This game rocks. It really does. It's joy distilled in a bottle. It's fun incarnate. It's the platonic ideal of the phrase "videogames are cool".

Seldom have I seen a game so consistently able to put the player into Flow State. With its killer soundtrack, focused on catchy and recognizable beats, it becomes natural to simply follow the beat and enter into the game's rhythm.

You know... You know those action scenes at the end of movies where the band of heroes finally get their shit together and become supernaturally well-coordinated to beat the villains? They're always super cathartic, emotional and just a blast to watch. And I always get that nagging thought - "oh, wouldn't that be cool to do in a videogame?"

Well, there you have it. That's the feeling I get when I play this game. Its gratifying combat system, endearing characters, hearty artstyle and carefree attitude all contribute to a sense of mastery and freedom that's incredibly rewarding.

At the end of the game, I was almost tearing up, despite the generic plot beats and cliché message. Everything's just so damn well executed! The game has a vision, a personality and a concept, and it just commits to them 200%. I can confidently say that I love this game.

Despite being a die-hard character action fan I wasn't sure how I was gonna feel about this game. I have next to no rhythm and many rhythm game/other genre hybrids have not worked so great for me. I was pleasantly surprised that Hi-Fi Rush did such a good job easing me into its rhythm mechanics that it felt natural to execute on them even in the middle of encounters with tons of moving parts.

The combat doesn't reinvent the wheel, most of the non-rhythm mechanics are very familiar as a fan of the genre, but it feels responsive as hell and executes on the formula very well. I love the way the parry is handled, you can use it against basically anything and there are so many options for you to use after hitting a parry that I feel way more inclined to use it than in other action games. The tag attack system is also pretty cool, letting you call in assists against specific types of enemies or just to do some crowd control while you air combo a dude. The enemy variety is really strong too, new enemies are introduced once or twice per level and they all add a new interesting dynamic to fights. Some of the bigger enemies introduced in the back half of the game end their fights with you having to parry multiple attacks in a row which is a lot of fun once you get their unique rhythms down.

I wasn't really sold on the tone of Hi-Fi Rush initially either. It has a habit of hitting you with puns or jokes nearly constantly which I typically find a bit grating. I think the reason it works for me here is that the humor really meshes well with the cartoonish art direction, they don't quip constantly during combat which lets you focus on the actual encounters, and the characters grew on me a lot after the first couple of missions. There were still a handful of jokes that made me groan or roll my eyes, but there were more that made me actually smirk or laugh so I think it works. Ended up loving all the characters by the end, especially Peppermint. Peppermint :)

When I think of the beginning of my teenage years and the games that occupied that space as I grew older I tend to think of a few different ones.

Assassin's Creed, Oblivion at my, at the time, best friend's house (R.I.P. Max), Heavenly Sword, Blazblue Calamity Trigger and most importantly of all I think about Mirror's Edge.

Mirror's Edge upon its first announcement blew me completely away. It came at that time of my early budding explorative amazement with art and different mediums where I would look at an E3 show or trailers online or discussion of different things and I, all wide eyed and still not that aware of what the medium can fully do yet, go like "holy shit VIDEO GAMES huh? What can this medium do? What CAN'T it do? Holy shit! That Killzone 2 trailer is TOTALLY real!"

In the case of Mirror's Edge I'd never seen first person platforming and parkour quite like this. I'd never seen a game try to be this and try to do anything like this. I hyper fixated on it, I thought about its wonderful usage of color in the trailers and gameplay I'd see of it, I remember wanting to know more about the dystopian 1984 ass world it takes place in, I wanted to run, I wanted to jump, I wanted to wahoo even all while radly jump kicking a cop off of a rooftop. I was spellbound by this game made by those wildin Battlefield devs that I didn't know much about at the time and what they were going for. It just hit something for me in a really special kinda way.

Eventually I was able to get it and to say my expectations were met and exceeded would honestly be a complete and total understatement. I played this game to fucking death, I wanted to get levels down, do no gun runs, get the best routes and lines down that I could. It excited me and while I didn't have a lot of people to share that passion with as a kid, I at least had my older sibling who shared that passion with me. I think I even remember kinda wanting to do parkour too but being too afraid of pain to ever bother trying lol.

So for me picking this game up is picking up a lot of memories I guess. Like a sort of time capsule, I remember the couch I played it on, I remember playing it with my sibling and trying to beat each other at the races, I remember playing it late into the night on weekends and my blink and ya miss em summers. I would take it to my Dad's place when we had to go, I would watch videos and runs of the trials other people online were uploading at the time.

I would play some other things too but this game just didn't leave my mind a lot for a good few years. It in a way was a comfort game for me. It made the bad and hard things that I had trouble dealing with and had difficulty fully grasping in my life not seem so bad to me and it gave me the genuine escape I tended to look for in those days. I would always return to it and give it a few more playthroughs. I just absolutely fuckin loved it.

Eventually though I put it down and didn't return to it for a long time. I would get it through a Humble Bundle years ago at this point again on PC but wouldn't really get too deep into it again. I picked up Catalyst too (though I forget if through a sale or bundle years ago too?) and have still only barely played the beginning of it. I think a part of me especially at that later time (about 2015-2018) was trying to get away from these feelings that I associated with bad things from my life that I was only then fully coming to terms with and trying to figure out how to really deal with.

Embarrassing experiences and personal things that with hindsight hits in a way that I don't wanna describe. It hurt to remember these things around that time, dealing with anything quite head on felt fairly impossible to me and this game was tied to a youth that I felt and honestly still feel was somewhat false in ways. Looking at this game I felt a sort of void and I didn't want to feel that anymore. Honestly I just didn’t wanna think about anything, I think in a way I became the void I wanted to escape without realizing it. So I just let it sit there in the pit of my memory, faint nostalgia and personal pains for a long while.

So I couldn't really tell you why I decided to just replay this today. After making videos I tend to like to chill with things I play for myself and review here or on letterboxd or whatever, detached from videos, and just write even more for myself and for all of the wonderful people who follow me and read all of this shit I write. But honestly I don't think that's fully why. I think maybe that wide eyed middle school MCR listening wannabe goth 7th grade self that's in there somewhere carrying all of the good and bad memories alike wanted to play it again and get me to see what I loved so much about it.

Playing this again I see it. The wonderfully smooth parkour that feels like a dream once you get the flow down. The levels that feel so great to learn and replay over and over again, the sense of height and verticality as you look down at the world below you from the high rooftops above. The wonderful art direction, the melancholy yet intense score just all of this comes together that makes something very special to me.

Even its imperfections just make me feel so happy for some reason. The clearly crowbarred in sloppy ass gun combat that doesn't fit what the game is really going for, some of the level design being a bit messy and somewhat flow breaking with the parkour (looking at you sewers) the first real go around, ledge grabs where sometimes I feel like I should've had that jump right and instead I completely plummeted to my death, the kinda empty and messy story. It all just makes up what Mirror's Edge is to me. An innovative testing ground of ideas and ambitions from a team clearly wanting to try something different than what they felt the norm of FPS games were and to me that just makes it special. Like Gravity Rush, even its imperfections add to the overall charm and humanity of the project itself. It just connects with me in a very particular kind of way.

Even though I just knocked the story, I also gotta admit that Faith and her want to get Kate out of the situation she has been tricked into resonates with me in ways that I don't wanna go into. Just know I relate to Faith in a lot of ways and although not the most fleshed out it just hits me in a very particular way.

This whole replay of the game just reminded me of a lot of things too. A lot of people that I miss. The places I haven't been to since the last time I left California. How much time has passed since then. How much time continues to pass as I and the people I know get older. All that I still wanna do with my life and the dreams and goals I have for myself and my future.

I miss those days and late nights on the couch with my sibling doing runs of this game. I miss that couch where I kept doing my best to get the pacifist achievement runs. I miss the couch where I completely beefed the speedruns cause I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be at them. I miss those days and some of those good feelings that come with them but I carry the memories with me forward as I continue to live on, both the good and the bad ones. I live to keep those memories alive, to find joy in the things that younger me never got to experience or always wanted to see or play or go through or listen to.

I guess in a huge roundabout sorta way I’m saying that Mirror’s Edge is why I love video games and art in general. Or it’s at least one of the many reasons. I love connecting to works on such a deep level like this. I love feeling like a piece of art is speaking to me in a way that it may or may not for someone else. I feel like I’m giving back to myself because I’ve needed to in ways and I feel like playing this again has just helped me even see that I needed to reconnect with that in a way. I needed to know that it’s okay to feel all of this right now. All these feelings of doubt within life choices, within where I am and why I’m still here and what matters the most to me, of what I’ve learned and how I’ve grown and changed and continue to grow and change. The fear I have of the future and things that could happen to me or the people around me but my desire to still take it on regardless and try to keep pushing forward regardless.

It’s easy for me to just feel kinda stuck sometimes and even just running through the same thought processes on loop while I’m trying to understand why exactly I’m feeling that way. I didn’t expect this at all or even realize this would happen on this replay after all of these years but I’m really happy that it did what it did for me. Honestly writing this and just sitting with these thoughts did too. Maybe a bit indulgent on my part but fuck it this is Backloggd! We all indulge a little!

At the end of the day I’m honestly just glad to Still be Alive ya know? (Corny I know but I wanted to end on a nice note and I wanted an excuse to link the song! It’s really good! I used to listen to it on my Sansa MP3 Player on my way to school!)

So I finished a second playthrough to elaborate on some thoughts for the video since this game isn't too long and I thought I'd share some things I didn't really discuss cause I couldn't find a good way to integrate it with what the video in full is really about.

While my thoughts on the story are mostly the same I will say I did budge more on specifically the way the game uses and validates wrath and anger as valid emotions that can lead to great change and genuine revolution. We're told day by day and bit by bit that anger is something that we should try to avoid and generally I agree especially if its just anger for the sake of it like the game itself does. When Asura loses complete control he's not pointed towards any goal or target he's just generally going at it.

When he's under control and his wrath is far more focused he's able to accomplish so much especially when he motivates others to encourage their wrath to drive them to be the change they wanna see in the universe. Anger and wrath are drivers to revolutionary cause and I think the way this game touches upon that within its bombastic shonen anime showiness is magnificent.

Also wow yeah I think the JP dub is better honestly. The English VA's aren't terrible but some just don't really fit their characters well imo. Asura and Yasha are great but characters like Deus and Augus just feel bizarrely stiffly performed. So personally whenever I play this again I'll just stick with the JP voices cause I think they perfectly match the vibe of every character.

Anyway, here's the video if ya wanna go check that out! I'm really proud of it and I hope ya'll dig it!

looking back, SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG has some overall major backloggdcore vibes lmao. at this point in time it’s been well over a year since i’ve last played the game but i’ve done so twice in the past. then why am i writing this review? to be frank it’s because i recently played DIRGE OF CERBERUS lol. funnily enough, both this and that game have some overlapping qualities mechanically and artistically (for better or for worse).
you open up with this fuckin insane ass intro where shadow, nah. we ain’t doin this. y'all know the story of this game to death whether it be due to hands-on experience or the more likely reason, internet culture. this game has such an insane presence online whether you’re a sonic fan or not. the obvious EDGY THE HEDGY meme may come to mind, but this game is kinda the laughing stock of sonic games online. i would say 06 is similar in that regard but for some reason there’s been a rapid resurgence of appreciation for that game for reasons i could not for the life of me tell you why. now i’m not saying this game is the MOST UNDERRATED SONIC GAME OF ITS ERA, hell no. this game sucks badly but there are key aspects that i can appreciate stylistically based on their own merits. hell i’m listening to the game’s ost while writing this. shit like that’s got me in the feels ya know? the way the menus have this gritty over-the-top mid to late 2000s charm that every 13 year old at the time was trying to pull off, or how a fuckin stock gunshot plays whenever you make a selection in said menus LOL. like this shit is really funny but cool at the same time. the fuckin, overlapping stylized arrows overlapping the degrading edges of the background borders overlapping some render of shadow with stock fire animatics overlapping the eyes of said overlapping model, overlaps bro. shit’s wild and differentiates itself from the rest of the games in this era of sonic and even the entire franchise. we will never get another “shadow the hedgehog” sonic game in an artistic sense.
you have this encapsulating atmosphere that lingers throughout the levels of the whole game. the bangin tunes ofc help this out immensely. melodramatic tunes for the slow infiltration of GUN hq, bleeps and bloops overlapping classic sonic rock tunes; it’s some good shit that helps the contextualization of each area, more so than sa2 but not as on par with sa1. the aforementioned grittiness carries over into the gameplay. of course shadow has his AK-47s and whatever which is seen as “nonsensical,” yet cartoon hedgehogs going super saiyan fighting a giant cock monster is completely sensical. i honestly do get the complaints about shadow simply wielding a gun as it’s defo a tonal contrast to what sonic is usually all about, but as its own thing i think its p cool. coming back to the gameplay, said guns do actually feel pretty good to use on their own. the downside to this is that they nerfed the shit out of the homing attack to focus on this which does kinda suck. shadow consistently falters in areas where heroes succeeded controlwise. shadow just feels a lot more slippery than in heroes which doesn’t help the abhorrent level design. levels either have stupid gimmicks further stupidified by the level missions or they just become exhausting slogs, sometimes both of these even. now, do i think the stylistic atmosphere carries this? no, lol. playing the game is just not that fun unfortunately. bosses are jokes and needing to play the game 10 times over is just plain redundant. conceptually, having multiple pathways was something ahead of its time for a platformer, but the issue is that the execution sucks. there isn’t a single mission in the game that i actually like. most of them break the flow and pace of levels entirely.
i think this is a game worth playing if you enjoy over personified mid 2000s style…but you also have to endure the conflicted gameplay. in conclusion, did the game succeed in its goal to resonate with edgy teens in the 2000s? no, but it succeeded in doing something else. being really really funny.

A game that could very easily have fallen into any number of pitfalls in the messages it tried to convey or they ways it tried to convey them, but deftly dodges every one. A game about numbers and systems and relationship values that is steadfastly against the idea of gamifying life and relationships, that asks us to value each other and the in-between moments of life.

On my good days, I’m here. On my bad days, I’m still here.

Losing parts of ourselves and our identities are as essential to the experience of living as growing them is. Individuals can only do so much but they can still be so much for each other, and that’s worth as much as anything else. In a world where there is no ultimate victory for ideology or faction, where there is no intrinsic value in any one outcome that is ultimately worth more than any other, we’re still gonna find ourselves in each other.

I’m still here.