"Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart" was touted as one of the few games that can fully leverage the hardware capabilities of the PlayStation 5. But according to one game industry veteran, Sony and Insomniac Games might've oversold the game's features just a little bit.
One of the most advertised gameplay features of "Ratchet & clank: Rift Apart" was its world-hopping mechanic. According to the marketing for the game, the PS5's super-fast SSD is the only reason that players are able to zip through many worlds in such a short period of time.
But according to a report by WCCFTech, TT Games founder and veteran game developer Jon Burton claims that "Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart's" world-hopping mechanic could've been made possible on much older hardware say, the PS3.
In layman's terms, "Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart" was able to pull off the world-hopping gimmick on the PS5 by putting the player character through small so-called Pocket Dimensions. These dimensions include limited in-game architecture or sequences, wherein a series of limited gameplay snippets or even cutscenes pass by.
Burton argues that this mechanic could be done on the 15-year-old hardware of the PS3 by simply loading game content in the background. He even shows an example of the work he did for "Lego Star Wars 3," wherein he was able to enable switching back and forth between two very different gameplay sections, all while the two instances can be seen happening at the same time.
Here is a YouTube video where Burton explains this in detail:
'Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart' Time-Hopping on the PS3: How Could It Be Possible?
For the new "Ratchet & clank" game, the PS5's solid-state drive certainly does have a hand in making the game's features run as smoothly as possible. But even as old as the PS3 is now, there is one thing that a lot of people don't know about it: its hardware was way ahead of its time.
The PS3 was equipped with a chip known as the Cell Processor, which chief engineer and so-called "Father of PlayStation" Ken Kutaragi was very proud of. During the early days of the console's life cycle, Sony's marketing focused a lot on the PS3's processing power, which they once called a "machine with supercomputer capabilities intended for home entertainment."
The Cell Processor also gave game developers a headache when they had to make games for it. The chip was ahead of its time, and it could outpace even modern Intel CPUs from as recent as 2019, reports The FPS Review.
There's still so much that can be said on Sony's 7th-gen console's still-untapped potential that it warrants an entirely new article. But know this: if there's one thing that Sony is good at, it's making amazing gaming hardware that stands the test of time. And with "Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart" on the PlayStation 5, they surely outdid themselves again.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by RJ Pierce
