Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart - The Uninteresting Cutting Edge

Despite the PlayStation 5 being reportedly the fastest-selling Sony console of all time, word on the street is that the product is still completely impossible to find. While I'm lucky to own one at all, I'm not sure how much I need this thing right now.

The PS5 is a machine capable of incredible graphical power and processing speed, truly cutting edge. But why do I need that power or  speed or edge? Today I'm playing NEO: The World Ends With You, a lower-budget game without 4K graphical or computational demands. It doesn't have ray-tracing, and less than 1K, it's an antique! The PS5 is the Ferrari of consoles and I'm driving under the speed limit. Since the Next Generation is unfolding slowly - and getting slower all the time - I might as well relax, because the PS5's power isn't going to get used for awhile.

By that logic, therefore, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart from Insomniac Games is a no-brainer purchase. This is one of the only high-speed performance tracks you can drive your Ferrari console on. If you want to see the $400.00 to $500.00 investment you put into your PS5 white elephant, you have to buy Rift Apart. Nothing else on the PS5 looks this good, and probably nothing is going to look better for a long time. The next-gen revolution in graphics is here, and the rest of the industry won't catch up for awhile.

I'm not begrudging Rift Apart for cornering the market here. Ratchet & Clank's newest game is a technical achievement of astounding quality. In terms of raw graphical horsepower, it is the best looking game I've ever played. The awe never wears off. Rift Apart is as stunning in the last hour as it is in the first. The cartoony art style helps a lot here. Insomniac Games can fully show-off how well the PS5 can produce 4K pixels, sharp color, and ray tracing lighting effects without concern for the dull reality of realism. And as a game, Rift Apart is a nearly-perfect construct. It is a smooth, enjoyable experience from start to finish. The game costs $70, plus tax. I do miss that money I spent. But I have no regrets here.

Anyway, now that the consumer advice portion of this review is done, let me talk about why Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is, underneath all the spectacle, deeply uninteresting.

E3 2021 Things I Want to Talk About Part 2: The Indies

There's plenty of reason to be disappointed in this E3. It was a weird show from a weird year. Physical reality fucked up a lot of big AAA plans. But one reason to be disappointed is not a lack of games. There's too many great games this year. E3 2021 might be one of the best shows in recent memory if all these games hit their potential.

Big studios move like glaciers in this industry. The pandemic could end tomorrow and we'll still be feel its impact for years. But, smaller games from smaller studios don't need to move glaciers. A lot of those companies were already working from home and could easily adapt to a closed offices. Some might have had no pause in development at all. Video games were also indisputably the safest bet for entertainment investments last year. This was the only entertainment industry to do better under plague conditions than worse. There's a lot of money out there all of sudden, especially when Microsoft needs their Netflix model to be flushed with content. Indie games are looking great.

This reflected in the shows themselves. The really big events like Summer Games Fest or Microsoft would show the bare minimum of their games. I know about as much about Starfield today as I did before that trailer played on Sunday. MS and Bethesda would rather you know nothing about Starfield for another year and please stop asking. Meanwhile indie devs got on camera and told their story. They were here to sell you, not fit some huge billion dollar company's grand strategy. That made the big games seem boring and their events dull. Meanwhile, I was thrilled constantly watching streams like Days of the Devs or The Tribeca Games Showcase or The PC Gaming Show. AAA games at E3 2021 were a cruel starvation diet. Indie games were a feast.

Plus, no AAA game was playable this year except that Final Fantasy CHAOS thing. Tons of indie games are out now on Xbox or PC. You still have a few days to try all this out.

Let's start. I have a lot of games that look great to go over:

E3 2021 Things I Want to Talk About Part 1: The Non-Indies

Gamer Christmas has come and passed. Let's talk about it.

Last year there was no official E3 thanks to a pandemic you might have heard about in the news. With E3 2020 cancelled, the usual downpour of gaming news instead trickled out slowly over the summer. It wasn't an E3 by name, but it was an extra-long E3 in spirit. Honestly, E3 2021 needs as much of an asterisk as last year. There was no physical event. The LA Convention Center remained closed and empty. Everybody, from industry insiders to professional media to fans, all shared the experience the same way - on their computers at home. It's egalitarian.

Personally, I love the accessibility of E3 this year. About forty indie demos dropped on Xbox and PC. So instead of needing to wander the floor, hunting for something cool, you can play that something cool at home right now. You didn't need a GameSpot badge to see Square Enix's over-long look at Guardians of the Galaxy. Instead, SE made you watch it during a very dull stream. Yeah, the actual E3 insider experience isn't all glamorous, sometimes its watching uninteresting stuff like that in backroom presentations. Speaking of the duller side of E3, you got to see it on Monday. Lots of random exhibitors like Verizon, "VoltEdge LLC", and "The Sensorium Corporation" fill up space on those floors. Monday's streams of Verizon and Razer were just like wandering the outer edge of the South Floor, all of it filler.

Covid-19 has definitely put a big pause on the industry's grand plans, and that's reflected in this E3. Most of the big AAA games are still a mess. The pandemic only just ended for some people in lucky areas, and still is raging at full force for most of the world. So let's not pretend that's over by any means. It was a disappointing E3 if you wanted a lot of big games this year or many answers. But it was a great E3 if you wanted smaller indie games. I'll have more to say about them tomorrow. There's still a ton to discuss in the non-indie space. Too much to say, in fact.

Let's go:

The Snyder Cut: A Play in Seven Acts

Part 1: Something Lighter

I am almost disappointed by how tasteful the Snyder Cut of Justice League was. If you asked me to imagine what four hours of Zack Snyder superhero filmmaking would look like, with Snyder being given final cut, it would not have been this. I was bracing for something brutal and purposefully awful, the Lars von Trier of superhero movies. I turned on the radio bracing for 6ix9ine and instead heard Chicago.

Here we have Zack Snyder, the guy who brought us Sucker Punch, "Granny’s Peach Tea", and 9/11 times 1,000 melting down Metropolis. None of that awfulness is here. Instead, Zack Snyder made a restrained, actually simple Justice League movie. I am not repulsed on a moral or aesthetic level. Instead, Justice League is perfectly competent.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League, "A Zack Snyder Film", opens with a short message telling us “This film is presented in a 4:3 format to preserve the integrity of Zack Snyder’s creative vision.” In 2021, very little is made for 4:3 anymore. Even Jeopardy is presented in widescreen. This is one of those idiosyncratic choices that seem to exist to prove the auteur credentials of what you’re watching. Think of Christopher Nolan deciding that audiences did not need to hear the dialog in Tenet. The 4:3 choice prepares you for something bold, something entirely unique. The visionary vision of "Visionary Director" Zack Snyder was so vision-ful that we had to sacrifice huge chunks of our TV set to see it.

Then that vision turned out to be remarkably ordinary. The Snyder Cut is a four-hour movie that feels like six hours, but should be half that. But beside that complaint, there is a perfectly normal action blockbuster in here. With a bit of trimming and a 16:9 frame this would not feel very auteur at all. The most Snyder-y of Snyder scene are hidden at tend end. It amounts to a post-credits scene set before the credits. Other than that Justice League feels like... the Justice League, as you imagined them. Superheros you recognize team up to fight a big dumbass alien guy. 

This is a huge win for HBO Max. But is it a huge win for film as an individual's art form?

Blue Fire - Maybe Don't Be 3D Hollow Knight

Blue Fire is very far from a major release. It has been out since February 4th and has not gotten a ton of press. Like seemingly millions of games that come out every year, Blue Fire is a small indie B-game on the Switch. I only happened to come across it randomly watching Switch game trailers, which is usually how I find the weirdest games I have the most trouble talking about. The other day I bought some fucked-up PS1 nightmare for $4 that probably has cursed me to die horribly in a week. I don't think I'll review that one.

There's so much competition in the indie scene today, Blue Fire is lucky to stand out at all. The game is basically 3D Hollow Knight. That's an easy concept to sell, so I think this game has been more successful than most. (Total guess, nobody has access to sales data.) I found a pretty active discord around the game, so somebody is playing it. The developers were able to sell a few hundred plushes of game’s main character. However, Blue Fire is not a game that make will make many Top 10 Lists when the year ends. It has better hopes of appearing in those annual "10 Indie Games You May Have Missed" pieces.

I struggle with Blue Fire for a couple reasons. First of all, this game is just good enough that it should get a bit more exposure. Yet, Blue Fire is also not some obscure masterpiece that you’re missing out on if you only play the big hits. It is a game with potential but also with serious flaws. That leads me to the other problem. When I say Blue Fire needs more exposure, does it need that exposure from me? This might be the only time you will ever hear about this game, and it is coming from somebody who only kind of liked it. Well, I did love something about Blue Fire, just not the main selling point.

Blue Fire is a pretty okay 3D translation of Hollow Knight.That's all good enough, I guess. Instead, Blue Fire is actually one of the greatest 3D platformers I have ever played. That part just happens to be hiding inside a less-than-incredible outer shell. If you want a deeply challenging and rewarding game, its here in Blue Fire. Just not in the main campaign.