Return to form for the Prince of Persia series. Amazing combat with an anime flair in the cut scenes. Some devilishly difficult platforming that can be tuned to your preferred difficulty. However, I do feel like the inputs aren't 100% perfect sometimes and can lead to some frustrating deaths. One of the few games I got the platinum for because its pretty obtainable. That said, oof the backtracking is the worst I have experienced in a while. This gripe really only pertains to trophy cleanup post game, so not a huge deal. Ubisoft games are always on sale so this is an easy recommend!

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is the type of game I want to see more like from AAA studios. It’s gameplay forward, ultra stylish, and more than anything focused. Also a feature I wish more big-budget games would mimic: it explores all its ideas in less than 30 hours. While I had a few nagging gripes with some of the design choices and the occasional bug, I’ll remember my time on Mount Qaf by the ultra satisfying exploration and immensely well-made bosses.

Arguably, the most important aspect of a metroidvania is its world design. I’m thrilled to say The Lost Crown’s world is a joy to navigate. It features just enough openness to feel exciting while not being overwhelming. On a micro scale, it features all the tried and true methods of gating progress: one-way doors, magical barriers, and ledges that are just out of reach. Enemy and hazard placements range from predictable to devilish and make every room have its own unique identity. The majority of said rooms are fundamentally different to navigate depending on which direction you’re coming from as well! The optional activities have a little something for every type of player. There’s walled in combat trials for the fighter freaks. There’s precise traversal challenges for the platforming peoples. There’s esoteric puzzle rooms for people with bad taste. Mount Qaf doles out worthwhile rewards anytime you stray off the beaten path. When it was all said and done, I finished the game at a little over 80% completion on my file and I was not going for a completionist run. It feels like the design encourages exploration at every step of the journey and that just aligns super well with how I like to play games.

The other main pillar of metroidvania design is combat. While I tend to be more attracted to the slow, deliberate combat of titles like Hollow Knight, I think Prince of Persia succeeds in adapting fast-paced, stylish action combat to 2D. Fights in The Lost Crown almost feel like a platform fighter and that sense only increases as you unlock more Simurgh Feather upgrades. You’re constantly parrying/dodging attacks, juggling enemies in the air and dashing around the combat space. It’s a lot to keep track of and even after I defeated the final boss on the 2nd hardest difficulty, I felt like I had only scratched the surface on what Sargon was capable of. In terms of progressing your power, Ubisoft Montpellier didn’t reinvent the wheel. You got your big traversal upgrades gained through story content, health/weapon stat increases, a few ultimate-type abilities and a copy/paste version of the charm system from Hollow Knight. Part of me wishes they would have sprung for some more interesting upgrade systems here but what’s in place gets the job done. The only building block here that doesn’t work for me is some of the enemy designs. Near the end of the game, oftentimes enemies would have attacks that lock you into a set animation. The visuals of these moments were well done but they really put a stop to the momentum of combat in a way that got really annoying. One enemy in particular kept grabbing me and exploding for half my health bar over and over and over again. Souls games have enemies like this that prove to be extremely memorable but since this combat system is so much faster, it just doesn’t really fit. Most bosses also had attacks that did this but the spectacle of a boss fight made it feel much more appropriate.

The narrative was fine. It had some moments but really I wasn’t super invested. It centers around a cast of Persian mercenaries (but like the good kind that are on your side) and their trying to chase down someone who kidnapped the titular Prince of Persia. Then it eventually devolves into fighting god which is of course the only thing you could hope for in any video game story. It’s just fine. I just didn’t really care but the flashy visuals of the cutscenes made up for a lack of anything interesting going on in the plot.

Now is the part of the review where I gush about the art. Good golly gosh this game has style. The style is not in its deeply detailed environment art or its admittedly not-super-engaging character designs. No, this game’s style is in its VFX and Tech Art. What is the style of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown? It’s shiny, iridescent shapes with sharp edges. Your eyes can easily go blind to just how beautiful the VFX is after a few hours submerged in this world but if you watch gameplay and really pay attention to them, it’s unreal. The typical 3-hit attack combo is exploding with energy. Your mid-air dash is a work of art. Every single verb that Sargon can perform is just bathed in this sheer essence of style. I absolutely love it. A lesser game would just use some generic whooshy white particles but The Lost Crown makes a statement here that the team has some extremely talented tech artists. And it’s performant! The game runs at 60fps on Switch and 120fps on everything else! I will take Style over Fidelity every day of the week.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown left a lasting impression on me. It wasn’t something I was fiending for at every hour of the day. It was an experience that respected my time and had me coming back a few times a week for a quick session. I’m sick and tired of these 100 hour open world games slurping up all my time. Give me more The Lost Crown level games from immensely talented teams. I’ll take a TotK or Elden Ring every few years but unless you got that level of juice in the tank, stick to this streamlined, concise model. Rant over. The point here is that regardless of length or scope, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a great video game. It’s worth your dollars. Buy it so Ubisoft gets the message but more so buy it because it’s a fantastic metroidvania.

Even though I'm not the best at rhythm games, Hi-fi Rush still manages to make you feel like you know what you're doing (most of the time).

Was not a fan of the record-scratch introduction from the trailer but the humor, style really ended up working in the context of the game. Always great to see unique, colorful art styles being used.

All in all a great surprise drop that makes a great use of gamepass.

Playing Hi-Fi Rush feels like reading the first volume of a comic about a brand new superhero, unburdened by expectations.

There's such an obvious, whole-hearted commitment to creating a world that runs on music that I found myself bobbing my head and tapping my foot to literally nothing an hour after I put this one down. Rhythm is so thoroughly baked into this game's DNA that, after a certain point, it becomes more difficult to do things off beat than on it. It's got charm and earnestness that quiets my impulse to nitpick. Everything is music in some way, and every element snaps into place on a beat - UI elements, footsteps, enemy attacks, YOUR attacks, item pickups. Cohesive and confident enough that I would almost believe it if you told me it was somehow an influence on every rhythm genre hybrid that came before it. Feels like a game from 3 hardware generations ago, and I mean that in the best way possible.

I’m late to the party because it ended up taking me over a month to finish after getting distracted with real life, but I gotta say… if this is how Shinji Mikami chooses to go out, then what a way to go out indeed.

The easiest way for me to describe Hi-Fi Rush is that simply put, it just works. Melding rhythm game and character action game/spectacle fighter mechanics clicked right away for me due to the natural process of acclimating to the classic push and pull of combat; figuring out enemy behavior and deciding how to best exploit that is often linked to cycles after all, so why not pair that with choruses and motifs of classic song structure to turn the whole experience into a musical symphony? The level of detail that Tango Gameworks instills to immerse the player and keep them on beat is admirable; pulsing LED walls, bouncing hedges and trees, synced-up lasers and retractable platforms to keep the player accountable, even Chai’s audible footsteps when romping about or his idle animation of swaying and snapping his fingers to the beat are all there to make sure you never lose track of the flow of the gameplay.

The linkages between the main “chorus” engagements are a bit more of a mixed bag admittingly, not necessarily because they’re “bad” but rather because these sections feel quite simple when compared to the flashy combat. During the lowest points of this level traversal, Chai gets to wander about these mostly deserted linear corridors (sometimes with hidden offshoots for collectibles) and occasionally wack a couple of crates for health or gears. There’s also a good chunk of platforming involved, but it’s definitely a bit awkward at first and never quite fluid. Chai doesn’t have a lot of standard horizontal momentum but can very quickly double jump, so classic platforming feels a little more precarious than it needs to be and often requires the quick forward dash to snag that extra distance. The result is an interesting conundrum, in that it’s super easy to undershoot without the dash but also surprisingly easy to overshoot while using the dash, never quite hitting that sweet spot.

Fortunately, the difficulty does scale up as you progress further into the story, and it’s much more enjoyable once the designers get to let loose by inserting more and more specialized elements. Shoot a barrier here, smash a wall over there, grapple through a series of skyhooks or chain rocket jumps to the beat to gain height, and so on, so forth. This is all is more or less a series of scripted action sequences that could just be thought of as a more complex 3D version of Bit Trip Runner, so while I’m clearly nitpicking, I do feel like these sections could be spiced up by scattering in some overworld enemies as obstacles that could also serve as anchor points to quickly grapple towards for skilled players to retain momentum. Regardless, the best of these segments will keep you moving forward and actively tapping your foot to the beat like a playable music video, and who’s really going to complain when you get to zipline and dodge hanging containers to Inazawa Chainsaw?

If there’s any real complaints that I have, it’s that Hi-Fi Rush's combat almost feels a bit too straightforward. There are two main components to this, and I’ll be deferring to a few other reviews I’ve read because I am more or less a noob at character action games (though I did still clear story mode on Hard difficulty despite this being the first character action game that I have ever beat, whatever that might be worth) and I think their perspectives added a lot to what I think could be touched upon in future works.

Firstly, Hi-Fi Rush has a few too many fail-safes in my opinion. The easiest way to explain this one is that positioning is unfortunately not very important in the grand scheme of combat. I’m going to agree with GoufyGoggs here to some degree: because enemy attacks are tied to the beat, and parrying actually cancels any of Chai’s attacks regardless of animation length or exact timing during the animation length, it’s fairly doable for players to auto-pilot by mashing attacks to wail on enemies (since the game doesn’t really punish you for attacking off beat as is) and correctly parry in time according to the given audio/visual cues as hinted by the background tracks to avoid taking damage at all. If this isn’t up your avenue though, it’s also pretty easy to cheese combat. Since enemy attacks lock-on and are telegraphed with quite a generous window, it’s pretty simple to continually dodge attacks by mashing the fast and high double jump or dashing to the beat in a circle around enemies, and then spamming your buddies’ assists to soften up opponents/tear through their super armor gauge because as CheesyChip has brought up, there’s not much of a cooldown, even without using the relevant support cooldown chips. It then becomes pretty trivial to lock onto enemies to go for the kill, by using the quick Magnet Grab to close distance as long as Chai’s looking in the proper direction, or if they’re close enough, abusing the generous attack magnetism (as pointed out by ProudLittleSeal here) to segue into a combo. I think these gaps could have been somewhat closed up if your attacks were more committal and couldn’t instantly be cancelled by parry (at least making the first few frames of the animation non-cancellable), if more enemy attacks were homing/adjustable so you couldn’t dodge everything by just mashing jump and dash, and if the support character cooldown was lengthened just a tad. To sum this up, Hi-Fi Rush’s combat is very honest about what it is and what to expect, which is why streamlining the combat to this degree makes it that much more basic when you’re willing to actively break and exploit the systems.

Secondly, while Hi-Fi Rush certainly provides a lot of room for creativity regarding combo potential, I’m not sure if the circumstances necessitate experimentation or for that matter, really encourage it. There are a lot of purchasable flashy standard combos that can be quite helpful with all different types of range and animations, but you don’t really need most of these combos when the grapple and dash will help you close distances and chain most combos as is and your standard bread and butter combos will get you through anyways if you’re not actively chasing high scores; even Rhythm Master difficulty of dropping below a C with the rhythm gauge shouldn’t be an issue as long as you’re landing all your hits and parrying/dodging most attacks. As pointed out by CheesyChip, these purchases are often pretty pricey and those gears can instead be used to purchase permanent upgrades like increased life gauge capacity, a health tank to revive Chai if he runs out of health, or Reverb Gauge increases to allow for stronger Special Attacks (which also will rack up a pretty penny). The actual levels will give you just enough gears for the necessities or to swap/try out a few attacks, and you can sell unused attacks if you need money in a pinch, though optimal level scrounging usually won’t provide enough to tackle both causes at once and you can’t grind levels with replays during the first run of story mode. That said, this concern is at least alleviated if you clear challenges on the Rewards board for gears (and this was in fact my main income during the latter half of the game), though it’s rather annoying that you can’t check up on your task progress in-between levels without exiting to the main menu and loading back into the hideout before returning to checkpoints. I also freely admit that my money was most likely not well spent on upgrading the chips and buying additional chip slots, which I found rather underwhelming since most of the chip upgrades were simple 10%/20%/30% stat upgrades (depending on the level the chip was upgraded to and however many slots it took up) and it was often more fruitful trying out new special attacks or focusing on the other permanent upgrades.

Nevertheless, I found that these areas of improvement were ultimately minor blemishes during my overall time spent; while I’ve spent a good chunk of time nitpicking systems and sections that could be even better with some touchups here and there, the core concepts and general execution absolutely kept me hooked. Aside from a strange glitch where my dodges failed to register during specific defense sequences of the final boss (forcing me to have to complete the ending segment of the final boss on Normal mode, where the glitch was inexplicably missing), Hi-Fi Rush was a thrill ride that I didn’t want to get off. The vibrant cel-shaded visuals, the clean and easy to grasp combat alongside rocking tunes that are more than happy to reward you for paying attention to the underlying rhythm, and a colorful and focused cast of characters with plenty of dad jokes, jovial banter, and layers upon layers of development and personality… I could go on and on about why this was such a memorable experience for me. Kudos to Tango for having the balls to shadow drop the game within the first month of the year, because as I see it, most major releases of 2023 will have trouble matching up to this.

Hi-Fi Rush is a game that feels so alive, and it feels damn good to have been alive taking in this breath of fresh air. As usual, I look forward to Shinji Mikami’s future endeavors if this is the level of creativity and cohesion that can be expected from him simply producing. And even if there is no next time, here’s hoping that Hi-Fi Rush will encourage many more greats to come with its unabashed charm and unapologetic sincerity.

Hi-Fi Rush is a new addition to Xbox's franchises. After years without a significant console exclusive, Microsoft released this game out of nowhere and caught everyone off guard. Is it good enough to achieve everything the fans dreamed?

Hi-Fi Rush is a rhythm-focused game, a hack n' slash that encourages players to attack, jump, and perform in sync with the beat constantly playing. To be honest, the concept is cool, but in my opinion, it didn't work. You can perform actions out of rhythm, and it won't impact your gameplay.

Analyzing it as a pure hack n' slash, it's fun to play. Not outstanding, but it has its moments. The combat is enjoyable, but it's the only significant activity during gameplay.

One remarkable aspect of the game is its ambiance. The art is beautiful and colorful. It's impressive how they synchronized all objects on the screen with the beat mentioned earlier.

The downside of the game, for me, is the soundtrack. As a game focused on music, it should feature an unforgettable soundtrack. Unfortunately, the music in this game is disappointing.

The story is not that compelling, but the characters are charismatic. There is room for more development for them, and I'm excited to see what they could do in a sequel.

In conclusion, Hi-Fi Rush is a valuable addition to the Game Pass catalog. It may not be the blockbuster Microsoft needed, but overall, it's a good game.

What if you wanted to go fast but God said you have to stop and find the collectibles?

This game was built with speed in mind, and you're set off to figure things out for yourself. Learning movement tech as you keep playing is actually satisfying and you can eventually chain moves together to skip large gaps, and complete stages much faster. The main character makes use of a yo-yo, offering a double jump, a dash forward through the air, and the ability to spin around the yo-yo while it stays in the air after a dash. This lets you carry the momentum as you swing forward, like choosing where to place a rope at any time. You can also drop down onto the yo-yo and ride it like a wheel.

The stages are mostly fine, not many of them stand out to me except the penguin world which was my favourite. It's a decent game which can be played casually, HOWEVER, there's bugs everywhere. Getting stuck in terrain, falling through the floor, the game literally crashing after clearing stages, those all happened to me.

There's also a score system, but it's kind of pointless since you can do things like bounce on a platform 100 times to get a 100 combo.

Back in 2018, Splatoon 2’s Octo Expansion was one of my favourite releases of that year. It turned Splatoon’s core singleplayer gameplay and weapon system on its head, in a way the campaigns only vaguely hinted at - providing ingenious puzzle rooms and a surprisingly steep difficulty curve that finally demonstrated that Nintendo understood & could capitalise on the series’ potential. Leaned into the strengths of Splatoon’s setting too, exploring its bizarre underbelly and fugged vibes. One for the fans of the ‘Rock Bottom’ episode of Spongebob. Seeing Agent 8 in the trailers for this had me a little excited, as Splatoon 3’s campaign was solid but didn’t feel as if it pushed the envelope much, I’ve come to see Agent 8 as Splatoon’s Harbinger of Difficulty and it turns out I wasn’t wrong.

Side Order is cool!! I love the setting (even if it’s basically just something of a play on the Copied City). I found it pretty easy to be excited by the prospect of delving into whatever Nintendo’s idea of a roguelite would be, and it’s a solid foundation but there’s so little variety here I can’t help but find the tower loop a little dry. There are only four mission types, FEELS LIKE there’s only enough individual level layouts for you to see every available one in a single run, and the upgrades you collect as you ascend the floors are merely statistical buffs; “+15% shot speed” type beat. It’s very hard, I like the risk:reward option of choosing harder rooms for better upgrades on top of other chaotic modifiers that can shoehorn you into making rough decisions. As with all roguelites with vertical character progression though, it’s only hard for a while until you power creep your way over roadblocks with permanent character upgrades and such. Numerically overcoming odds always feels cheap to me and I knew my completing the DLC would only be a matter of time investment. Eventually you get the option to retract your upgrades for a prestige reward boost, but I’ll be one hundred percent with you, I don’t like the majority of the weapons in this game and I can not bring myself to be a completionist about this if it means I have to suffer the fucking umbrella. It's all a little undercooked and doesn't have enough to really justify playing over and over for.

Anyway the story is great lol, albeit that there's not a lot of it. The lengths they go to show how much Marina loves Pearl is endlessly cute. She made the currency in her gamedev project “Prlz” maan 🙏🥹. Recalling who won the FinalFest of Splatoon 2 gave me something of a pop-off moment and I’m dying to see how this DLC would have looked if Order won. Endgame is the strongest finale of all of these games yet and that’s honestly a ridiculously high bar. Remix Ebb & Flow forever I will cry every time. Personal favourite soundtrack in the series, too! I love how heavily it leans into its dark ethereal sleep paralysis ambiance. LOVE how the hub/training areas have little environmental tells for the instrumentation in the bgm.

Do you know this strangely new trend in recent singleplayer games where the main character has Marvel-tier dialog and never shuts up? This is exactly that, but now give the main character schizophrenia and obliterate the 4th wall entirely. This is basically what Deadpool (the game) is. Now, I will give the game credit for some moments I genuinely laughed at, but this was just too much. I was at this moment in one of the three or two last levels, where the game decided to turn into a 2D platformer for some reason and joke about that, when I asked myself: "Hold on, why am I here? Like, what's the plot reason to be doing this?". The answer to that is, there's no reason, this game is just non-stop jokes, one after another with little to no time to relax. This is indeed, a pretty insane game. And yeah, two thirds of the jokes are pee pee poo poo jokes and sex jokes. The other third are 4th wall breaking jokes. I don't know how in-character these jokes are, but this might be one of the most blatantly sexist games I've played, there isn't a single woman who doesn't have a sex or boob joke. And believe me, it gets stale quickly.

Talking about the game itself, it's decent. For the record, I'm not big on hack and slash/beat 'em up/whatever this is, so I don't know how most similar games work therefore I can't compare, but this one is okayish. It's gets boring, sort of, towards the end, even a little bit frustating cause enemies can take up a lot of hits before dying and enemy swarms are a recurrent thing, so most of the time there will be enemies shooting at you while you're getting your ass kicked. Thankfully the autosaves are good enough so you'll jump right back into the action after dying. And MAYBE it is that I just plain suck at chaining combos, so I'm not going to be too harsh on that, but it did start to feel a bit tiring when all I did was kill the same enemies but now they dealt more damage and had more health. And yes, you can upgrade and buy weapons, but you'll never be overpowered, then sometimes you'll run away from the enemies and try to hide until you regain your health back.

After all, it's a decent game. Not too great, not too bad. Sure, the haha lol XD random humor is something straight out of 2013, and it shows, and the story is a bunch of non-sense lined up together, but the game can be good sometimes yet could have been improved. There's a fun time to be had if you can put up with all the insanity this game offers, that's for sure. Tho if you can't, it's totally understandable.