Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart Accessibility Features Offer More Ways To Play

Gamers have the rather undeserved stereotype of being button or key-mashing young people and that games are designed around that. That may have been true at some point in time but the gaming industry has also learned to adapt to a more varied range of gamers with more varied physical abilities. Accessibility modes are becoming a must-have especially in large titles from large studios and Insomniac Games' Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is showing other games how to do that well.

Some games offer the bare minimum in accessibility, sometimes revolving just around audio or graphics, the latter usually for those with slightly poorer eyesight. While those definitely help some players, a lot more can be done to make games not only more playable but even more enjoyable for those with physical disabilities. And when a rather chaotic game like the next installment of Ratchet & Clank offers such features, you know it's really going the extra mile to cater to all kinds of gamers.

A lot of the accessibility naturally touches on the way the game is played and controlled. While twitch experts will have no problem getting through the game, Rift Apart also offers different control modes, like a Toggle Fire mode where weapons fire repeatedly with one click and toggled off with another. The game also offers multiple difficulty levels, much more than your usual game.

Of course, there are also options to tune how the game looks but controls are even more fine-grained than your usual brightness and contrast. There are shaders that can be applied individually to different in-game objects, from interactive objects to enemies to even the hero.

While these features are directly designed for those with physical handicaps, the great thing about accessibility is that they actually benefit everyone. These settings can also make life easier for casual gamers who may not be too enthusiastic about the actual gameplay but can't resist the allure of the iconic comical duo of Ratchet & Clank.