I've wanted this game for, no joke, 3 years, and I finally bought it! It's good! It is hard carried by it's style, that is wonderful in every single aspect, I adore it it is EXACTLY my style. The animation definitely looks cheap but that's ok. The music is also, my style. Lots of electroswing which I enjoy, albeit in limited quantities. Songs started to blend together. The Forest level and City escape ones were the only ones I remember because they are GOOD. Ghost of Culvert and the one made by the frontman from Fake-Type are good too. My biggest gripe is that if you double jump you can't homing attack. Honest to god, that doesn't do anything but frustrate the player because the double jump is so miniscule. Besides that tho, good game!

Stylish, weird, snappy, extremely fun. This is just one of those games where you look at it and you know its going to be a rad time, its a rhythm platformer, and it looks like that. And the game lives up to that concept with some amazing electronic beats and tight level design, as well as a very touching story. This game reminded me a lot of, of all things, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. Both games really take advantage of the idea of death, both are weird cult hybrid mash-ups of different genre, and most importantly, this game takes the biggest thing from the ending LOL.

And like Ghost Trick, this game is just a tight short but extremely rewarding experience. I had a blast just tearing through levels and listening to those tunes while getting my ass beat. I wish this game wasn't just stuck on PS4 and Switch, because this is an experience worthy of everyone's attention.

HOLY CRAP

okay that was a good game. great story, fantastic music, genuinely enjoyable levels. i think sometimes its a bit too finicky? like the homing attack specifically, and bosses feel like they werent designed with the rhythm aspect in mind. but overall, a great game

also, as someone with a heart transplant myself, i love the representation

disclaimer: I only played the demo.

I really have to log this and put my thoughts out there. I love rhythm games. I am learning, though, that I don't like when rhythm games do... more. it's too much for me to handle. I thought I'd love Crypt of the Necrodancer. I... didn't. :( glad there was a demo of this. I was tempted to purchase it, but it was far too much money to spend on something I wasn't sure I'd like. the demo was longer than I expected it to be, so it gets points for that.
this game is SO cool stylistically and musically. like, it gets that all juuuuust right. but for me, the gameplay was very awkward. using different buttons really threw me off terribly. my shitty ADHD brain couldn't keep up and I didn't even actually complete the demo. embarrassing! but I'm glad I was able to try it.

Somehow both the best rhythm game and the best platformer of 2020. It's a whole game that manages to nail that "moving to the music" feel that the rhythm levels in Rayman Legends had, despite playing nothing like that. Mechanically it's probably closest to Crypt of the Necrodancer where every beat matches to a movement, but things like doing tricks in the air or breakdancing/charging to give yourself a longer dash or jump can be used to circumvent that a bit.

The soundtrack is also worth talking about. NIS brought in a few different artists to work on it, as well as having some of their own composers write tracks. The biggest outside contributor was DYES IWASAKI of Fake Type, but there are a few other independent artists too. I don't exactly know what to call the genre that most of the music falls into, but it's a kind of jazz-electronic hybrid (electroswing? IDK I'm not a big music guy). I've always kind of liked jazz so that part appeals to me and is probably one of the reasons I liked the soundtrack as much as I did, but the songs are all super distinct from each other and have a variety of tempos that are used to speed up or slow down the whole pace of a level. There are even a few songs that play with the beats a bit to throw you off of a basic "1-2-3-4" tempo for pressing buttons. The music also meshes incredibly well with the weird art style of the game and the absolute fever dream that is its story. This game has boss fights. This game has large scale hallucinations. This game begins with a narrator asking you moral questions while you watch a rat be cut open on an operating table. It's weird, it's wild, and it's incredibly fun.

It took me so god damn a while to complete this game.

The story is great and mostly importantly...

THIS SOUNDTRACK BOPS

If you haven't played this game, I suggest you give it a try.

Finished this while the power was out for nearly 24 hours; managing to beat the final boss with barely 5% battery left was so satisfying.

Mad Rat Dead is one hell of a game. The controls are snappy and (mostly) responsive, the art direction is both cute and unnerving, and the story is shockingly heartfelt. I found myself really connecting with its themes.

This is also one of the greatest video game soundtracks ever made, you cannot tell me otherwise. Catch me two-stepping to MAD RAT, ALIVE.