I was raised on Playstation. Nintendo and Xbox never got the same reach that Sony did here in Portugal, so my first videogame memories are on the original Playstation console.
Most of those are a blur and I can barely remember specific games. I do remember my time with the Playstation 2, though, and with its furry mascots (miss you, Sly Cooper!). One of them was Ratchet and his metallic friend, Clank.
When Insomniac returned to the franchise with Rift Apart I was excited to try it, but I did not own a Playstation 5 at the time. So I patiently waited for it to come to PC, bought it on release, and did not find the time to play it… Until now.
I’m not sure what motivated me to play this now, but it might’ve subconsciously been the Jason Schreier rumour about Playstation pulling back from PC ports, directly naming Insomniac’s Wolverine.
Whatever the case, I’ve played over 5h of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and most of those have been spent in awe. The few in which I do come back down to earth are spent fearing for Nixxes, hoping that their talents won’t be wasted on live-service games that rarely push the technical limitations of the medium.
Rift Apart is a technical marvel. I am fortunate enough to own a beefy computer— luckily acquired right before the “RAMpocalypse”— and, consequently, to be able to run the latest Ratchet & Clank at maximum settings. I also recently acquired an HDR OLED Ultrawide monitor and have been consistently disappointed with how sparse adequate support is for this kind of technology.
Luckily, Nixxes are the best at way they do, and Rift Apart is the perfect stage for them to demonstrate it. The game is running at around 140fps with flawless ultrawide support and with genuinely mind-blowing HDR. I find myself frequently picking my chin up from my lap when I’m greeted with an absurd wide shot upon arriving at a new planet.
I constantly feel like I am playing a Pixar movie. The animations are phenomenal, the lighting and colours are pristine, and there isn’t a single solitary stutter around. The loading times are blazingly fast and all of the fancy DualSense features are enabled on PC. There isn’t a single blemish I can find on this port.
This is one of those rare occasions in which I’m playing a AAA game without tinkering with settings for hours or giving up and just accepting that stutters are par for the course. And even though Ratch & Clank: Rift Apart is a title from 2021 ported to PC in 2023, it looks as good as anything else I’ve seen to this day.
I am thoroughly enjoying myself and often giggling like a child, but I can’t help but feel sad when I put the controller down.
The last project that Nixxes worked on was the recent PC port of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach. As usual, they knocked it out of the park. But when will they have another chance to do so?
We’re living in an age when excellent PC ports are few and far between. More often than not games are deeply unoptimised or, at best, plagued with the occasional stutter, the bane of most UE5 titles.
A company like Nixxes, specialising in the unique art of correctly optimising a game for PC is worth their weight in gold. Imagine playing a FromSoftware title ported to PC by Nixxes. An hypothetical Elden Ring 2 with native ultrawide support, an uncapped framerate, stutter-free and supporting all upscaling techniques available on the market.
Sony acquired Nixxes back in 2021, so they’re stuck with Playstation projects. But with the studio supposedly pulling back from porting their games to PC, what will be left for them to do? I genuinely hope we don’t see them heading the same way that Bluepoint did, but the timeline is uncomfortably similar.
To end this on a positive note, bask in the glory of some (of way too many) screenshots I’ve taken so far. If you have the budget, a good PC and do not own a PS5, play all of Nixxes ports. They’re by far the best way to experience those games.
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