GAME CLEAR No. 35 -- Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus

Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus (2013, PS3)

Developer: Insomniac Games
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Clear Date: 6/10/2021

Just like A Crack in Time, I managed to beat this game just in time for Rift Apart, which I’ve already started. I’m leaving the same disclaimer here in that regard, which is that I’m operating on slightly fuzzy memory here since I’m playing a subsequent entry at time of writing, and I’ve been playing a lot of R&C in general, but I’ll do my best to make sure my comments are relevant specifically to Into the Nexus.

This game was a weird one because it was released mere days before the PS4 came out, and I don’t remember it making much of a splash at all. Having said that, it also came out a few months before I picked up the Ratchet & Clank HD Collection and played the series for the first time, so it wasn’t really on my radar either. In any case, I did notice that it settled on a Metascore in the mid-seventies and was curious to see if it represented any sort of drop off in quality compared to its universally enjoyable predecessors. I’m pleased to say it did not!

Into the Nexus is striking in two ways immediately upon boot. First, it runs at 30fps (maybe sometimes worse?), which is pretty jarring coming from the 60fps (albeit unlocked) predecessors. This was in the wake of Insomniac’s decision to stop targeting 60fps following a consumer study that determined it would not hurt sales. Obviously times and hardware have changed, as has that attitude! Nevertheless, Into the Nexus was a product of that thinking. To its credit, it does attempt to make up for it by definitely presenting 30 of the prettiest frames per second the series had offered to date. The game looks very good, but the frame rate dip is especially jarring if you pop in the Into the Nexus disc pretty much immediately following the credits of A Crack in Time, as I did. Anyway, it was easy enough to get used to after a half hour or so, of course, but I’ve surely enjoyed returning to 60 frames in Rift Apart.

The game was also released as a budget title, and as a result I was able to beat it in about 5 real time hours despite stepping away from it a time or two. I imagine its brevity compared to the previous Future titles is part of what earned it its comparatively low aggregated critical score. But I’m here to assure you that its quality is every bit as good as its predecessors, if not more!

As with A Crack in Time, Into the Nexus continues to polish the basic R&C gameplay that has existed since the very first game. Running, jumping, and shooting have never felt better. Furthermore, like A Crack in Time, Clank’s sections remain fun! In this game, he’s tasked with negotiating dimensional rifts/disturbances to get past whatever’s stopping him and Ratchet from proceeding. These bits play a lot like VVVVVV, with 2D platforming sections involving player-controlled gravity. It’s well-executed, and it was so nice for Clank’s gameplay to be fun a second time in a row!

The story involves a pair of disgruntled alient twins and their mission to merge the dimension they’ve been orphaned from with the dimension of Ratchet & Clank. The problem is they’re starting to have success, and the beasts they release are scaring folks into abandoning entire planets! Ratchet & Clank step in to stop this, of course, and supporting characters Talwyn Apogee (largely absent in Crack in Time) and of course Captain Qwark offer their occasional in-person and/or comms assistance. As always, no spoilers, but I’ll say that while the game’s length does give it sort of an “episodic” feel rather than the grander feel of Tools of Destruction and A Crack in Time, it nevertheless tells a pretty good story that does a fine job of tying up most of the loose ends of the Future series.

Oh, and I haven’t really talked about the music in these games because the music of the series in general has never blown me away, but Into the Nexus really leans into the “film score” style of music, and it works pretty well! I sometimes bemoan that kind of thing in games, but here it kind of helps the “heroic” feel or whatever. A Crack in Time did this too, but I forgot to mention it there because I’m being slapdash about these because I want to get back to playing Rift Apart!

On that note, I really had fun with Into the Nexus, and I see no reason to skip it if you’re playing the Future series.

I’ll be back soon to talk about Rift Apart, I’m sure.