LogFAQs > #962091176

10. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

For absolutely no reason, 2021 was host to a number of franchise comebacks. Previously, we saw Psychonauts 2 on this list, which was the first full-length experience the franchise had seen since 2005. Yet to be seen on this list are NEO: The World Ends With You, the first entry into the franchise since its inception in 2007, and Metroid Dread, the first original, non-spin-off Metroid game since 2010, and the first official main-line game since 2004. At the time of this writing, I have not played No More Heroes III, but it is also the return of a franchise which hasnt seen a mainline entry since 2010. Similar to all of these is the Ratchet & Clank franchise, which, barring a failed reboot/movie tie-in, hadnt seen the light of day since 2013. This isnt quite as long of a gap as the aforementioned titles, but it is still quite significant in the current era of annual releases or sequels being announced immediately following a release. Whether or not these games are actually any good is beside the point. I was craving the consumption of franchises from my miserable adolescence and I was rewarded.

While they will ultimately receive the same scoring. I feel like there is a pretty noteworthy gap between Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. You could say Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is the first truly great game to be introduced in the list, and that we have now encroached upon the must-play territory. However, you will need to have a Sony PlayStation 5 in order to play Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, so I am sorry for imposing this upon you. If you do not have a Sony PlayStation 5, please stop reading and do not come back until you have acquired one. Until then, you are not a strong enough gamer to be reading my words, and I am offended you would attempt to join my company.

If you were to ever meet me in real life, you would soon discover that I am a fucking nerd. This personal feature has been present throughout most of my life, though it reached its throughline between the ages of twelve and fifteen. This period of my life was marked with such intense gaming that I became the god gamer you witness today. I can attribute the whole of my gaming landscape to a mere five core titles which I will now list: Dark Cloud, Jak II, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Tales of Symphonia, and Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. All of these video games, regardless of where I align their quality now, were transformative to how I viewed games, and I consider them to be some of the most important games for my own personal growth as both a gamer and, unfortunately, a mortal.

To say Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart had some big shoes to fill would be putting it lightly, especially given the disgusting wretch some people refer to as 2016s Ratchet & Clank, a video game I hate more and more any time I think about it for more than three full seconds. Ratchet & Clank hasnt really been the franchise it started out as for a long time, and efforts to create a game as fresh and memorable as that original trilogy on the PlayStation 2 have been lukewarm at best. Sure, the games end up being great fun to play, and its likely a lot of my nostalgia talking, but the transition from a platformer with third-person shooter elements to a third-person shooter with platforming elements has not been kind to the identity of the series. This issue reached its climax with the last mainline entry, Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus, a game so marred by a lack of ideas that they couldnt even stretch it out beyond a brief 6-hour campaign at best. The gameplay loop of this franchise is fortunately satisfying, so its not as if the franchise has become unenjoyable, but theres little to separate these games from one another at this point.