody lets me borrow their PS5, or some company comes up with console rentals (I want a free rental for coming up with the idea), I don’t want to let the game slip by. It seems to be very critically acclaimed, and I would hate to miss a new entry in a series I adore. We’ll see if I get the opportunity eventually.
Anyone who knows of my gaming preferences can tell you that Ratchet & Clank is one of my favorite intellectual properties. I’m talking in the same echelon as Zelda, Metroid, and those kinds of classics. I LOVE Ratchet games. The graphics, the music, the shooting mechanics, it’s just all amazing. I’ll play them like a gosh dang addict until I’ve upgraded every weapon, found every secret, and satisfied every skill point. I even managed to get my wife on board with Ratchet: Deadlocked and we both had a really good time eking out everything that game had to offer.
So, you’d expect that I would be on board with a new release on day one. And in some other scenario, maybe I would be. The problem is, I don’t have a Playstation 5 and I won’t, at least not for a long time. I can’t even blame it on console shortages and scalpers buying up the few that are made. I wouldn’t buy one if shelves were stocked everywhere.
I don’t do anything as an early adopter, least of all consoles. Usually, I’m not really interested in launch titles anyway. If I did pre-order a console, there wouldn’t be any games on it that I’d be genuinely eager to play. Why waste money on a first gen console that I don’t really care about, when I could save money on sales later, for often upgraded or slimmed down hardware? I’ll get it when I get it, you know?
But with the PS5, I’m not completely sure that I WILL get it. I got a PS4, and I very rarely play it. I probably still got my money’s worth out of it, but that is the console that I play the least of. My Nintendo Switch gets booted up almost daily for either me or the kids to play. We have so many more games on the Switch, and I’ll usually go for third party games on Switch even if those versions aren’t as good. The Switch platform is just so convenient, and it fits my use cases so much better.
So we have a first party exclusive game that I’m really interested in, on a platform that I may never adopt. For a while, I had hopes that Sony might do the same thing that Nintendo did with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It was originally going to be on the GameCube, but they pushed out the release date and ported it to the Wii with some upgrades. I got the GameCube version, because I didn’t have a Wii at the time, and I still got to experience the game without some of the bells and whistles.
The difference is that Twilight Princess was originally for GameCube, but it was pushed back. Rift Apart was intended as a PS5 launch title from the beginning. It was made on PS5 developer kits, with the performance of the PS5 in mind. Nobody at Sony intended for Rift Apart to be available on PS4, or at least that’s how it seems to me. And cutting down on some of the resources or throttling the framerate would hurt the experience of the game. I’d still play it, but I can’t say for certain that many other people would.
If it weren’t for the Ratchet & Clank series, I could pretty definitively say I wouldn’t bother with a PS5 ever. None of the other Sony exclusives are interesting to me, and my Switch works fine for third party titles. But I love Ratchet games, and I really hate to opt out when they’re actively making new games.
You know what we need? Console rentals. I would rent a PS5, cram every bit of Rift Apart that I could manage, and return the whole thing. Even if I didn’t get credit for the Platinum trophy, I could still say I played the game. Alternatively, I would just borrow a friend’s PS5, but most of my friends are still having difficulty even buying one for themselves.
I’m hoping that one day I can play Rift Apart. Whether they port it to PS4, somebody lets me borrow their PS5, or some company comes up with console rentals (I want a free rental for coming up with the idea), I don’t want to let the game slip by. It seems to be very critically acclaimed, and I would hate to miss a new entry in a series I adore. We’ll see if I get the opportunity eventually.
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