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Game Ramblings #141 – Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

More Info from Insomniac Games

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: PS5

I’m not going to sit here and claim that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is anything new and innovative. I’m also not going to claim that it’s the best game ever. That said, I will sit here and claim that it’s the best Ratchet & Clank.

This series has always felt pretty special to me. Its mix of platforming elements and gun-based gameplay has always really hit just the right notes. For this one, it’s the return to the saga after a long time. It’s been 8 years since Into the Nexus and 12 years since the last proper full original title – A Crack in Time. What this game sees is a studio that’s spent the last bunch of years learning a whole lot of new tricks. There’s clear elements of platforming that they pulled from Sunset Overdrive. There’s the story telling that they learned in pushing forward with Spider-Man. There’s the technology that they grew for the PS5 release of Miles Morales. All tied together, it turns out a damn fine game.

A lot of people will probably focus on the rifts as the big technological trick to this game, and while that stuff can be some fucking black magic, it’s not what really grabbed my attention. To me, it’s the totality of the experience that is really the big trick. This is the first game that’s really felt next-gen to me. PS5 or Series X upgraded games I’ve played like Miles Morales or Immortals or Gears 5 just haven’t felt next-gen. They’re clearly experiences that are being held back by their ties to the previous generation of consoles. This one truly feels like a next generation spectacle. Your first time walking into Nefarious City is incredible. Switching between dimensions instantaneously while riding a grind rail feels like magic. Doing the usual R&C bullet fucking bonanza shooting at a boss feels elevated to a level that the series has never seen.

However, that’s not why I played R&C titles. Luckily, the gameplay still delivers. The thing that always worked well for me is the gunplay, and that pushes in two directions for me.

The first is that I always could find some weapons that I really preferred that I knew would return for the sequels. For me that was things like the Buzz/Doom Blades with their bouncing star blades, or the Agents of Doom which spawns AI that run at ground-based characters. I could build my style around that general set of weapons and kind of know what my pattern would be. In this case, I would throw Agents down to mop up small stuff while I then focus on larger or flying targets. These have made their return in the general case, but they’ve also returned with the weapon upgrade trees in tow. Besides adding an additional upgrade path to the overall metagame, these add nice little upgrades to your power curve, giving you a more granular path than simply leveling up your weapons.

However, the second thing was always finding which of the new weapons really supplemented my play style, and there were a few standouts for me in Rift Apart. The first is the Topiary Sprinkler. Given its name, it shouldn’t be surprising that this turns enemies into plants. This one worked into my rotation as a really powerful crowd control mechanism, since the plant conversion acts as a built-in stun. The second was the Void Repulser. This one is a general shield, but it can also be used as a sort of radial shotgun blast. When fully upgraded it can also be used to catch and throw back enemy projectiles. As a defensive maneuver that could also damage enemies, this was extremely useful in fights with a lot of smaller enemies. The final standout was the Pixelizer. This one is a pretty normal shotgun, but it voxelizes enemies. As a visual spectacle, it’s as good as any of the conversion weapons that the R&C series has had in the past.

All of this then is supplemented by an additional layer of complexity thanks to the dynamic triggers on the DualSense. The weapons all have some form of this integration, but there’s definitely some that are more useful than others. With the basic shotgun, pulling the trigger half way does a single barrel shot. Pulling it all the way fires all barrels (2 by default, 4 when leveled up). The Shatterbomb will throw out an aiming line for a half pull, with the toss happening on the full pull. The Drillhound works similarly, with a half pull doing a lock on and a full pull throwing the drill. Each weapon has its own little quirk with this half/full pull that really expands out the repertoire in ways that the series has never seen.

There’s other little details that are really well integrated with this controller. If you can’t fire at all, the trigger goes into a heavy resistance mode, which is a nice way of indicating with feel that it’s time to switch to something else. In general the haptic feedback on weapon firing and impacts is fantastic. Ratchet’s footsteps come through the left and right side rumble motors in the controller, which is a nice little way to pull you into the game in a subtle feel-based way. The controller also throws a lot of small sounds – bolts being picked up, weapons being equipped, item activations, etc – that really just work to immerse you further into the game. None of these are groundbreaking features, but it’s small immersion boosts like this that really push the next-gen feel of the game as you’re playing it.

I know I’ve gotten this far and haven’t talked about the story, but honestly I don’t think there’s much to say there. The addition of Rivet to the story feels both appropriate to this specific title, as well as appropriate to the Ratchet metaverse in a way that doesn’t leave me feeling like they shoehorned in a Lombax, which was definitely a problem I had with Going Commando and A Crack in Time. It ended up continuing the general R&C universe in a way that felt right. If there’s anything that really is a standout to me, it’s that they’ve so vastly improved the actual way they present the story since the previous games that it finally feels like a proper story, rather than a roughly narrated cartoon. I think this all comes down to experience gained in the Spider-Man games, but it’s nice to see. This ends up being a well told self contained adventure, but still advances the meta story about Ratchet and whether or not he wants to find the rest of the Lombax race, and I was left satisfied with the conclusion, while also being left in a place where there’s more to explore in future titles. It’s a nice balance of progress and cliffhangers.

Ultimately it’s not a surprise I enjoyed this game. I’ve been playing this series for 20 years and loved every title, so it was kind of inevitable. What is nice is that this feels like a proper return. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a mainline Ratchet title, and it doesn’t feel like they’ve lost what made the series special in the intervening years. There’s a good mix here of new tech, better storytelling, and cleaner general action that make this feel like a fresh next-gen experience, but they’ve also not lost what made the series special to begin with. The over the top gunplay is still as fun as it’s ever been, and that will keep me coming back to whatever they decide to do with the next adventure – potentially with a new fun Lombax and robot friend in tow.

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Game Ramblings #118 – Ghost of Tsushima

More Info from Sucker Punch

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS4

There’s no doubt that this is the feudal Japan Assassin’s Creed that everyone has been asking for, but I’m not saying that as a bad thing. This takes a lot of what’s made the past few AC games great with some clever changes to the overall structure. It also features combat that clicked for me way more than it ever did in those titles. Overall I was left playing a game that surprised me in how much I enjoyed it, despite its familiarity.

If there’s two main things that I think separate this one from AC, it’s that there’s generally less to do, and that combat is a bit more nuanced. The first one provides a greater focus on the overall meta game, steering you to do fewer activities, but ones that generally feel like they have a great impact on your character progression. The second provides changes to the moment to moment action as you go through. Combined with a high level of polish, this gives us what feels like the next step in this type of gameplay, and hopefully a bar for Ubisoft to hit with Valhalla.

Taking a look at the map, you get that immediate feeling of familiarity. There’s fog of war in areas you haven’t been to. There’s icons for quests and towns and activities all over that pop up. However, they all serve some sort of purpose. Rather than climbing towers to lift fog of war in an area, you have to invade Mongol camps and take out their leaders. Side quest aren’t just fun little story points – they also give rare resources to upgrade existing gear, and in some cases completely new gear. In many cases, you won’t even know what the icons on the map are for until you get up close to them.

However, there’s a lot of in-world hints as well to help steer your exploration. If you want to focus on gaining some health, you’ve got to keep an eye out for steam columns where you can use hotsprings. If you need to boost your resolve to have access to more special moves, you’ll be on the look out for banners marking the location of bamboo strikes. If you want to get some accessory charms, you’ll want to keep an eye out for small yellow-leaved trees to follow foxes around.

All of these little things do a lot to make that exploration focus just work. There’s always some visual clue to pull your attention and there’s always some tangible reward at the end of it. None of the things feel like a waste or a grind. You do a thing, you get an immediate reward, and you immediately know what it does. It all just feels really natural in practice. Where AC Origins and Odyssey started to shed some of their collection-heavy past, this one feels like it took the next step that Ubisoft was perhaps hesitant to do.

Combat has a similar thing where it feels like a logical next step in the process. Stealth is still in play, and is still super useful. Parries and dodging are there like in AC and are still your main means of avoiding damage. Combat still kind of breaks down when there’s large groups, largely because there’s only so many directions you can focus on at once. However, where things really clicked for me were in the duels.

Duels are effectively your boss fights for this game. Starting one off always has a great intro cutscene to establish the fight, then your camera comes in super tight and you’re off. The actual combat is still the same, but the one-on-one focus allows for a lot tighter overall action. Where dodging without care for timing will generally work well against trash mobs, mistiming your dodges here could put you in a spot where the opponent can immediately hit you with a second attack before you can respond. On the other hand, timing your dodge perfectly puts you in slow motion with the ability to quickly attack. The same thing also stands with parries. Time it well, and instead of just a simple parry you will break your opponent’s defense and have them lined up for a critical strike. It’s also hugely beneficial that parryable and dodgeable attacks are different and have obviously different visual tells. It puts the combat into a place where there’s no guessing and it’s all about timing and skill, then solid execution of attacks when you’ve put yourself in a place to go on the offense.

There’s also something to be said of the fact that there’s very distinctly strong stances in this game, and in that regard it feels like it’s pulling a lot from the Yakuza series. As a player you have 4 main stances, each good against specific enemy types – swords, shields, spears, and brutes. While you can definitely fight any enemy with any stance, the skill of identifying and fighting with the right stance is hugely beneficial to clearing out enemies as quick as possible, while also minimizing the damage that you end up taking. This ends up being the real saving grace for group combat, as using the stance switching can allow you to quickly clear up the easier targets, leaving you to focus on one or two of the more problematic ones.

It also dawns on me that I didn’t take any screenshots of me using either of the bows. That’s kind of a shame because they’re honestly very good. You have a short bow (quick draw, lower damage) and a long bow (slow draw, large damage, can pierce metal) that are both very effective at their role, especially in stealth situations when taking out sentry units. They’ve got a pretty solid impact feel to them, they’re generally easy to fire, but with gravity effecting the arrows they aren’t trivially easy. There’s also a bit of aim assist typical of gamepad, but it’s not overbearing. It ends up falling in a place where there’s enough skill involved to make using it feel fair, but enough assists in place to make it still feel natural with gamepad aiming.

I certainly won’t sit here and claim that this is generally an original title, but it didn’t necessarily have to be. It takes the framework established by the recent Assassin’s Creed titles, and iterates enough on it to feel like its own thing. What it does do is give me hope that we see it push Ubisoft to take that next step with Valhalla or Sony with the next God of War, because as a genre these open world action games just work very well. This one added a really well developed feudal Japan setting and interesting story to the overall game framework, and it hit really well as an end-of-generation title. It also served as a really interesting change in direction for Sucker Punch after wrapping up some of their Infamous story line early on in the generation. Now, admittedly I wouldn’t mind seeing them go back to Sly Cooper after this, but they did a hell of a job pushing the open world action game in a direction of continued improvement here.

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Game Ramblings #115 – The Last of Us Part II

More Info from Sony

  • Genre: Survival Horror / Adventure
  • Platform: PS4

Admittedly, I wasn’t a huge fan of the first game. The only reason I finished it in the first place was because the story and setting for the game was so captivating. Mechanically, it otherwise reminded me a lot of Red Dead 2 – unnecessarily tuned towards realism, and generally clunky. For the sequel, it was again the story that kept me rolling on through, although I was surprised as I played how much the game had mechanically improved. That’s not to say I think that its mechanics are necessarily great, but it felt much better as a game, which allowed me a much smoother path forward through it.

If I look back at the original game, there were a number of mechanics that generally frustrated me that feel much improved here.

Gun combat in the first was pretty difficult, mostly because aiming felt made to be incredibly difficult on purpose. This one was somewhat more tuned to be a game. That’s not to say it was CoD aiming, but it was more forgiving. There were also some upgrades that provided significant boosts to your ability to quickly aim, have stability, etc that made things cleaner. It also just felt like the game was made to support gun-based interactions better. The original felt like guns were there for oh-shit moments. In this one, resources aside, I felt like I could legitimately play the game using gun combat as a primary path, even if I didn’t go that route. It’s better enough that I kind of wonder how much of it has actually changed, or if I just had a better feel for it this go through.

Melee combat was also significantly improved in a way that made me avoid combat significantly less than in the first. Dodging attacks is extremely fast and useful. Enemy tells are obvious without having huge timing windows. The melee combat in that regard is simple – basically dodge and swipe – but it feels fair, and it feels precise. The original game’s mechanics basically resulted in me avoiding combat entirely, because it felt like a death sentence. In this one, oddly large damage at times aside, combat didn’t feel like a reload – it just felt like a different kind of challenge.

However, the big thing that really changed combat for me is that the set pieces felt designed for combat. That’s kind of vague, but this is probably my best description of it. In the original, encounters with the infected were generally stealth sequences with guaranteed death traps. They were tight quarters, often had sound-based traps, and if you triggered the wrong infected, you were screwed. The infected areas in particular were terrible for gun combat, since they were generally winding corridors with no sight lines to shoot. That generally just exacerbated how rough the guns were for me to begin with.

In this one, things are just a lot more free flowing. The encounter areas are generally wider and more open, even when indoors. There’s a lot more escape spots – whether it be vaulting over something, escaping through a gap, or just generally having the horde go back into roving patterns if you kill your immediate target and hide. The same things you can use to vault over can also be used for peeking over and firing. Sight lines are much longer in almost all encounters, giving you more opportunities to shoot and save yourself when things do go wrong. There’s much better ability to even fire silent ranged projectiles like arrows, which greatly enhances your stealth capabilities. Overall, this one felt much better as a combat game, rather than combat being something that is a last resort.

That’s not to say that things always felt great. The picture above is from what is probably the largest boss-style encounter, taking place in the VERY dark and VERY tight abandoned basement of a hospital. This one felt straight out of the original game. I couldn’t see far, I couldn’t navigate well, and I was able to get stuck on things extremely easily. I probably died more in this single fight than the rest of the game, and generally speaking it felt less like mistakes I made, and more the game fighting against me. Luckily, this was far less common than the original.

There was also one early game surprise that really brought me into the game, but quickly and sadly went away. The first day of the first of the game takes place in a pseudo-open downtown Seattle. You get a map, you get to check off areas you’ve explored and pilfered for goods, you actually get to just randomly explore. They so heavily teased an open world experience, with all the side tracking exploration that I love out of that type of game. Then you get to the end of that chapter, and it’s completely linear for the rest of the game. It felt like a cock tease, and even worse is that it worked really well. It was fun to wander over to a big ruin, see if there was a path in, go in and sneak around the infected, and find some prize at the end. That’s not to say that the rest of the game didn’t have some semblance of side tracking, but from then on it was always incidental entering a building you were walking past anyway, and not giving the player the agency of wandering around a city just to explore. In the context of the story it made sense, but I was sad to see the mechanic teased then pulled away.

So then, that story:

Spoiler

I suspect I ended up liking the story a lot more than the general internet has, or at least, the internet seems really up in arms about it, and it’s hard to tell how much of that is noise or consensus. There’s no way to really avoid it – Joel came out of the first game looking like a real asshole. I sympathize with what he did, and I sympathize with Ellie being the only immune survivor, but there’s no doubt that Joel potentially fucked humanity. However, the story felt complete. It being complete is what made the start of this one so predictable. Joel was going to get killed by someone in an act of vengeance. There was no way that was going to be avoided, because there’s no reason for the sequel to exist otherwise. If Joel isn’t going to get killed, then him and Ellie are going to be living their best survivor life in Jackson, and this was not going to be a farming simulator.

That’s not to say that the predictability was bad, but it muted what was probably the opening shock moment to me, and it set an early tone for Ellie’s arc in this one. She was always going to come out looking like an asshole on her quest for vengeance. However, I had no problem with that. She had good reasons within her character arc to go out for vengeance, had a good path in doing so, and the payoff was gratifying within the expectations I had.

The big swerve for me in that regard ended up being Abby. Her connection to the first game as the daughter of the surgeon you murder right at the end of the game was incredible. It gave a second arc of vengeance that was definitely convenient in its appearance, but equally strong. Abby’s arc in particular felt more interesting and complete to me. Her arc started as one of completed vengeance, grew into a character learning to trust in others and not so blindly follow orders, and ended back at the beginning in vengeance after Ellie and her crew killed her friends. Of the two arcs, Abby’s felt like it had more overall growth, and wasn’t just fueled of blind rage. In doing so, it added to both of their arcs, and added interesting back story to the path of the original game.

That’s not to say that everything in the story felt great to me. Dina’s pregnancy in the game’s first arc felt a little too like a convenient plot device to give a reason for Ellie having a fixed base in Seattle, and felt too convenient of a way to provide tension in their relationship. Jesse’s character felt like a convenient pop-up helper in the first arc as well, then after he’s killed he felt swept under the rug entirely, as Ellie’s anger through the end of the game was still clearly around vengeance for Joel. The Scars also felt less like the intended “back to nature” rebel group, and more like another convenient way for the second arc of the game to have a large-scale enemy. It gave Abby some room for character growth, but it felt unnecessary when she could have also been rebelling against the group she was a part of with the same end gain.

However, the big issue for me was really the lack of player agency in the finale sequence. This is a similar problem I had with the first game. You had no choice but to escape with Ellie in the original, and you had no choice but to kill the surgeon. Without it, this game wouldn’t exist. This one had a similar problem. The Seattle portion of the game ends with Ellie and Abby facing off, and effectively fighting to a violent draw. They’ve both lost people at each other’s hands, and they’ve gotten to a point where Ellie has lost, and Abby no longer has the will to fight. As an ending, this felt appropriate. They’re both assholes, and neither of them are going to gain anything by killing any more. And then the game continued.

The end arc of Ellie tracking down Abby again to kill her felt forced, especially in how the result panned out. Abby is found imprisoned and at the end of her rope while trying to find any of her past life with the Fireflies. Ellie is emotionally and physically drained, and has abandoned her life with Dina to continue her path of vengeance. Given the rest of the game, it felt like one more unnecessary smack across both of their faces – giving them one more dose of suffering in an already shitty world. You’ve got no choice in the path that this takes, and it’s incredibly frustrating. You can’t help Abby not get imprisoned. You can’t have Ellie just enjoy her life in Wyoming. Hell, you can’t even go for a complete bad ending and have one of them die anyway. In the end, Ellie is alive and goes home. She lets Abby escape to Catalina Island to go to the Fireflies. Ellie has nothing to go home to, and the Fireflies have no ability to even provide her with the saving grace of being humanity’s savior anymore. It all ends in complete hopelessness, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

Really, it feels setup in a way that provides a path for another sequel.

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I guess overall, this one fell on the more positive side of what I expected. Given the first game, I expected some mechanical roughness. I definitely got that, but mechanically it fell far more on the positive side that I went in expecting. On the story side, I expected a difficult story, but one that I enjoyed and I got that, even if a few things rubbed me a bit the wrong way. On the setting side, I expected a fantastic compelling setting, and I got that in spades. It’s interesting seeing where this one landed, and it’s a really fine example of what’s possible in game storytelling, despite the fact that the internet seems to be a little angry with the end result.