All eyes were on the PC launch for Ratchet and Clank after the last PS5 port on PC, The Last of Us Part I, didn’t go down too well. Who would have thought that Ratchet and Clank would ever make their debut on PC in the first place? While Sony has been quite open about porting other franchises, I honestly thought it would never happen. Well, it is here and it looks absolutely gorgeous. If anything, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart on PC sets a new bar for modern PC hardware and the game’s robust level of customization makes it a marvel to look at.
The game’s PC system requirements might look reasonable but the more you ask from this CG-meets-game masterpiece, the more you’ll need to have in order to bring it to life. At the same time, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is also incredibly scalable so its requirements are only a rough estimate of the hardware you’ll need. I often jump from PC gaming on my 144Hz 1440p monitor to my 4K TV and the game had issues running on the latter.
This is likely due to the bump in resolution across the two displays. Of course, a simple tweak to the DLSS toggle changed this. I could easily go from “Balanced” on my TV to “Quality” on my monitor to make up for the few hitches in frame rate. I could even turn off DLSS completely if I wanted to. This helped push a higher visual fidelity on the game at the cost of some frame rate.
I have reviewed Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart already on PS5 so I won’t go into the general gameplay much here. Instead, I want to touch on the performance of the game here instead.
But if you’re new to the game, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is a somewhat return to form for the Ratchet and Clank series. It follows Ratchet and Clank across the galaxy as they try to stop Emperor Nefarious, who is an alternate version of Dr Nefarious and a bad guy who actually succeeded and has run the universe with an iron fist, from taking over their universe.
The game has a heavy focus on the Rift gameplay, a mechanic that sees Ratchet and Clank jump through interdimensional rifts from one universe to the other. These rifts lead to unworldly locations and at times, alternate versions of worlds they are already in. Situational events take place here too such as different enemies have set up shop, places are in complete ruin and at times, blocked off by puzzles solved in other rifts.
For the most part, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is a fun shooter. The guns are cool to wield and the production levels are at an all-time high. The series already set the bar back on the PS3 with its so-called “Pixar” animation quality and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart just takes things to another level.
Even after playing the PC port, I do feel like the game still plays thing safe. It is still a cookie-cutter Ratchet and Clank game that runs about 8-10 hours and has very little to go back to once the credits run. The story is predictable and the planet-to-planet progression still delivers a mixed bag of shallow and eventful locations to explore.
The thing is, if you have played a Ratchet and Clank game in the past 20 years, you have played Rift Apart. Sure, it is a shinier more technologically-advanced game but it is just a Ratchet and Clank game. That is both a good and a bad thing in my opinion.
Right onto the benchmarks and performance. I ran Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart on all sorts of settings. I tested it without DLSS 3 enabled and everything maxed out to the top at 4K and went down from there. I ran these tests on my current PC build which includes a Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti Gaming OC, 32GB of DDR5 4800MT/s RAM and an AMD Ryzen 7700X CPU. I also installed the game on my Seagate Firecuda 530. Here are some of the results I had.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Maxed – DLSS Off (4K) – 21FPS AVG
At first, I cranked the game to the max on my 4K TV. This means maxing out the resolution, and graphics settings, turning off DLSS 3 and increasing ray tracing to the max. The same goes for other settings such as ambient occlusion and shadows. You don’t get more maxed out than this.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Maxed – DLSS On + RT Maxed (4K)
Of course, 21FPS isn’t ideal for gaming at all so that’s where DLSS 3 comes in. Across the various settings, I had the following frames:
- DLSS Quality – 65FPS Avg.
- DLSS Balanced – 73FPS Avg.
- DLSS Performance – 85FPS Avg.
- DLSS Ultra Performance – 99FPS Avg.
DLSS 3 does a great job of boosting performance. It takes a somewhat unplayable 20FPS experience and immediately makes it 60FPS and playable. Quality and Balanced were likely the best settings here. Performance had some nasty artefacts which appeared on all moving objects and even shadows. Smaller objects also flickered a little bit. However, on Quality and Balanced, the image quality was a lot better.
There was the odd artefact here and there, especially on distance leaves and wired but the general quality polish was a lot better than going with Performance and Ultra Performance. Again, 60FPS is decent for this title.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Maxed – DLSS Off + RT Off (4K) – 50FPS Avg.
I also tested how the game ran without any raytracing enabled. At 4K with DLSS off, it was okay at around 50FPS. Here, you’re getting the best possible visual polish. Assets look super sharp and the resolution is at its best. For those who think raytracing is a waste of resources (like me), this is the mode for you. You can always enable DLSS 3 to get an even bigger boost:
- DLSS Quality – 85FPS Avg.
- DLSS Balanced – 96FPS Avg.
- DLSS Performance – 107FPS Avg.
- DLSS Ultra Performance – 119FPS Avg.
Of course, you can always lower the resolution slightly on the game to help boost the performance. I found on my RTX 4070 Ti that running at 1440p maxed with DLSS 3 disabled produced a 50-60FPS image and honestly, that works for me. The general visual polish was great and I was able to see all the ray-tracing reflections and shadows.
Overall, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is quite easy to get running. It has quite a decent set of graphics settings to tweak which are all scalable to your hardware. If you want to max this out at 4K, you’ll need a pretty hefty GPU. Especially if you want to avoid the nasty graphics hiccups on DLSS 3.
In terms of bugs, I did experience a few while playing Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart closer to the launch. However, the most recent update has ironed out many of the graphical hiccups I faced. It will only get better from here.
As a PC game, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is excellent. As a game, I still have my issues with it but that stems more from playing the same old thing for the past twenty years. It is definitely a visual showcase on PC.
This Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart PC review is based on a code sent to us by PlayStation. The game is now out on Steam for R799.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Summary
As a PC game, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is a visual showcase with a robust list of graphics settings that make the experience scalable to all hardware.
