Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PC Basically Unplayable Without an SSD

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Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC is for all intents and purposes unplayable without an SSD, experts have revealed.

Digital Foundry’s John Linneman discussed the game’s performance when running off an actual PlayStation 4 hard-drive on a machine just above minimum spec. As the gameplay shows, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Part breaks down during its famous level-shifting mechanic.

Our first look at Ratchet on PC! It has a few issues but it’s overall in good shape! Infinitely better than TLOUP1 and Jedi Survivor at launch. The funniest bit is when Rich tried running the game off an actual PS4 hard drive on a machine just above min spec! https://t.co/Qt0qkYwzeu pic.twitter.com/hgFrXKVGSG

— John Linneman (@dark1x) July 26, 2023

Developer Insomniac and publisher Sony drew criticism after Rift Apart’s PC specs were announced in the run up to the game’s launch. The specs confirmed Rift Apart does not require an SSD to run, despite this being a central part of the original PlayStation 5 version’s marketing.

Julian Huijbregts, online community specialist at porting studio Nixxes Software, said to run Rift Apart on Very Low settings (720p and 30fps), users would require an Intel Core i3-8100 or AMD Ryzen 3 3100 CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon RX 470 GPU, and 8GB of RAM.

Rift Apart can also run from 75GB of HDD space on these settings, but the Recommended and higher specs all demand 75GB of SSD space.

In its initial announcement, Sony claimed Rift Apart was “designed around PS5’s ultra-high speed SSD”, adding that “players will seamlessly travel through different dimensions in mid-gameplay, thanks to PS5’s ultra-high speed SSD”.

Huijbregts confirmed the game “can be enjoyed using an HDD and the minimum system requirements”, but encouraged players “use an SSD in combination with the recommended system requirements or higher to experience the game’s signature dimension-hopping gameplay as originally intended”.

Based on Digital Foundry’s analysis, while it’s technically true Rift Apart can run without an SSD on PC, doing so makes it near impossible to play.

“As I note in the video, I had a much better experience with a 7200 RPM HDD in my 12900k PC… but I also have 64gb of ram which helps a lot (though it still pauses much longer than an SSD),” Linneman explained. “This low spec system only had 8gb of ram thus it pages the HDD like crazy.

“The main video here shows the game running on a min-spec PC as well but using an SSD and, as you watch that video, you’ll notice that it’s quite playable in comparison. The poor HDD simply cannot cope at all.”

“As we said,” Insomniac community chief James Stevenson cheekily noted on Twitter.

As we said https://t.co/un1Nku4q3o

— James Stevenson (@JamesStevenson) July 26, 2023

The PC version of Rift Apart joins other previously PS5 exclusive games like God of War and The Last of Us Part 1 on the platform, though the latter launched with myriad issues that earned the beloved remake a “mostly negative” rating.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.