A Quick Thought on Hi-Fi Rush

Mon, 06 Feb 2023 12:28:08 -0600

Playing Hi-Fi Rush has made me realize just how absurdly good and criminally underrated the Ratchet & Clank level design over the years were. For pretty much every gen, though some argument could be made that Rift Apart leaned too heavily into the open world sandbox at times.

That’s not to say Hi-Fi Rush is bad, it’s just that they could have taken a lot of pointers from R&C’s level designs through the years to create a world that feels busy and expansive, while still being mostly linear guided levels that more often than not felt like they weren’t. Hi-Fi Rush is extremely guided, and I don’t even know why they have the constant literal glowing arrows pointing where to go that are everywhere, you can’t exactly backtrack through the level most (all?) of the time. It feels claustrophobic, but the rest of the design says they want the level to appear expansive and lived in.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 08:49:33 -0500

I’ve been playing the Ratchet & Clank series since the first one came bundled in the PS2 my family bought in the early 2000s. It is one of those random constants in my life, because I’m not usually much of a fan of the genre, but I have played and completed every mainline R&C game that has come out, and have collected physical copies of most of them, and do thoroughly enjoy them all. Even the 2016 game-based-on-movie-based-on-game remake/reboot. There’s a certain charm to them, and while the biting humor of the original PS2 series has gone away, it still has a whimsical fun to it the series where you’re a small furry creature ripping the galaxy a new one with a massive variety of absurd (and absurdly fun) weaponry.

Ratchet & Clank on Rinsland's Corner

A Quick Thought on Hi-Fi Rush

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart