Xbox really just up and dropped this absolute banger on us day 1 without warning huh
Hi-fi Rush is an absolute joyride from beginning to end, by far one of the most visually stunning and mechanically creative games I've ever played in a long long time. Combining a character action game with a rhythm game honestly is such an ingenious idea that I'm surprised that this hadn't been done before. Essentially, it's a standard character action game where all of your actions sync with the beat of the music. Your attacks will perform to the beat regardless if you actually input them on the beat, but doing them with the rhythm deals more damage and grants you more score. You get a plethora of combos including launchers, quick damage dealers, ground to air, multihit and huge AOE attacks. You even get a healthy selection of charged super attacks with 2 you can choose and swap between, partner attacks you can also swap between, partner SYNCED attacks, the list goes on. It took a bit to get used to but eventually this all becomes incredibly natural. Admittedly the parry somewhat trivializes most enemy encounters with how everything is synced to the music, and the character synced attacks also felt incredibly strong despite how little cost they had, but both also felt satisfying and fun to use so I'll let them slide. You also get ranked at the end of every combat encounter and at the end of every chapter. Your attacks aren't the only things synced with the beat of the music currently playing: EVERYTHING is synced with the music; the attacks of your enemies, hazards, the environment around you, you even get a togglable option that shows the "beat" of a song to better follow along and deal more effective damage for a higher score. This also makes general platforming and exploration a musical treat, both visually and audibly. The visuals in general are some of the best I've ever seen in a game, incredibly stylistic and comic book-esc and the way the world around you moves and pulses to the music is a huge treat. They're incredibly vivid, and I especially get a kick out of the stylistic onomatopoeia exploding in a crazy fashion on screen after a finishing blow. The animated cutscenes and in game animation of the characters are also top notch, and the transitions this game has are some of the slickest I've ever seen. I'm honestly doing the game a massive disservice by just describing how the visuals look, just...watch some gameplay footage to see what I'm talking about, it's genuinely that good looking, crisp and runs smooth as butter basically all the time. The characters are genuinely likable and fun to watch as well, the story was engaging in a fun silly way and this game actually managed to make me laugh quite a bit or at the very least crack a smile for a majority of my playthrough.
I do have some grievances, though most of them are minor. The chapters are generally way too lengthy for a replay of them (say, if you wanted to play on a higher difficulty or for better ranks/looking for secrets) which can be tiring to go through. Platforming never really feels solid, Chai's double jump feels incredibly stiff and the airdash often overshoots platforms more often than not. It gets the job done sure, but not in a particularly graceful way. Combat in general suffers from a lack of a lock on system, there are a few attacks that are downright irritating and annoyingly inconsistent to activate. The dash heavy attack for instance, I can't count how many times I inputted this move towards an enemy facing behind me, only for Chai to slowly wind up a normal heavy attack like an idiot. The scoring system and game as a whole is fairly easy, I did manage to die a few times on hard mode but still at MINIMUM managed to get a B, A or even S on most stages. That being said, Spectra Room 16 is absolutely abysmal and can go jump in a ditch for all I care, but I digress. Also while I appreciate the variety of your arsenal, a lot of the super attacks kinda felt interchangeable and superfluous. I basically equipped the AOE one that deals a ton of damage (uses 4 gauges) and the one that instantly heals you by quite a lot, particularly broken if you execute this immediately after a combat encounter has finished.
If you haven't yet, I absolutely IMPLORE you to give this game a try. It's already done really well via word of mouth, but hey, even more attention isn't a bad thing, right? Still crazy to me that the same team that developed The Evil Within games did this as well (and yes, I did appreciate the few TEW nods this game had lol). Shinji Mikami really is a jack of all trades.
Chai is my spirit animal.
Hi-fi Rush is an absolute joyride from beginning to end, by far one of the most visually stunning and mechanically creative games I've ever played in a long long time. Combining a character action game with a rhythm game honestly is such an ingenious idea that I'm surprised that this hadn't been done before. Essentially, it's a standard character action game where all of your actions sync with the beat of the music. Your attacks will perform to the beat regardless if you actually input them on the beat, but doing them with the rhythm deals more damage and grants you more score. You get a plethora of combos including launchers, quick damage dealers, ground to air, multihit and huge AOE attacks. You even get a healthy selection of charged super attacks with 2 you can choose and swap between, partner attacks you can also swap between, partner SYNCED attacks, the list goes on. It took a bit to get used to but eventually this all becomes incredibly natural. Admittedly the parry somewhat trivializes most enemy encounters with how everything is synced to the music, and the character synced attacks also felt incredibly strong despite how little cost they had, but both also felt satisfying and fun to use so I'll let them slide. You also get ranked at the end of every combat encounter and at the end of every chapter. Your attacks aren't the only things synced with the beat of the music currently playing: EVERYTHING is synced with the music; the attacks of your enemies, hazards, the environment around you, you even get a togglable option that shows the "beat" of a song to better follow along and deal more effective damage for a higher score. This also makes general platforming and exploration a musical treat, both visually and audibly. The visuals in general are some of the best I've ever seen in a game, incredibly stylistic and comic book-esc and the way the world around you moves and pulses to the music is a huge treat. They're incredibly vivid, and I especially get a kick out of the stylistic onomatopoeia exploding in a crazy fashion on screen after a finishing blow. The animated cutscenes and in game animation of the characters are also top notch, and the transitions this game has are some of the slickest I've ever seen. I'm honestly doing the game a massive disservice by just describing how the visuals look, just...watch some gameplay footage to see what I'm talking about, it's genuinely that good looking, crisp and runs smooth as butter basically all the time. The characters are genuinely likable and fun to watch as well, the story was engaging in a fun silly way and this game actually managed to make me laugh quite a bit or at the very least crack a smile for a majority of my playthrough.
I do have some grievances, though most of them are minor. The chapters are generally way too lengthy for a replay of them (say, if you wanted to play on a higher difficulty or for better ranks/looking for secrets) which can be tiring to go through. Platforming never really feels solid, Chai's double jump feels incredibly stiff and the airdash often overshoots platforms more often than not. It gets the job done sure, but not in a particularly graceful way. Combat in general suffers from a lack of a lock on system, there are a few attacks that are downright irritating and annoyingly inconsistent to activate. The dash heavy attack for instance, I can't count how many times I inputted this move towards an enemy facing behind me, only for Chai to slowly wind up a normal heavy attack like an idiot. The scoring system and game as a whole is fairly easy, I did manage to die a few times on hard mode but still at MINIMUM managed to get a B, A or even S on most stages. That being said, Spectra Room 16 is absolutely abysmal and can go jump in a ditch for all I care, but I digress. Also while I appreciate the variety of your arsenal, a lot of the super attacks kinda felt interchangeable and superfluous. I basically equipped the AOE one that deals a ton of damage (uses 4 gauges) and the one that instantly heals you by quite a lot, particularly broken if you execute this immediately after a combat encounter has finished.
If you haven't yet, I absolutely IMPLORE you to give this game a try. It's already done really well via word of mouth, but hey, even more attention isn't a bad thing, right? Still crazy to me that the same team that developed The Evil Within games did this as well (and yes, I did appreciate the few TEW nods this game had lol). Shinji Mikami really is a jack of all trades.
Chai is my spirit animal.
LoneSpeedsterDX
1 year ago