That Insomniac lot are a bit good at this, aren't they? This is a studio that has a thing, and is very good at it. That thing is crunchy action, springy movement, a kind of intangible elasticity of motion. It's playfulness. The team's boiled it down to a formula now – formulas can be good things too by the way – and so they can now inject it with precision into everything they make, from Sunset Overdrive to Spider-Man to of course Ratchet and Clank.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is the latest and it's a treat; featherlight and welcoming, almost completely on rails – sometimes literally – but in a way that just makes playing it a breeze. Mild peril, low to no stakes, a kind and thoughtful heart, a fairly large amount of Nickelodeon jokes that might've washed over me but will no doubt split the sides of your seven-year-old. A blast. This is what Insomniac does so very well: makes games full of charm, movement full of whip and snap, animation full of life.
Here's the setup: Ratchet is a furry creature called a Lombax, lonely and one-ish of a kind, his sidekick Clank is a little robot, and the two of you are heroes. As a gift, on an opening day that has the two of you float through your own victory parade, Clank has made Ratchet a Dimensionator, an old macguffin that can open up portals to different dimensions. But – surprise! – things go sour when the nominatively-determined Dr. Nefarious turns up and pilfers it, travelling to a dimension where he always wins. And we're off. The rest of the plot's a little thin (lots of that payoff can-kicking, "At last, we finally have everything we need to buil- Oh no! The machine's broken!" kind of thing, which can make events feel a touch more overlong than they actually are) but the plot is very much not the point.
