Our nation was rocked to its very core at the recent revelation from actor Elizabeth Perkins that Robert De Niro was very nearly her co-star on the classic 1988 dramedy Big, and with him in the adult Josh role, it would have been a “horror movie.” After a few months of leaving us all to convulse in wonder over this surprising information, Jimmy Fallon has thankfully asked De Niro about what happened during a recent Tonight Show appearance.
Whereas Perkins recalls the only reason De Niro didn’t move forward with the role was due to “scheduling conflicts,” the man himself explains: “We had a thing, an issue with the negotiation so it went the way it went, so that was fine.” And that’s all he had to say on the subject. Check out the clip below to hear the man say it himself, even though most likely you can hear his voice in that clipped sentence, anyhow.
Big eventually landed Tom Hanks, thankfully, and Hanks’s most recent film isNews of the World, and he has at least three other movies on the horizon, including playing Geppettoin the live-action Pinocchio. De Niro has two films currently in post-production. Perkins recently had a memorable run on the short-lived Netflix series GLOW, playing Birdie Howard.
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Sony’s next big PlayStation 5 exclusive, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, releases this Friday, June 11. Ahead of that, reviews for the game have begun to appear online, and it looks like Sony has another hit on its hands.
GameSpot’s Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart review scored the game a 9/10. Reviewer Steve Watts said the game is “flashy and technically impressive without feeling self-important.”
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His review added: “It’s just as silly, sweet, and earnest as the Ratchet & Clank series tends to be, while the new generation of hardware makes this entry look and play better than ever.”
Other reviews beamed about Rift Apart as well, and you can see a sampling of excerpts from reviews below. For more on the critical reception to Rift Apart, head to GameSpot sister site Metacritic. You can also check out GameSpot’s Rift Apart preorder guide.
Game: Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Platforms: PS5
Developer: Insomniac Games
Release Date: June 11
Price: $70/£70/$125 AUD
GameSpot — 9/10
“Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is flashy and technically impressive without feeling self-important. It’s just as silly, sweet, and earnest as the Ratchet & Clank series tends to be, while the new generation of hardware makes this entry look and play better than ever. Like the heroes and villains and their dimensional counterparts, this one may appear different or carry itself with a new accent, but there’s an underlying truth to the person underneath. At its core, it’s still your trusty old pals on another grand space adventure. That’s what’s important.” — Steve Watts [Full review]
ScreenHub — 4 Stars
“We will see a lot of this over the next couple of years. Experienced studios equipped with powerful new tools to help better realise existing design ideas and push them to satisfying extremes. They’ll wash us over with waves of audiovisual and tactile splendour, convincing us that the future is here. It’ll be nice. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apartis very nice. But I can’t wait for someone to lead me out further, into those deeper, unknown waters.” — Edmond Tran [Full review]
VentureBeat — 5/5
“Developer Insomniac Games’ new action-platformer is the PS5’s Halo or Super Mario 64: an early standout release that justifies the console’s existence. But like those games, it is also an instant classic by which we will judge the entire upcoming generation.” — Jeff Grubb [Full review]
IGN — 9/10
“Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is a stunner. It not only gives the latest generation of consoles a game that looks as beautiful as the improved tech promised, but it’s also a fantastic experience to play. Insomniac has been around the Ratchet and Clank block plenty of times before, but Rivet and other new characters add so much charm, wit, and heart to a franchise I’ve loved for most of my life. That’s coupled with series-best action-platforming gameplay and incredible art and sound design across the board. Rift Apart may not be the biggest adventure around, but its big heart, wild weapons, and incredible detail easily make it one of the most memorable of the year so far.” — Jonathon Dornbush [Full review]
NME – 4/5
“Rift Apart is entirely what you expect from a new Ratchet and Clank adventure. It’s a joyous, stunning, playable Saturday morning cartoon, providing a generous helping of family-friendly blasting. And that’s both its biggest strength and its greatest weakness. Despite its incredibly slick exterior, there’s little new gameplay wise to really push the envelope or surprise players. Where the constant reinvention of a Mario title keeps the gameplay feeling fresh by bombarding the player with new mechanics, Rift Apart instead relies on visual splendour for its variation, wowing you with a string of setpieces between repeated sections of familiar-feeling gameplay. Those that came away from its initial reveal wowed at its Rift-based premise will leave bitterly disappointed. Still, that’s not to say that there isn’t fun to be had here–and when everything looks this good, it’s easy to forgive a bit of repetition.” — Tom Regan [Full review]
The Guardian — 4/5
“Humour has always been a defining feature of Ratchet & Clank, right back to its origins on the PlayStation 2, but it doesn’t try too hard. It’s funny in a laid-back, undemanding way, and the story is similarly easy to digest. Rift Apart did not exactly challenge me, but it entertained me immensely. It’s just such a lot of fun, and so gorgeous I still can’t quite believe it. If this is an indication of how the new generation of consoles can infuse familiar-feeling games with new wonder, we’re in for a great few years.” — Keza MacDonald [Full review]
Game Informer — 9/10
“I had a smile on my face most of the way through Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. It’s a great continuation of the series that is just a joy to play. It steals your eye with its stunning vistas, makes you care about the characters, and is loaded to the hilt with fan service (especially in the alternate dimension and a weapon you have to assemble). Insomniac clearly had a blast working on this game and leaves us with a tease for an even bigger adventure right before the credits roll.” — Andrew Reiner [Full review]
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A new season of Fortnite means a new landscape of weapons to learn. Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 7 goes heavy on the sci-fi, so there are several new weapons to master, in addition to some previous weapons being vaulted or unvaulted. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the new list of weapons you’ll find across Apollo. Put on your tinfoil hats and get in there with these Fortnite Season 7 vaulted and unvaulted weapons, then stay tuned as we break down all the brand-new weapons first arriving on the island.
Fortnite Season 7 Vaulted Weapons
Dual Pistols, we hardly knew ye.
One of the first questions many players seem to have when a new season of Fortnite launches is: What weapons have been vaulted? In Fortnite Season 7, the list of vaulted (no longer available) weapons isn’t too long, but it might include something you got used to, so check to see what’s absent.
Infantry Rifle
Revolver
Harpoon Gun
Dual Pistols
The lack of a harpoon gun means there’s no other way to fish than with a good old-fashioned pole–okay, or you can still blow up fishing spots with grenades if you’re feeling dangerous. In addition to those, the Flopper fish, Stink fish, and Vendetta fish won’t be found in the waters of the island, at least not right now. Keep in mind that Epic likes to vault and unvault additional items as a season goes on.
The Infantry Rifle was only around for a few weeks of Season 6 before it was vaulted once more, while the Revolver seems to come and go almost alternatingly across Fortnite seasons, so don’t expect it to be gone for long.
Fortnite Season 7 Unvaulted Weapons
After a three-month absence, Snipers are back in Fortnite.
Epic would never remove a bunch of items and not replace them with others. The list of unvaulted weapons is actually even longer than the vaulted list, so players can enjoy access to more weapons at the start of Season 7. Here’s the list:
Bolt-Action Sniper Rifle
Heavy Assault Rifle
Suppressed SMG
Pistol
Hand Cannon
Snipers have returned after taking the entire Season 6 off, to either your dismay or excitement depending on how adept you find yourself to be aiming down the scope. While the Revolver and Dual Pistols depart, two other handguns–the Pistol and Hand Cannon– return to replace them. Joining these weapons, other unvaulted items include the Launch Pad, which can be placed on any player-built flat surface to send you gliding across the map.
Aliens have invaded Fortnite as Season 7: Invasion has begun. Along with new weapons, new locations, and new UFO vehicles, the new season brings a brand-new collectible in Alien Artifacts. What are they and what do they do? We’ve got the answers for you right here.
Alien Artifacts are a new collectible currency similar to the gold Bars in previous seasons. Unlike those Bars however, these artifacts have a specific purpose: unlocking customizable parts for Kymera, the first skin unlocked in the Chapter 2 Season 7 Battle Pass.
Using the artifacts found around the island you can design the Kymera skin to your liking, changing its head shape, eyes, skin color and more. Most options cost between two and 17 artifacts.
Alien Artifacts are located through normal exploration of the island, appearing in random places where they can be collected by walking through them like ammo or materials. It is still unclear whether or not some locations will always spawn artifacts, but the pool of water where the Spire used to be in the center of the map seems to spawn them regularly.
The other method of obtaining Alien Artifacts is through Cosmic Chests, a new type of chest unique to Season 7. Cosmic Chests are loot chests frozen in giant crystals and suspended in mid-air. Opening them requires a team of players, meaning they will only appear in non-solo matches.
To open the Cosmic Chest, your team must do the following:
Locate a Cosmic Chest and have your team gather around it.
Upon activation, a beam of light will attach to one or more members of your team.
Those members must attack specific points on the crystal, and only those members can damage said points.
The beams of light will shift throughout the party, so repeat the steps with all party members until the chest is freed.
Prominent Fortnite Twitter account HypeX has shown gameplay of a squad opening a Cosmic Chest, which you can see below.
Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 7 brings an alien invasion to the island, adding Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty and DC superhero Superman as part of the Season 7 Battle Pass. Check out our full breakdown of what’s new and what to expect when you drop in the middle of the Invasion for the first time, as well as all of the unvaulted weapons and Season 7 Week 1 challenges.
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A Catholic Memes community has banded together to see to it that Amazon’s upcoming Lord of The Rings show will be “based and chasted.” The petition on Change.org already has almost 38,000 signatures, with the goal being 50,000.
The petition claims that Amazon has hired “intimacy coaches” and has asked that actors be comfortable with “doing nude scenes in the castings.” It goes on to say that Tolkien’s work is “truly wholesome and packed with incredible Christian symbolism.”
It’s certainly true that Tolkien was indeed a devout Catholic, but this goes more in a hyperbolic way in stating that his “memory does not need to be stained with gratuitous nudity or even nudity in the slightest.” Tolkien’s works have been family-friendly, most notably with The Hobbit, which is a children’s book; however, taking the themes from three volumes of the Lord of the Rings, there’s a lot more content geared towards adults.
Even as late as 2001 when the movies premiered, The Lord of the Rings was actually banned in several churches and deemed “satanic.” A church in New Mexico even held a book burning event and has been challenged numerous times throughout its publication history as being “anti-Christian.” The books were usually paired with the Harry Potter series since the movies hit around the same time.
Tolkien’s estate itself hasn’t laid out any particular guidelines with morality clauses for the show, but more like what the show can, and can’t show in the timeline of the events of the books. So far all we really know is that the First Age is completely off-limits.
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Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a game about counterparts. In this strange new setting, everyone has a doppelganger who looks almost identical to the one we know, but their circumstances have changed them. Ratchet’s new alternate dimensional counterpart, Rivet, may have had a harder life than him, and it’s shaped her personality in surprising ways, but she’s still the same heroic person at heart. The same can be said for Rift Apart. The new generation of hardware has made some dramatic changes for the better, but in a very welcome and comforting way, this is still the Ratchet & Clank you’ve come to know and love.
The title may be “Ratchet & Clank,” but Rivet is the real star here. Ratchet and his robot buddy Clank are the template that helps inform what we learn about Rivet and her own journey, and the vast majority of Rift Apart takes place in her universe. She also seems to get slightly more playtime, even if the stages are split roughly evenly as the two heroes divide-and-conquer to enact their universe-saving plan.
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Once the game begins in earnest, after a brief tutorial in Ratchet’s Megalopolis, the bumbling but sinister Dr. Nefarious transports himself and the titular duo to another dimension. When Nefarious gets there, he finds that it’s ruled by an Emperor Nefarious. The Emperor is conspicuously absent at the moment, so our Dr. Nefarious just helps himself to the throne, and no one, including the evil executive assistant, seems to notice that he’s a pretender. Meanwhile Ratchet and Clank are separated, and Clank is picked up by the freedom fighter, Rivet.
Most of the game centers around these dimensional counterparts, who are not exact twins but rather similar characters with different names and slightly different personalities in this new world. Rift Apart rewards longtime fans with little nudging winks on how the alternative characters break from our expectations. For example Mr. Zurkon, a violent autonomous robot that has been both a weapon and a character in past Ratchet games, now owns a bar with a strict no-fighting policy. Giving the alternate characters their own identities and names helps reduce what might otherwise be confusing dialogue about who matches who. Ratchet, naturally, thinks this mysterious lady Lombax has taken Clank, but thankfully the “heroes in strife because of a misunderstanding” trope is resolved quickly and they begin working together.
But this game belongs to Rivet not just because it takes place in her dimension, but because she’s such a fantastic addition to the larger Ratchet & Clank universe. Having finished Rift Apart, I would love to play a standalone Rivet game, set in this or any other dimension. Part of that is the performance of Jennifer Hale as Rivet, who introduces a disarming amount of emotional heft. Unlike Ratchet, Rivet has experienced a string of defeats from the oppressive Nefarious regime, and Hale imbues the character with little tinges of self-doubt and loneliness even as she maintains her heroic determination. This is a character like Ratchet who fights for justice, but she hasn’t had a partner like Clank. Ultimately, the story is a sweet-natured but relatively conventional one about friendship and trust, elevated above its conventions by Hale and the surrounding cast.
Despite the fact that the dual heroes barely ever talk face-to-face, they share one pool of equipment. The game gives a sci-fi gobbledygook explanation, but more importantly, having one weapon wheel between both characters ensures that you can switch between your favorite guns without having to pause the fun and look for what you need. Ratchet is known for its inventive munitions, and aside from a handful of returning guns like the Warmonger and Buzz Blades, almost all of the weapons are new. They largely fit into familiar archetypes, but the PS5 DualSense makes a massive difference to how the weapons behave and how you interact with them.
For the most part, the DualSense lets you control different functions with a half- or full-pull of the right trigger. The Negatron Collider, for example, is an energy beam that will charge up and then hold the charge at a half-pull, and fire at a full-pull. The default Burst Pistol swaps between a fairly accurate single-shot and a less-accurate triple-shot. Several of the grenade-types use the half-pull as a targeting reticle. These functions seem deceptively simple but once I got into a rhythm, it felt completely natural to call up functions without a second thought, encouraging me to experiment with satisfyingly complex strategies. For example, a favorite of mine, the Blackhole Storm, is a gatling gun that spins up at a half-pull and then fires at full. With a little experimenting, I found you can keep it spinning without firing by easing up on the trigger, saving ammo but keeping the weapon at the ready. It’s that kind of smart implementation that makes the DualSense functionality more impactful than a mere gimmick.
Even the DualSense speaker is welcome. I never enjoyed the controller speaker on the DualShock 4, but here it’s used to subtly signal when your weapon is charged, or to give you a crisp and satisfying ting-ting sound of collecting bolts. At some points the haptic vibration and speaker prompts blend so seamlessly it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Smart implementation makes the DualSense functionality more impactful than a mere gimmick.
Like past Ratchet games, the weapon upgrades come in two complementary tracks. The first simply upgrades your weapon through use, so the more you use your favorite weapons, the faster they’ll upgrade. The other is obtained by purchasing nodes on an upgrade tree with Raritanium, a limited resource scattered throughout the planets. The upgrade tree unlocks more nodes as you upgrade the weapon through use, so the two systems sync together very well.
Some of the weapons feel a little off with how many uses it takes to earn an upgrade, though. The Ricochet gun, which bounces off your enemies like a pinball, upgraded much later than some of my other weapons even with heavy use, and very specialized or situational weapons like the Bombardier or Cold Snap are achingly slow to upgrade. Playing a Ratchet game as I do–where I basically abandon any weapon that’s already maxed except in cases of emergency–I started to find that the very situational weapons were lopsided toward the back half. That meant that I spent the last handful of encounters firing off low-level weapons so as to not “waste” the experience before switching to my fully upgraded arsenal to actually take the fight seriously.
Rift Apart is an action platformer, and Insomniac has built further on its already robust traversal options from past games. Complementing the usual suite of jumps, rocket boots, and contextual swinging mechanics are two new moves: the Rift Tether and the Phantom Dash. The Rift Tether pulls you into a dimensional hole in such a way that it looks as if the world is moving around you, while the Phantom Dash lets you phase out of reality and functions like a dodge roll. In the platforming segments, these combine with the existing Ratchet & Clank mainstays to make for some breathless, harrowing setpieces, as you transfer from rail-grinding to wall-running to rift-tethering with reckless abandon.
Even better, these traversal tools sing when you apply them in combat scenarios, especially in tougher encounters when you’re swarmed with enemies. The Rift Tether lets you close distances or get away for a breather quickly, and the Phantom Dash feels different than a standard jumping dodge because it breaks the continuity of your fire–including the charge for weapons like the Negatron Collider. Whether you want to risk a dodging jump to hold your fire or play it safe with a Phantom Dash is the kind of split-second risk-reward decision that makes combat feel exciting.
Not all of the traversal is quite as satisfying, though. A few times you have to jump on the back of a pterodactyl-like creature named Trudi to navigate a particular stage or snag some collectibles. While it’s seemingly intended to add variety, the beast feels sluggish and temperamental compared to the smooth and intuitive controls of Ratchet and Rivet. These segments are short enough that they don’t detract too much from the overall experience, but they stand out as a weak spot when compared to the rest.
More successfully, Insomniac mixes in moments of variety with two types of puzzle stages. A series of Clank puzzles has you placing orbs with different effects (like super-speed or heavy weight) to guide a constantly running line of Clank “possibilities,” Lemmings-like, toward a goal. A more action-oriented puzzle section, featuring an adorable spider-robot named Glitch, has you unlocking and then zapping viruses to open computer systems. Similar to the guns and bolt pickups, the tap-tap-tap of Glitch’s tiny metallic legs sound and feel very satisfying on the DualSense. These interstitial segments aren’t deep enough to support their own games, but they’re a welcome brief change of pace in this one.
Gallery
Those puzzles are also entirely skippable if you find they’re not to your taste. The challenges and Trophies aren’t gated by difficulty level, and you can use accessibility options like the slowdown mechanic to finesse your way past tricky parts. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart comes across as a game that’s comfortable in its own skin and unafraid to let you engage on your own terms. Not into this or that? “Hey man, that’s cool,” it seems to say. “Just enjoy the rest, we’re all here to have a good time.”
All of this is delivered in such a refined, recognizable package that the technical prowess on display doesn’t often call attention to itself. The Rift Tethers refresh your perspective almost instantaneously. Cutscenes and gameplay blend so seamlessly together you might often miss the transition. Pocket dimensions hidden throughout planets open an entirely separate environment that feel like they’ve punched a hole in the fabric of space. A couple of particular planets let you switch back and forth between entire realities in a snap. And load times are non-existent, either so fast that you’d never notice or hidden behind scene transitions. It makes the whole game feel cinematic and harmonious in a natural, unselfconscious way.
If you do pause for a moment to take it in, it will be to gawk at the stunning visuals. The environments are richly detailed and differentiated. Both the enemies and major characters have the kinds of stretchy, expressive faces and inventive design elements you’d see in an animated feature film. The textures are so well-realized you can practically feel the difference between Clank’s shiny steel and other types of painted or rough metals. Each time I reached a new planet, I would take a few moments to just rotate the camera and soak it all in. It’s just astounding to look at, even if that level of visual fidelity isn’t as noticeable when you’re in the thick of the action.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is flashy and technically impressive without feeling self-important. It’s just as silly, sweet, and earnest as the Ratchet & Clank series tends to be, while the new generation of hardware makes this entry look and play better than ever. Like the heroes and villains and their dimensional counterparts, this one may appear different or carry itself with a new accent, but there’s an underlying truth to the person underneath. At its core, it’s still your trusty old pals on another grand space adventure. That’s what’s important.
Horizon: Forbidden West is coming to both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, leading some to believe that the cross-generation development limited the game in some capacity. Game director Mathijs de Jonge has now spoken about this, saying Forbidden West will shine on both PS4 and PS5, though the next-gen edition has a number of benefits.
“I don’t think the cross-generation development was limiting in any way,” he told Hardware Zone. “When we started with the concept of this game, we had so many great ideas that ended up being included, to the point that we didn’t really think about hardware limitations or anything, we just wanted to design a really nice, unique experience for the player. An awesome adventure.”
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The “big delta” between the PS4 and PS5 versions of Forbidden West is mainly “on the graphical side of things,” de Jonge said. “On the PlayStation 5, we can add so much more detail graphically. We can see the tiny hairs on Aloy’s face, for example. You can also see a ton of detail from far away,” he said.
The PS5 edition also uses 3D audio, leverages the DualSense controller, and has faster loading times, de Jonge said. Speaking more to the graphics, de Jonge said the power of the PS5 allows the game to render individual strands of moss on rocks. “So this machine is so powerful, and it can add so much more detail to the image,” he said. “I think that’s one of the biggest deltas, next to the processing power of the machine. Because the PlayStation 5 is so much more powerful, we have it on all the time. During gameplay, there’s a very high-quality rendering and lighting system on a lot. So there are all these extra features that make the game look even better.”
This is not the first time that de Jonge has spoken about the PS4 edition of Forbidden West. He previously promised that the game will look “fantastic” on PS4, despite the system having relatively less power than the PS5.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a game about counterparts. In this strange new setting, everyone has a doppelganger who looks almost identical to the one we know, but their circumstances have changed them. Ratchet’s new alternate dimensional counterpart, Rivet, may have had a harder life than him, and it’s shaped her personality in surprising ways, but she’s still the same heroic person at heart. The same can be said for Rift Apart. The new generation of hardware has made some dramatic changes for the better, but in a very welcome and comforting way, this is still the Ratchet & Clank you’ve come to know and love.
The title may be “Ratchet & Clank,” but Rivet is the real star here. Ratchet and his robot buddy Clank are the template that helps inform what we learn about Rivet and her own journey, and the vast majority of Rift Apart takes place in her universe. She also seems to get slightly more playtime, even if the stages are split roughly evenly as the two heroes divide-and-conquer to enact their universe-saving plan.
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Now Playing: Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Video Review
Once the game begins in earnest, after a brief tutorial in Ratchet’s Megalopolis, the bumbling but sinister Dr. Nefarious transports himself and the titular duo to another dimension. When Nefarious gets there, he finds that it’s ruled by an Emperor Nefarious. The Emperor is conspicuously absent at the moment, so our Dr. Nefarious just helps himself to the throne, and no one, including the evil executive assistant, seems to notice that he’s a pretender. Meanwhile Ratchet and Clank are separated, and Clank is picked up by the freedom fighter, Rivet.
Most of the game centers around these dimensional counterparts, who are not exact twins but rather similar characters with different names and slightly different personalities in this new world. Rift Apart rewards longtime fans with little nudging winks on how the alternative characters break from our expectations. For example Mr. Zurkon, a violent autonomous robot that has been both a weapon and a character in past Ratchet games, now owns a bar with a strict no-fighting policy. Giving the alternate characters their own identities and names helps reduce what might otherwise be confusing dialogue about who matches who. Ratchet, naturally, thinks this mysterious lady Lombax has taken Clank, but thankfully the “heroes in strife because of a misunderstanding” trope is resolved quickly and they begin working together.
But this game belongs to Rivet not just because it takes place in her dimension, but because she’s such a fantastic addition to the larger Ratchet & Clank universe. Having finished Rift Apart, I would love to play a standalone Rivet game, set in this or any other dimension. Part of that is the performance of Jennifer Hale as Rivet, who introduces a disarming amount of emotional heft. Unlike Ratchet, Rivet has experienced a string of defeats from the oppressive Nefarious regime, and Hale imbues the character with little tinges of self-doubt and loneliness even as she maintains her heroic determination. This is a character like Ratchet who fights for justice, but she hasn’t had a partner like Clank. Ultimately, the story is a sweet-natured but relatively conventional one about friendship and trust, elevated above its conventions by Hale and the surrounding cast.
Despite the fact that the dual heroes barely ever talk face-to-face, they share one pool of equipment. The game gives a sci-fi gobbledygook explanation, but more importantly, having one weapon wheel between both characters ensures that you can switch between your favorite guns without having to pause the fun and look for what you need. Ratchet is known for its inventive munitions, and aside from a handful of returning guns like the Warmonger and Buzz Blades, almost all of the weapons are new. They largely fit into familiar archetypes, but the PS5 DualSense makes a massive difference to how the weapons behave and how you interact with them.
For the most part, the DualSense lets you control different functions with a half- or full-pull of the right trigger. The Negatron Collider, for example, is an energy beam that will charge up and then hold the charge at a half-pull, and fire at a full-pull. The default Burst Pistol swaps between a fairly accurate single-shot and a less-accurate triple-shot. Several of the grenade-types use the half-pull as a targeting reticle. These functions seem deceptively simple but once I got into a rhythm, it felt completely natural to call up functions without a second thought, encouraging me to experiment with satisfyingly complex strategies. For example, a favorite of mine, the Blackhole Storm, is a gatling gun that spins up at a half-pull and then fires at full. With a little experimenting, I found you can keep it spinning without firing by easing up on the trigger, saving ammo but keeping the weapon at the ready. It’s that kind of smart implementation that makes the DualSense functionality more impactful than a mere gimmick.
Even the DualSense speaker is welcome. I never enjoyed the controller speaker on the DualShock 4, but here it’s used to subtly signal when your weapon is charged, or to give you a crisp and satisfying ting-ting sound of collecting bolts. At some points the haptic vibration and speaker prompts blend so seamlessly it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Smart implementation makes the DualSense functionality more impactful than a mere gimmick.
Like past Ratchet games, the weapon upgrades come in two complementary tracks. The first simply upgrades your weapon through use, so the more you use your favorite weapons, the faster they’ll upgrade. The other is obtained by purchasing nodes on an upgrade tree with Raritanium, a limited resource scattered throughout the planets. The upgrade tree unlocks more nodes as you upgrade the weapon through use, so the two systems sync together very well.
Some of the weapons feel a little off with how many uses it takes to earn an upgrade, though. The Ricochet gun, which bounces off your enemies like a pinball, upgraded much later than some of my other weapons even with heavy use, and very specialized or situational weapons like the Bombardier or Cold Snap are achingly slow to upgrade. Playing a Ratchet game as I do–where I basically abandon any weapon that’s already maxed except in cases of emergency–I started to find that the very situational weapons were lopsided toward the back half. That meant that I spent the last handful of encounters firing off low-level weapons so as to not “waste” the experience before switching to my fully upgraded arsenal to actually take the fight seriously.
Rift Apart is an action platformer, and Insomniac has built further on its already robust traversal options from past games. Complementing the usual suite of jumps, rocket boots, and contextual swinging mechanics are two new moves: the Rift Tether and the Phantom Dash. The Rift Tether pulls you into a dimensional hole in such a way that it looks as if the world is moving around you, while the Phantom Dash lets you phase out of reality and functions like a dodge roll. In the platforming segments, these combine with the existing Ratchet & Clank mainstays to make for some breathless, harrowing setpieces, as you transfer from rail-grinding to wall-running to rift-tethering with reckless abandon.
Even better, these traversal tools sing when you apply them in combat scenarios, especially in tougher encounters when you’re swarmed with enemies. The Rift Tether lets you close distances or get away for a breather quickly, and the Phantom Dash feels different than a standard jumping dodge because it breaks the continuity of your fire–including the charge for weapons like the Negatron Collider. Whether you want to risk a dodging jump to hold your fire or play it safe with a Phantom Dash is the kind of split-second risk-reward decision that makes combat feel exciting.
Not all of the traversal is quite as satisfying, though. A few times you have to jump on the back of a pterodactyl-like creature named Trudi to navigate a particular stage or snag some collectibles. While it’s seemingly intended to add variety, the beast feels sluggish and temperamental compared to the smooth and intuitive controls of Ratchet and Rivet. These segments are short enough that they don’t detract too much from the overall experience, but they stand out as a weak spot when compared to the rest.
More successfully, Insomniac mixes in moments of variety with two types of puzzle stages. A series of Clank puzzles has you placing orbs with different effects (like super-speed or heavy weight) to guide a constantly running line of Clank “possibilities,” Lemmings-like, toward a goal. A more action-oriented puzzle section, featuring an adorable spider-robot named Glitch, has you unlocking and then zapping viruses to open computer systems. Similar to the guns and bolt pickups, the tap-tap-tap of Glitch’s tiny metallic legs sound and feel very satisfying on the DualSense. These interstitial segments aren’t deep enough to support their own games, but they’re a welcome brief change of pace in this one.
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Those puzzles are also entirely skippable if you find they’re not to your taste. The challenges and Trophies aren’t gated by difficulty level, and you can use accessibility options like the slowdown mechanic to finesse your way past tricky parts. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart comes across as a game that’s comfortable in its own skin and unafraid to let you engage on your own terms. Not into this or that? “Hey man, that’s cool,” it seems to say. “Just enjoy the rest, we’re all here to have a good time.”
All of this is delivered in such a refined, recognizable package that the technical prowess on display doesn’t often call attention to itself. The Rift Tethers refresh your perspective almost instantaneously. Cutscenes and gameplay blend so seamlessly together you might often miss the transition. Pocket dimensions hidden throughout planets open an entirely separate environment that feel like they’ve punched a hole in the fabric of space. A couple of particular planets let you switch back and forth between entire realities in a snap. And load times are non-existent, either so fast that you’d never notice or hidden behind scene transitions. It makes the whole game feel cinematic and harmonious in a natural, unselfconscious way.
If you do pause for a moment to take it in, it will be to gawk at the stunning visuals. The environments are richly detailed and differentiated. Both the enemies and major characters have the kinds of stretchy, expressive faces and inventive design elements you’d see in an animated feature film. The textures are so well-realized you can practically feel the difference between Clank’s shiny steel and other types of painted or rough metals. Each time I reached a new planet, I would take a few moments to just rotate the camera and soak it all in. It’s just astounding to look at, even if that level of visual fidelity isn’t as noticeable when you’re in the thick of the action.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is flashy and technically impressive without feeling self-important. It’s just as silly, sweet, and earnest as the Ratchet & Clank series tends to be, while the new generation of hardware makes this entry look and play better than ever. Like the heroes and villains and their dimensional counterparts, this one may appear different or carry itself with a new accent, but there’s an underlying truth to the person underneath. At its core, it’s still your trusty old pals on another grand space adventure. That’s what’s important.
Fortnite Season 7 has arrived, as you can probably tell from all the aliens running around. As always, a new season means new challenges, and the Fortnite Season 7 Week 1 challenges are already here with the launch of the Invasion season. If you’re looking for a quick boost to your Battle Pass level, here’s the full list of Week 1 challenges in Fortnite.
Week 1 Epic Quests
Collect different weapon types (5) – 30,000 XP
Search chests at Steamy Stacks or Craggy Cliffs (7) – 30,000 XP
Deal Damage with Pulse Rifle (500) – 30,000 XP
Elimination with the Rail Gun (1) – 30,000 XP
Accept a quest from a payphone (1) – 30,000 XP
Upgrade weapons at upgrade benches (3) – 30,000 XP
Buy a shield potion from a Mending Machine (1) – 30,000 XP
Week 1 Legendary Quests
Converse with Sunny, Abstrakt, Dreamflower, Riot or Bushranger (0/3) – 45,000 XP
Collect Stone From The Aftermath (0/100) – 30,000 XP
Collect 10 different IO tech weapons (0/3) – 30,000 XP
Interact with Bunker Jonesy’s conspiracy board (0/1) – 30,000 XP
Place rubber ducks in Retail Row, Pleasant Park and Believer Beach (0/3) – 30,000 XP
As you can see, this week’s Legendary Quests aren’t repetitive as they have been in recent seasons, and instead focus a bit more on story elements surrounding the alien invasion. Some of these challenges are quite simple even if it’s your first time playing on the new map. Collecting five different weapon types, for example, is pretty self-explanatory. We went over some of the new weapons in our Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 7 overview.
Get off to a fast start with the Fortnite Season 7 Week 1 challenges.
Steamy Stacks and Craggy Cliffs are just where they were last season, so look to the northeast quadrant of the island for these named locations. The Pulse Rifle can’t be found in any special spot, so if you happen upon one, preferably in Team Rumble where you can respawn, hold onto it and do some damage. The same goes for the Rail Gun. Payphones are scattered all over the map and operate a bit like NPCs, who themselves still roam the island. Pick up any payphone and accept a quest to complete that challenge. Mending Machines are similarly ubiquitous.
The Aftermath is the new location in the exact center of the island (last season’s The Spire). Head there to collect stone for that challenge. The rest of the Legendary Quests will get their own guides shortly, so stay tuned as we bring you continued coverage of Fortnite Season 7. We’ve also got a guide on where to find Alien Artifacts so you can start customizing Kymera, as well as a full list of all the unvaulted weapons for this season.
Watch live streams, videos, and more from GameSpot’s summer event. Check it out
PlayStation has announced the top downloaded games for May 2021, with the top spot on PlayStation 5 going to everyone’s favorite tall vampire lady simulator.
Resident Evil Village topped the list of most downloaded PlayStation 5 games in both North America and Europe in its debut month, with the game also topping the list for PlayStation 4 in Europe. North American PS4s downloaded Rust: Console Edition the most in May, with RE Village right behind it in second place.
Games that featured prominently on the PS5 May downloads list include Returnal from Housemarque–which placed second and third on the North American and European PS5 lists respectively–and sports titles MLB The Show 21 (third in North America) and FIFA 21 (second in Europe).
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition also launched strong on PlayStation 4, ranking third in North American downloads and sixth in Europe. Grand Theft Auto V continued its sales dominance, ranking fourth overall on both PS4 lists.
In the free-to-play sector Call of Duty: Warzone topped both consoles in both regions, with Fortnite and Rocket League making up the top three.
The full top 20 rankings for both North America and Europe, as provided on the official PlayStation Blog post, are below.
