Many gamers have fond memories of the Playstation 2 era. As Yahtzee Croshaw once discussed it’s the console where titles like Shadow Of The Colossus, Okami, Silent Hill 2, Prince of Persia, and many more can coexist and get along well together. Such a vast array of games all of varying qualities and ideas. Now I should mention that I never owned a PS2 nor did I grow up with any of the games on that console. I grew up mainly with Nintendo consoles and spent a majority of my time playing Super Mario, Mega Man, and Sonic. However, I do heavily respect this era as a lot of the games that came out helped influence games I love now. What surprises me the most is how many stylized games there were. Games that looked like they were animated, but were not. Developers found unique ways to work around the hardware and create games that weren’t just the nitty gritty visuals. Jet Set Radio, Viewtiful Joe, Killer 7, and the aforementioned Okami. The gameplay for some of the titles may have aged poorly, but their art direction hasn’t aged a day. Reason why people look back fondly.
Flashforward to modern gaming and things are looking brighter than ever. Gaming has evolved to great heights and developers both big and small are constantly putting out games that strive to innovate in unique ways. With the rise in technology and an expressive market we’re starting to see old concepts come back from the dead. One of which is stylized games. A great example of this being Persona 5 the exciting JRPG where every spec of its world and gameplay has a hint of pizzazz. Rollerdrome and Sable are two games with a comic book-esque art style, and there’s one game named Bomb Rush Cyberfunk that attempts to be a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio and succeeds. You could also mention games that are fully animated like Hollow Knight or Cuphead, but I’m being very specific here. When I refer to stylized games I mean games that mix colorful animation with 3D models and world. Takes a lot of effort to make 2 worlds work together well. There’s one game that came out last year that not only managed to make both worlds work itogether in spades, but helped innovate in several other genres like character action and rhythm games. Hi-Fi Rush.
This is a game that came out of nowhere. Hi-Fi Rush was developed by Tango Gameworks who you may or may not know as the makers of The Evil Within and Ghostwire Tokyo. It was founded by Shinji Mikami, the director of the highly acclaimed Resident Evil 4. He also made Vanquish which we covered a little recently. First game he made upon forming his own company was of course The Evil Within which had a rocky launch but managed to gain a cult following with time. Then he handed control over to John Johanas who directed the second game. Ghostwire Tokyo was then directed by Kenji Kimura, but in the shadows Johanas and Mikami began development on a whole new project. It was a dream project Johanas had been thinking of for years, and it was approved by Mikami as he wanted the studio to venture beyond the horror realm for once. They were able to get the fundings from Microsoft and Bethesda, and slowly they got to work. They never posted a single reveal, trailer, or development update on Hi-Fi Rush. It was a secret and it wasn’t until an Xbox showcase in 2023 that they finally decided to show it off. In fact, they just released the whole game entirely. Free if you had Game Pass and if not then you’d only have to pay half the price of what your typical Triple A game release costs. Just 30 bucks for a big bang!
The shadow drop was both surprising and the weirdest feeling in a very long time. Nobody drops a game out of nowhere before and the only people who do so are smaller devs confident enough that their product is good. Launch trailer didn’t leave a good impression either as it opened with the main protagonist literally saying the line, “You may be wondering how I got into this mess?” Self aware writing that gamers have gotten sick of especially with a disastrous release that came out close to the same day Hi-Fi Rush did called Forspoken. You know that game Square Enix pumped one hundred million dollars into, had a protagonist you lost complete faith in within the first thirty minutes, and felt more like a fancy tech demo to a better game. Yeah, that one. Timing for Hi-Fi Rush was odd, but somehow it rocketed into the air and became one of the best things Tango ever made. Like I said you have to be confident to release a game out of nowhere, and Hi-Fi Rush was more than just confident.
It had that snappy energy Playstation 2 games have. It was stylized, thrilling, willing to take huge risks, and above all else it had soul. Hi-Fi Rush is an outstanding achievement and the devs truly deserve all the acclaim they’ve been receiving for it. I wanted to play Hi-Fi Rush sooner rather than later, but Bethesda is owned by Microsoft now and it was exclusive to Xbox for a year. Thought I would never get the chance to play it, but Microsoft decided to follow a plan recently to release some of their games to other consoles. Much like how Sony is releasing their exclusive to PC in the hopes different audiences can get into their games. Hi-Fi Rush comes to PS5 and I purchase the bad boy day one. Played it over the last week, finished it, and can confidently confirm that this game rocks. It rocked my socks off, pulled my shirt off, signed my back, and hoped back on stage to deliver an epic encore. I love this game. It’s one of the best character action games I’ve ever played. Today we’ll be talking about why I absolutely adore Hi-Fi Rush and why it deserves your attention.
Story
This exciting journey follows Chai, a young man who has come to Vanderlay Technologies to get a robotic arm to replace his disabled one. He has big dreams in mind and one of the first things he wants to do is pursue his dreams of becoming a rockstar. A goal he has been imagining since he was a kid as he grew up listening to famous rock musicians and bands. Since he’s disabled he is able to get a pass and skip the lines of people who want to get cybernetically enhanced. Chai takes off his belongings and prepares for operation. Due to unforeseen consequences though his MP3 player ends up on his chest during operation, and before it could be spotted out the machine preparing to infuse Chai’s arm compresses the two together. Chai does get a robot arm, but the MP3 player mysteriously infuses onto his chest as if it were that power core from Iron Man. He sees no use in it, but upon exiting the operation room the staff label him a defect. The operation gave him something he wasn’t supposed to have, and robots are being sent after Chai to destroy him. Chai freaks out at first, but his musical heart begins to pound. A pole emerges from his arm and scrap in the environment fuses to form a guitar which Chai uses to bash his enemies in.
Chai makes a daring run for it all the while realizing the world around him has synced up to the beat of the music playing on his MP3 player heart. Chai thinks he won’t escape, but is saved by a talking robot cat named 808. The cat doesn’t actually talk. Its owner, Peppermint, who is voiced by the lovely Erica Lindebeck is speaking through the cat and helps Chai escape before he can be pounded into a pulp. They meet up in her hideout where she reveals that Vanderlay Technology has a dark plan lying beneath the surface. She wants to figure out what it is, and upon departing for a daring operation they discover Kale the current CEO of Vanderlay wants to mind control all the individuals they implanted cybernetic enhancements onto. The only way to stop Kale from doing this is to collect six password keys from the six high ranking individuals. Chai will make unlikely allies, and together they’ll defeat Kale and save the day.
Gameplay
If you played a character action game like Devil May Cry 5 or Bayonetta before then you’ll fall right at home with Hi-Fi Rush. The catch being that unlike in those games where you can hack & slash your way through foes easily in Hi-Fi Rush everything is timed to the beat of the music. Enemy attacks, moving platforms, and environmental hazards. You can button mash if you want, but there’s a bonus for if you stay in beat with the music. Everytime you time your actions well with the beat they are amplified. A basic attack may increase by a certain percent, and this can be further amplified if you switch up combos or manage to keep it up while taking damage. There is a score meter each encounter that increases if you do so, and they are all added up for an end of level grade. You get more scrap the higher your scores and grades are, and scrap can be spent at a shop to unlock upgrades for Chai. Whether that be new combos, maximum increases to one of many stats, special abilities, or chips. Special abilities are these powerful maneuvers that can be performed in exchange for using a little bit of a special energy meter. This meter goes up as you hit enemies and maintain a good combo. These special abilities can save you during dangerous scenarios if you know when to use them. Like let’s say removing a powerful foe quickly to then focus on the smaller guys. You can only have one to two specials at a time, so choose wisely.
Chai also has a couple of other unique tools up his sleeve besides his badass scrap guitar and all those different combos. He has a grappling hook to not only zip around the world and occasional platforming challenges every now and then, but himself towards enemies easily. Helps keep up your combos and reduce the amount of running about during combat. You gain a parry later on to deflect enemy attacks, and there’s some foes you way to keep the pressure on so you can break their defense and get some really easy hits in. Overtime you also get companion side attacks that can help with breaking the defense of certain foes. Some enemies will have barriers that deflect all kinds of attacks besides the damage type your allies have. Peppermint can blast blue energy shields, Macaron can break heavy armor, and Korsica can put out flames. Switching between all three is easy and is heavily encouraged if you want to stay alive against certain enemy types. You have basic ground troopers who attack with swords, heavier set ones who attack slower but can deal heavy damage, literal walking tanks, robot birds, motorbike shielders, samurai at some point and many more. Sometimes at the end of a stage you’ll face a boss and this is where your skills will be put to the test. Whether that be to push you to utilize newly learned skills, or understand the gimmicks of their fights. Just keep up and eventually you’ll come out triumphantly. Besides all of that there’s nothing much else to say. It’s a fun game with a core gameplay loop, and there is nothing wrong with simplicity afterall.
Hopefully you can beat Kale slay the day. Get it?
Thoughts
As I said during the intro, Hi-Fi Rush is an outstanding achievement for Tango Gameworks and above all else a musical masterpiece. It is so well designed, addicting to play from start to finish, and I have no major complaints that can drag on what is possibly a perfect work of art. First I’d like to address the combat and how good it feels to play. At first I kind of sucked at it. My timing was off and for some attacks you have to wait a few extra beats. I was playing really slow at first with attacks only timed every two beats. Then I got used to it and ended up going to a combo made by the end. Delivering quick blows every beat, chaining into a heavy, then dealing a combo where I spin my guitar around like a buzzsaw, and zipping over to another enemy to do the exact same thing. Character action games tend to get repetitive after a while, but I never got sick of the combat loop here in Hi-Fi Rush. The addition of a grappling hook is great and helps maintain the flow of fights. It’s not the first game to do it nor the first character action game to do so. DMC5 did it, but it was only for one of the characters. It feels so good here though, and at least the hook is used just for pulling yourself to enemies rather than DMC5 where you can do both but its hard to do one. I also like how certain enemy types force you to use parrying or companions abilities to break their defenses. It pushes you to use the tools you have, because I’m going to admit not a lot of character action games force you to utilize combos and abilities.
Level design is great albeit linear. I think what makes up for it are level ideas themselves. How they always seem to be some new idea despite it all taking place in a single campus. Mechanics they use and how sometimes they throw in a platforming section to test your movement. I never thought platforming segments in character action games worked mainly because the character is never designed for platforming. It didn’t work well in the older God of War games, Bayonetta, or Devil May Cry. It works in Hi-Fi Rush because Chai has a decent jump, air time, can dash while in the air, can double jump, and it’s easy to tell where you are going to land. Exploration can net you some really nice rewards and I actually feel rewarded for checking every nook and cranny. You can find important character upgrades and currency whereas in other character action games the secrets feel weirdly placed. Every level is well paced, exciting, has cool set pieces, and will sometimes have the occasional minigame where you time your button presses to the beat or have to press a specific combination. Getting you to stay on rhythm and continuing staying on rhythm.
Now I don’t want to make it sound like the only selling point for Hi-Fi Rush is the gameplay. As I said this is a stylized game and the art direction is beautiful. It’s colorful, smooth, pops out, and I’m surprised they managed to get it working. It feels like I’m playing a cartoon and there are a lot of games I’ve said that about in the past. Hi-Fi Rush takes the cake and its style is what gives it a certain personality a lot of Triple A games lack nowadays. The music is great. I mean great music is needed if you are going to make a rhythm based game. There’s a lot of original songs & even some licensed tracks from famous artists like 9 Inch Nails, The Prodigy, and Black Keys. One of which I got into thanks to Hi-Fi Rush, so thank you. The story while having cheesy and predictable moments is well written. The characters are great, motives are relatable, the humor is actually funny, there’s a good moral message, and it’s very well paced. For a majority of people this is a fifthteen hour long experience, but for me it was eight to nine hours due to decent skill and playing on normal. Still a pretty lengthy amount of playtime, but those eight to nine hours go by really quickly due to story pacing, transitions between set pieces, and building hype.
I love Hi-Fi Rush. It is the best character action game I’ve played, the best rhythm game to ever be created, and deserves to be called one of the best titles of 2023. Is it in my top five? Sadly no, but it’s almost up there. It is going into my gaming hall of fame for being one of the greats, and I can happily suggest it to anyone who has next gen console no matter what kind of games they are into. In the end I am going to have to give Hi-Fi Rush a 10/10 for being incredible. Please play this game.
