I am a musician - I’ve spent my whole life playing various instruments, writing and recording songs, performing very occasionally. But like a lot of you, my first real exposure to rhythm games was back in middle school at the height of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I must have poured a hundred hours into Guitar Hero 4, wailing away on the plastic instruments and singing my little heart out into the mic. I remember that time fondly, joking about Through the Fire and Flames with the boys at lunch in 7th grade, having friends over to blast through some Aerosmith or Paramore, and feeling just for a second that I was a rockstar.
Hi Fi Rush takes that second, the one when you nail the end of the solo, and blasts it into a 10 hour masterpiece the likes of which I have never seen before. Tango Gameworks and Bethesda have pulled together everything good about both early 2000's adventure platformers and Saturday morning cartoons with literally none of the baggage attached to the nostalgia.
You’ll take control of Chai, a cocky, young aspiring rockstar with a heart of gold - sorry, heart of iPod. In an experiment gone wrong conducted by suspicious cyberpunk megacorp Vandelay, his heart is replaced with a Tony Stark style contraption - the iPod is always playing music, and the world and his body always move to the beat of that sound. In an appropriately jokey aesthetic of a whimsical far future world, Chai must join forces with the mysterious hacker punk Peppermint, the gentle giant tech genius Macaron, the enthusiastic and comedic droid CNMN [Note: pronounced Cinnamon], and the musical robot cat 808 to stop Vandelay from mind controlling the entire world. Each of these characters experiences an arc, and every one of them resonated strongly with me. It's funny, charming, and distinctly aware it's a video game.
Right away, Hi Fi Rush captures the exact aesthetic it goes for - this game exists as a monument to the shows you remember on Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney Channel from the early 2000s. A little bit of Teen Titans here, a little Fairly Oddparents there, a splash of Kim Possible to top it off - you know the vibe. You miss the vibe. You miss the vibe so, so much, and you miss that time of innocence, and no one has managed to recreate that nostalgic ecstasy in your adult life without it feeling forced, or like a cash grab. Until now.
Our underground resistance force sends Chai forward as their weapon - his new robot arm turns a wrench into a guitar by magnetizing the gears around him, perfect for rhythmically landing the beatdown on these robo punks. Hi Fi Rush is a linear action rhythm game, set in a wonderfully realized dystopic future city where robots, mechanical limbs, mechs, and laser guns are all standard issue. Each level is called a track, and each battle within is a chorus while each platforming adventure part between them is a verse. At the end of most tracks you’ll encounter a boss battle, and oh boy, I will get to that.
The tracks perfectly mix together the platforming and combat segments, setting the pace so that one never goes on too long. Recall that the entire world is moving to the beat of the music - that includes platforms, enemies, puzzles, and more. Everything. Chai moves completely to the beat as well, snapping his fingers as you stand idle and keeping his footsteps in rhythm as you move. The platforming segments require precision jumping and timing that uses a full kit of moves.
You can also call your companions in during both platforming and combat sections. Through some future tech nonsense, they can teleport to your location instantly to attack or help with a puzzle segment before going on a short cooldown. However, you can flip between your three companions and summon each one the second the last disappears, if you time it right - that strategy is imperative to win later boss fights. Peppermint comes in for ranged laser pistols that break shields, Macaron slams down to bust open armor, and your third battle companion who I will not name brings wind power that puts out fires and knocks enemies around. Using these abilities to traverse the environments is all well and good, but it’s in battle that it all really shines.
Everything is to the beat. All of your attacks as Chai connect on the beat, regardless of when you hit the button. If you do hit the buttons on time, then your attack power ramps up for each consecutive hit you stay on beat. It’s a genius system, because it means that even if you fall off your cadence you still have the feeling of hitting in time, which makes it easier to get right back into it. 808 acts as a metronome, and you can watch the pulsing light on him for the BPM or if you’re having trouble, open a large metronome at the bottom of the screen. Each strike on an enemy adds a harmonic chord to the song playing, so it feels almost like you’re writing the music yourself.
X is a light attack, Y is a heavy attack. B is to parry, RB is to dodge, LB is to hookshot to an enemy, and RT summons your selected companion. As the rhythm flows through you and the wide variety of robots attack, you’ll have to harness your inner rockstar to execute amazing looking combos and the best feeling melee attacks I can recall in years. Are there any other games where you can surf on a flying guitar and ram through an enemy? No? I thought not.
But upgrades! Of course there are upgrades. Silly. The gears you collect as currency can be traded back at base in between levels for health upgrades, special powers, new combos, new permanent items, and chipsets with incremental upgrades you can level up by using them. Here’s a tip - at HQ, there’s a wall you can check to get gears for in-game achievements that I didn’t find out about til after I beat it. 217,000 gears wasted! Regardless, I was able to make it through alright with what I scrounged up in the levels.
Hi Fi Rush boasts several boss battles that I would call all-timers. I would actually put the Korsica fight in my top 10 of all time. I cannot stress how fun they are. During the Mimosa fight, something odd happened - I was actually so happy, so giddy and excited, that I had to stop playing because I nearly threw up. Every boss fight not only takes what you’ve learned previously and puts it to a grueling but doable test - it also introduces a completely new way to understand and express rhythm. Each is visually stunning, an artistic spectacle, and also a mechanical marvel. The final boss fight was the hardest, and I could feel the deranged look in my eyes as I made my fifth attempt to defeat Kale Vandelay and save the world.
I’ve gone a long time without talking about the music, but hopefully it can speak for itself. It is fantastic, top to bottom. A few talented folks at Tango Gameworks were joined by The Glass Pyramids to create a powerful musical score, each track following a different rock subgenre. The boss fights and high moments are punctuated with excellently utilized licensed music from Nine Inch Nails, The Black Keys, the Prodigy, and more. It’s the exact kind of music I love to chill and vibe to, and if you’re like me you’ll be speechless at how good the soundtrack hits. Different songs let you try out different BPMs as well, so each level inherently feels a little different than the last, on top of the wildly different environments.
Hi Fi Rush’s heartfelt story is full of twists and turns that never try to deceive you, only to delight. Wrapped around the core themes of found family, which you know I’m a sucker for, the culmination of everything at the top of Vandelay tower had such a profound effect on me I actually dropped a few tears. There is a part of many stories which I’ve heard referred to as “the theme restated,” when the protagonist realizes and harnesses the power of the story’s theme in the context of their own character. The moment is powerful in Hi Fi Rush, more than it should be.
You can’t see rhythm. No one can. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Whether you can read music or not, whether you’ve mastered an instrument or can’t manage to play Hot Cross Buns, you are a rock star. You may not know it, you probably don’t believe it. But you’ll tightly navigate those progressions, finesse those pull-offs, and slice through those harmonies until you do believe it. Hi Fi Rush is going to make you believe you are a rockstar.
Hi Fi Rush takes that second, the one when you nail the end of the solo, and blasts it into a 10 hour masterpiece the likes of which I have never seen before. Tango Gameworks and Bethesda have pulled together everything good about both early 2000's adventure platformers and Saturday morning cartoons with literally none of the baggage attached to the nostalgia.
You’ll take control of Chai, a cocky, young aspiring rockstar with a heart of gold - sorry, heart of iPod. In an experiment gone wrong conducted by suspicious cyberpunk megacorp Vandelay, his heart is replaced with a Tony Stark style contraption - the iPod is always playing music, and the world and his body always move to the beat of that sound. In an appropriately jokey aesthetic of a whimsical far future world, Chai must join forces with the mysterious hacker punk Peppermint, the gentle giant tech genius Macaron, the enthusiastic and comedic droid CNMN [Note: pronounced Cinnamon], and the musical robot cat 808 to stop Vandelay from mind controlling the entire world. Each of these characters experiences an arc, and every one of them resonated strongly with me. It's funny, charming, and distinctly aware it's a video game.
Right away, Hi Fi Rush captures the exact aesthetic it goes for - this game exists as a monument to the shows you remember on Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney Channel from the early 2000s. A little bit of Teen Titans here, a little Fairly Oddparents there, a splash of Kim Possible to top it off - you know the vibe. You miss the vibe. You miss the vibe so, so much, and you miss that time of innocence, and no one has managed to recreate that nostalgic ecstasy in your adult life without it feeling forced, or like a cash grab. Until now.
Our underground resistance force sends Chai forward as their weapon - his new robot arm turns a wrench into a guitar by magnetizing the gears around him, perfect for rhythmically landing the beatdown on these robo punks. Hi Fi Rush is a linear action rhythm game, set in a wonderfully realized dystopic future city where robots, mechanical limbs, mechs, and laser guns are all standard issue. Each level is called a track, and each battle within is a chorus while each platforming adventure part between them is a verse. At the end of most tracks you’ll encounter a boss battle, and oh boy, I will get to that.
The tracks perfectly mix together the platforming and combat segments, setting the pace so that one never goes on too long. Recall that the entire world is moving to the beat of the music - that includes platforms, enemies, puzzles, and more. Everything. Chai moves completely to the beat as well, snapping his fingers as you stand idle and keeping his footsteps in rhythm as you move. The platforming segments require precision jumping and timing that uses a full kit of moves.
You can also call your companions in during both platforming and combat sections. Through some future tech nonsense, they can teleport to your location instantly to attack or help with a puzzle segment before going on a short cooldown. However, you can flip between your three companions and summon each one the second the last disappears, if you time it right - that strategy is imperative to win later boss fights. Peppermint comes in for ranged laser pistols that break shields, Macaron slams down to bust open armor, and your third battle companion who I will not name brings wind power that puts out fires and knocks enemies around. Using these abilities to traverse the environments is all well and good, but it’s in battle that it all really shines.
Everything is to the beat. All of your attacks as Chai connect on the beat, regardless of when you hit the button. If you do hit the buttons on time, then your attack power ramps up for each consecutive hit you stay on beat. It’s a genius system, because it means that even if you fall off your cadence you still have the feeling of hitting in time, which makes it easier to get right back into it. 808 acts as a metronome, and you can watch the pulsing light on him for the BPM or if you’re having trouble, open a large metronome at the bottom of the screen. Each strike on an enemy adds a harmonic chord to the song playing, so it feels almost like you’re writing the music yourself.
X is a light attack, Y is a heavy attack. B is to parry, RB is to dodge, LB is to hookshot to an enemy, and RT summons your selected companion. As the rhythm flows through you and the wide variety of robots attack, you’ll have to harness your inner rockstar to execute amazing looking combos and the best feeling melee attacks I can recall in years. Are there any other games where you can surf on a flying guitar and ram through an enemy? No? I thought not.
But upgrades! Of course there are upgrades. Silly. The gears you collect as currency can be traded back at base in between levels for health upgrades, special powers, new combos, new permanent items, and chipsets with incremental upgrades you can level up by using them. Here’s a tip - at HQ, there’s a wall you can check to get gears for in-game achievements that I didn’t find out about til after I beat it. 217,000 gears wasted! Regardless, I was able to make it through alright with what I scrounged up in the levels.
Hi Fi Rush boasts several boss battles that I would call all-timers. I would actually put the Korsica fight in my top 10 of all time. I cannot stress how fun they are. During the Mimosa fight, something odd happened - I was actually so happy, so giddy and excited, that I had to stop playing because I nearly threw up. Every boss fight not only takes what you’ve learned previously and puts it to a grueling but doable test - it also introduces a completely new way to understand and express rhythm. Each is visually stunning, an artistic spectacle, and also a mechanical marvel. The final boss fight was the hardest, and I could feel the deranged look in my eyes as I made my fifth attempt to defeat Kale Vandelay and save the world.
I’ve gone a long time without talking about the music, but hopefully it can speak for itself. It is fantastic, top to bottom. A few talented folks at Tango Gameworks were joined by The Glass Pyramids to create a powerful musical score, each track following a different rock subgenre. The boss fights and high moments are punctuated with excellently utilized licensed music from Nine Inch Nails, The Black Keys, the Prodigy, and more. It’s the exact kind of music I love to chill and vibe to, and if you’re like me you’ll be speechless at how good the soundtrack hits. Different songs let you try out different BPMs as well, so each level inherently feels a little different than the last, on top of the wildly different environments.
Hi Fi Rush’s heartfelt story is full of twists and turns that never try to deceive you, only to delight. Wrapped around the core themes of found family, which you know I’m a sucker for, the culmination of everything at the top of Vandelay tower had such a profound effect on me I actually dropped a few tears. There is a part of many stories which I’ve heard referred to as “the theme restated,” when the protagonist realizes and harnesses the power of the story’s theme in the context of their own character. The moment is powerful in Hi Fi Rush, more than it should be.
You can’t see rhythm. No one can. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Whether you can read music or not, whether you’ve mastered an instrument or can’t manage to play Hot Cross Buns, you are a rock star. You may not know it, you probably don’t believe it. But you’ll tightly navigate those progressions, finesse those pull-offs, and slice through those harmonies until you do believe it. Hi Fi Rush is going to make you believe you are a rockstar.