I beat the campaign on the 2nd difficulty in 2016—4.5 hours and I put it down. I replayed it in 2021 to get the 100% as I had 40% of the achievements and am glad I did. I think the main campaign speaks for itself; the 4 arm shooter is very fun.

I had never played the Vendettas campaign before, which was a mistake. I only wish the game actually identified Vendettas for what they are--an entire campaign about the length of the main campaign. I enjoyed the Vendettas characters--I recommend using Jimmy for the campaign as he is the most fun IMO. I also recommend the Hit List, which are kind of like Call of Duty Special Ops missions. Revisiting the same areas is worth it for little extra bits of story and Left 4 Dead style action with surprisingly unique characters--and it's multiplayer too, if you have a friend with a copy. I squeezed 17 hours out of this game and honestly had way more fun than I expected to.

I often say that games are fully realized as art when they exemplify unity of concept. I'm adding Hi-Fi Rush beside Loop Hero on my list of games that achieve this. The core concept: what if a hack n’ slash was a rhythm game? So the story is about a kid with an mp3 player as the core of his powers, Chai's character arc is based on becoming a rockstar by becoming a superhero, his surrounding environment is alive to the beat, the aesthetic and atmosphere captures the energy of the driving BPM, obviously the gameplay is rhythm based, and even the arcade modes experiment with and evolve around BPM!! I was a little skeptical when I first saw Chai and Peppermint because they're tropey. But I was drawn in by the concept and vibrant and lively style, and this game is clearly inspired by the ps2 games I love; they were allowed to play with trope and cliché without all of us turning our noses up at them, so I decided to let the game speak for itself.

Strong performances from the voice actors endeared me to the cast in the early levels, and eventually I grew to love the cast as they grew to love each other (Pepperica…). I became invested in character growth and the character driven humour only hit harder as the game went on, masterfully walking the razor’s edge between silly and sincere. The first playthrough is quite short, but by the final levels I found myself genuinely touched by the emotional beats and enjoying the story beats which are made all the more engaging by thoughtfully employed quick time events. The story takes a backseat to the gameplay and yet is never backgrounded as each level is filled with personality and chatter from interesting bosses that in turn have interesting fights. I played the game on Hard for my first run and, while the learning curve is necessarily steep due to the length of the game, by the time I finished with it I was very proficient and it felt good to fly through fights that I only recently found quite punishing. Achievement hunting highlighted this particular aspect since I revisited the levels numerous times, always feeling improvement even after I had exhausted unlocks and upgrades.

Often when achievement grinding I prepare for a certain amount of tedium, but Hi-Fi Rush never felt frustrating or annoying. I didn’t love having to beat the game on Normal and Easy after Hard, but it felt like a victory lap with all my unlocks after beating Very Hard. That said, if the difficulty achievements did stack I would have gone to Rhythm Master after my Hard run instead of skipping that difficulty. There’s definitely some bloat in the end game achievements, but I’m glad that they’re there for people who love the game even more than I do and have the time and inclination to squeeze what I can only assume might take upwards of 100 hours out of the game. I’m not a perfectionist style of gamer, and I don’t think I could ever muster the strength to complete the no-hit and S runs required by the Wall of Fame achievement, but skill issue, whatever. That means I’m sitting at 63/71 achievements, and I’m very content with that after 40 odd hours. I didn’t bother with the Rhythm Tower and, while I did complete a run of Normal BPM Rush and Power Up! Tower Up!, I don’t have interest in the myriad of technically punishing challenges that lock the game’s 5 rarest achievements. That said, I can maybe see myself reassessing this stance in the future if the mood strikes me to pick the game back up, especially the Rhythm Master playthrough achievement (although damage and hp numbers already feel over-tuned in Very Hard). BPM rush IS very fun though…

I was very impressed by Hi-Fi Rush! I’ve seen this sentiment a lot and I’m sure you’ve heard it a lot too: it feels like this game was made for people like me. I love hack n’ slashes, I love rhythm games, I love ps2 style adventure games like Ratchet and Clank and Sly Cooper. But I don’t think this game is only for fans of those things, and I don’t think it’s fair to go in comparing it to those games. Sure it’s a must get for fans of the above, but I’m confident this game would turn the uninitiated into fans of whatever genre it introduces them to. The combat is tight, the story and setting are fun, the characters are lovable and full of life, the writing is funny and down-to-earth, the music is great; in short, it’s a blast. My biggest recommendation even to non-achievement hunters is to hunt down as many (all) of the vlogs and HR Investigator interactions as posssible! The achievements for these things are super rare and there’s some genuinely hilarious content in them! I love this game!