Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart's PC port is one of Sony's best

We’re now several years into Sony’s initiative to bring its first-party PlayStation Games to PC, allowing the once-exclusive titles to be experienced by a new audience. The journey has had its ups and downs, with some ports launching with severe performance issues that mar otherwise excellent games. The latest port brings Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, one of 2021’s most beloved games, to Steam. I’m glad to report that it’s one of the better PlayStation PC ports, but it’ll push your system to its limits.

Step into a new dimension

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was arguably the first game to really flex the power of the PS5 hardware, specifically the shiny new SSD. The game’s dimension-hopping antics mean that you’re constantly loading new worlds in real time, without the crutch of a cutscene or loading screen. While this made the game a marvel on PS5, your mileage on PC will certainly vary.

Playing Rift Apart on an SSD with an RTX 3070 and Intel Core i7-9700k, I was able to make these transitions pretty smoothly while playing on high settings. That set, you’ll notice some pauses and drops in FPS if playing with lower hardware or on higher settings as the game chugs to load everything in a timely manner. You’ll take the biggest hit to performance if you try to play the game on an HDD, as port-handler Nixxes Software recommends an SSD for even the minimum system requirements.

On the other side of things, players with souped-up builds will get to enjoy the true glory of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Its PS5 release was already one of the most visually stunning games I’ve ever seen, and cranking those settings up on a capable PC is simply eye-watering. It’s one of those games that feels at home on a desktop, where you can tinker and manipulate its robust graphical settings.

Just shoot straight

One of the reasons that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart stands as one of the best PlayStation ports to PC is that it simply ran well on day one. It’s a low bar, I know, but we live in a world where The Last of Us Part 1, one of the most critically-acclaimed games of the 21st century, holds a “mixed” aggregate score on Steam due to the fact that it was nigh unplayable when it first came to the platform. Horizon Zero Dawn also had its issues when it was ported in 2020.

It’s all thanks to Nixxes, the team that primarily handled the development of the Rift Apart port and brought the game over from PS5 to PC. The game isn’t a flawless piece of software, but the fact that I never suffered a single-digit framerate or frequent crashes puts it head and shoulders above other ports. Nixxes also handled the ports for Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, both of which also performed quite well on PC. It’s worth noting that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is also Steam Deck Verified, but I didn’t have the chance to try it out on the small console.

Together forever

More than anything, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is great on PC because it’s just an excellent game in general. It was one of the best games of 2021, and it remains a mystery to me how Insomniac was able to deliver this while in between Spider-Man games. A herculean effort, though players with lower-end to mid-range PCs may be dealing with an inferior experience to the PS5 release, those with the proper hardware are in for a genuine treat.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a young journalist from Maryland, who likes to game. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge Scream nerd and film fanatic that will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_