Will Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart Run on the ROG Ally? - First Impressions

Now that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is out, we can finally get it into our hands and test out the game on our PCs, and by association, our handheld devices. I tested the third-person platforming adventure on the Steam Deck and was blown away by the performance and possibility of 40 FPS on the device, but with the ROG Ally, we have a lot more power to play with. With that, I don't want to waste any more time and get right into the game.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on the ROG Ally

Getting into the game, I was actually shocked that there is a launcher! In the launcher, you can change graphical settings and click Play. There is an option to hide the launcher in the bottom right corner so it won't show up again, and you can change the graphical settings in-game as well, so I would just check the box to hide it.

I did get 2 errors when playing the game on the Ally so far: An out of date AMD GPU driver error (the game can still play past this) and a video memory error. The video memory error can be fixed by giving your GPU 8G of VRAM and you can do this in Armoury Crate's settings.

After those, I was able to start playing the game!

1080p

I started off in 1080p and tried to get a build that would work decently with the increased resolution. Unfortunately, even on Turbo Mode, I had trouble keeping a consistent 30 FPS regardless of settings. It gets close, and that is awesome, but it isn't enough to where I am happy playing it. The sharpness of the visuals are very nice, even with dynamic scaling on, but the frequent drops to 20-25 FPS, as well as the loading for changing rifts being longer than the Deck, was enough to turn me off of playing this way.

720p

This is actually where I stopped my testing due to the crashes and graphical issues I was having. For the little gameplay I got to get through, I wasn't able to hit 45 FPS regardless of settings and I couldn't get a solid 30 FPS without using an upscaler. I don't actually blame the game for this as much as I blame the outdated GPU drivers.

The drivers the ROG Ally are using are not updated, which means some essential fixes/optimizations for the game are missing. During the 1080p gameplay, I didn't experience any of this and was getting a mostly solid 30 with no crashes or graphical glitches during gameplay, but as soon as I started testing 720p, it all hit. It started with changing the graphics preset to low and having it completely change the way my game looks:

Even if I went back to the Medium preset, the game would not get out of this new look. Even quitting to the main menu and going back in didn't fix this.

The only way is to fully quit the game and then get back in. But unfortunately, I encountered the new issue, my game completely shuts down due to the out-of-date driver.

This happened multiple times to the point it was no longer a coincidence and I had to stop playing. I feel any benchmarks I get are going to be skewed due to the GPU driver being obsolete and needing an update. It is very possible once the driver is updated, 1080p will be viable and 720p could hit 60 FPS with Turbo Mode, but until then, performance is terrible compared to the Steam Deck.

Should You Buy Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on the ROG Ally?

As it stands, no. This is definitely not going to be an optimal experience on the ROG Ally. I don't believe this is any fault of PlayStation, Insomniac, or Nixxes though, the optimization shown on the Steam Deck proves this, rather this is ASUS and/or AMD needing to get the new drivers out on the device. The last GPU update was last month, so it is about time a new update comes in.

There are reports and videos showing the game running well, so this could be our individual device, but I can confirm I am not the only one having this experience with Ratchet & Clank on the Ally.

If you are okay waiting until the driver update is here, then go for it. I have full confidence the game will be wonderfully playable once this update is released. But with no word on it yet, this is one I would unfortunately not play here.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is available now on Steam for $60.

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