Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus is the last game in the Future saga, and it plays like it knows it. Insomniac Games shipped this one for the PlayStation 3 in 2013, published by Sony Computer Entertainment, and it is a shorter, tighter, more gravity-obsessed version of the traditional Ratchet & Clank experience. It is also, by the standards of the four Future games that came before it, a step down. The parts are good. There just aren’t enough of them.
Trailer, via PlayStation.
Vendra Prog and the Nebulox Seven
The story starts with a manhunt that actually worked. Vendra Prog, one of the most wanted criminals in galactic history, is captured. Ratchet and Clank, now with the Polaris Defense Force, are assigned to escort her to the Vartax Detention Center aboard the ship Nebulox Seven, alongside Cronk and Zephyr.
Vendra doesn’t stay captured. She uses her psychic powers to cut the ship’s power, putting the whole crew at risk. Ratchet fixes the damage. Then a small army of Thugs-4-Less mercenaries, led by Vendra’s twin brother Neftin, boards the ship and breaks her out. They blow up the Nebulox with explosives. Cronk and Zephyr die in the blast.
That is a real loss, and Into the Nexus treats it as one. Ratchet and Clank escape and stow away on a mercenary ship headed to planet Yerek in the Zarkov Sector. Ratchet calls his superior, Talwyn Apogee, who tells him to come back. He doesn’t. He and Clank go investigate anyway.
Pollyx, the Netherverse, and Mr. Eye
On Yerek they meet Pollyx, a Terachnoid scientist who once worked for Dr. Nefarious. Pollyx says the Progs kidnapped him for his research into the Netherverse, an alternate world full of demonic entities called the Nethers.
At the Meero Orphanage, where Vendra and Neftin grew up, Ratchet and Clank find Vendra talking to the leader of the Nethers. She calls it “Mr. Eye.” They get caught. Captain Qwark shows up in time to save them and hands over their old ship, Aphelion.
From there the game opens up. Qwark watches the Progs from orbit while Ratchet and Clank fly to planet Kragg to enter Destructapalooza, a tournament run by Neftin’s mercenaries. Winning it earns Clank a jetpack upgrade. Then it’s on to Weeblesnog City, the capital of planet Silox, where the Progs are up to something worse.
Gravity, the Winterizer, and the Repulsor
Into the Nexus plays like other Ratchet & Clank games, but it leans harder on gravity. Gravity is a vital entity here, used to reach places you otherwise couldn’t. That single change does more for the feel of the game than any weapon in the arsenal.
The arsenal is where the game gets its personality. New and returning tools include:
- The Fusion Grenade and The Warmonger, both returning weapons
- The Winterizer, which creates a tornado that freezes enemies and turns them into snowmen
- The OmniBlaster, a fast, short-range weapon
- The Nightmare Box, a device that scares enemies with clowns, an eye, or a pirate, leaving Ratchet free to finish them off
- The Repulsor, a gadget that suspends enemies in mid-air
Skill Points, Cheats and Gold Bolts all come back. Raritanium upgrades weapons. The Intergalactic Arena returns under the name Destructapalooza. Zephyr, Cronk, Talwyn, Captain Qwark and The Plumber all appear, along with the Thugs-4-Less army. There are three difficulty settings — Cadet, Hero and Legend — plus a Challenge Mode.
Clank and the Netherverses
The best idea in the game is buried in Clank’s sections. Clank enters 2D puzzles called the Netherverses, mind-bending mazes where a Nether follows him and the goal is to get that Nether to the other side of the rift through Ratchet’s dimension.
It is a strange, tense little loop, and it is the only part of Into the Nexus that feels like it is trying something the series hasn’t done. The gravity work in Ratchet’s sections is a refinement. The Netherverse is an experiment. The game needed more of the second thing.
A Short Game at the End of a Console
Into the Nexus arrived at the end of the PlayStation 3’s life, and it shows in the scope. This is the fourth and final chapter of the Future saga, and it is the shortest and thinnest of the four. The exotic locations and over-the-top gadgets that define the series are all present. They are just spread across fewer hours than the story wants.
The reviews landed generally positive, though lower than the earlier Future games. Graphics, gameplay, controls and humor drew praise. The story and the length drew criticism. That split is fair, and it is also the whole story of this game: the craft is intact, the ambition is not.
Here is the running order of the Future saga as it stands:
| Installment | Saga position | Platform |
|---|---|---|
| Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction | First | PlayStation 3 |
| Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty | Second | PlayStation 3 |
| Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time | Third | PlayStation 3 |
| Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus | Fourth and final | PlayStation 3 |
After Into the Nexus, the series went quiet. A reimagining of the first game came to the PlayStation 4 in April 2016. A proper sequel, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, arrived on the PlayStation 5 in June 2021 and on Windows in 2023. That is an eight-year gap between Into the Nexus and the next real Ratchet & Clank game. Into the Nexus was not a farewell anyone planned. It just turned out to be one.
What Actually Works
The controls are tight, as they always are in this series. The humor lands. The Winterizer turning enemies into snowmen is exactly the kind of over-the-top gadget the series is known for, and the Nightmare Box scaring enemies with clowns is a joke that works because the game commits to it. The gravity focus gives Ratchet’s movement a weight that earlier entries didn’t have.
The Netherverse puzzles are the standout. A 2D maze with a Nether chasing Clank toward a rift is a clean, legible idea, and it is executed with enough pressure to matter. It is the one section where Into the Nexus feels like it has its own identity instead of borrowing one from A Crack in Time.
Where It Falls Short
The story is the weak point. Cronk and Zephyr die early, and the game does not sit with that loss long enough to earn it. Vendra and Neftin are serviceable villains, but Mr. Eye and the Nethers are a threat the game describes more than it dramatizes. The inter-dimensional event that supposedly threatens the universe never feels like it threatens much of anything.
Then there is the length. Into the Nexus is short, and not in a way that feels disciplined. It feels trimmed. The Future saga built toward something across three games, and this final chapter closes it out in a fraction of the time. The exotic locations are there. You just move through them too fast to live in them.
6.9 of 10
Into the Nexus is a good game that arrived at the wrong moment and at the wrong size. The mechanics are solid, the gadgets are fun, and the Netherverse is the most interesting thing Insomniac did with Clank in years. But this is the finale of a four-game saga, and it plays like an epilogue. It resolves the Future storyline without giving it the weight the earlier games earned.
Worth playing if you have followed Ratchet and Clank this far. Worth playing if you want a tight, well-made platformer with a genuinely clever puzzle gimmick. Not worth playing if you are hoping the last chapter of the Future saga lands like a last chapter. It doesn’t. It lands like a goodbye that was written quickly.
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