Another Playstation game has made its way to PC, and we love to see it. It gives more gamers a chance to enjoy great games, however, the question is, how well does it run on what is supposed to be the superior platform?

Fellow MKAU member, Adam Brasher, has already done a fantastic and full in-depth review of the game itself, which you can check out here Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart – Review | MKAU Gaming. What I want to focus on is how well the PC port runs, but first, we will have a quick look at what Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is about.

Developed by Insomniac Games, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is an Action-Adventure and 3D platformer. You take on the role of Ratchet, venturing forth to take on an evil Emperor from another reality and to do so, you must traverse through interdimensional portals, but you’re not alone in your endeavors, finding and playing as the newcomer, Rivet, a resistance fighter from another dimension, who is just as determined to take out the evil emperor.

Now we got the jist of what the game is about, let’s start off by mentioning what type of machine I was running the game on myself. My PC is equipped with an RTX 3080 10GB, Ryzen 9 5950X, 32GB of DDR4 Ram and I had the game installed on a NVME.2 SSD.

On initial boot, you get prompted with a pre-game launcher. Here you can do a quick run-through of the settings you think your PC can handle.

At first, I went with the preset set to very high and went on my way, and at first glance, it was looking pretty good, with reasonable frame rates of around 120FPS, but it wasn’t very consistent, and ranging between lows of around 60FPS or even lower with busy sections, to 160FPS at points with less action. Having constant and random dips can be kind of jarring and take away from the enjoyment of what is Ratchet & Clank.

I continued to fiddle with some settings and found a happy medium, using mostly high settings to find a comfortable and stable experience that still looked great. Although we all like to have as high a frame rate as possible, having an inconsistent frame rate isn’t ideal for most scenarios.

I’m the kind of person where if it’s not stable, I like to set it to a solid middle ground. Unfortunately, there’s no mode to set a specific frame rate, only VSync, which is rather full or half your monitor’s refresh rate. Time to push the game and my PC to its limits, I was curious to see how it would run on max settings and with ray tracing. Let’s just say it didn’t go well, causing my game to tank down to under 20FPS.

It did look pretty though, so if you do have a PC that can run it on such crazy high settings, I recommend it. As for the mid-tier PCs, there are heaps of options to tend to your experience as well, from lowering the settings, which the game still looked reasonably nice and playable, to the latest upscaling technology options.

I was really impressed with how it looked, even playing in 1080p and on just the high preset to keep my experience smooth, and even the detail in Ratchets fur looked nice after doing so. One thing I did notice, however, is that during cutscenes it appeared to upscale, giving very nice visuals during those cinematics without taking any performance hits.

The only thing I truly had any issues with is traveling through dimensions. For some reason, it tends to lag and stutter between them as though it’s struggling to load. This did take away from some of the fluidity, and overall experience, especially early on in the game when you first witness it.

Ratchet & Clank is definitely a fan favourite and I’m glad to see such a game come to PC. Initially, the launch of a port can be a little rough with some hiccups, but with due time, these will get patched and offer the full experience of such a great title. Right now, I believe the game is completely playable if you can look past these small issues and find the settings that work best for you.

Written by: MrVibeAU