If you play videogames with nothing but your eyes and ears you'll probably really like Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. If not, you'll probably find yourself amused for first half of the game.
There's this running joke with my industry friends about forcing a handful of artists to make a game and being given the best-looking walking sim you've ever seen. It's the most boring piece of shit ever, but damn, does it look good.
This is what BRC feels like. A really nice art demo. Sure, it has gameplay, and the writing is halfway decent, but it's all very shallow.
Before being a game BRC is first a tribute to Dreamcast era titles. It bleeds inspiration from Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure, and most evidently, Jet Set Radio. This adds to a lot of the charm of the game, be it the modern takes on JSR's style of music, the wacky character designs, and lack of facial animations. You feel the dev's love for this era, assuming you're at least somewhat acquainted.
Though, it feels like so much time was put into paying homage to Sega's last console that they forgot to make a game. The core gameplay is skating around town tagging walls and running trick combos. Very JSR. And while the graffiti system is pretty cool, allowing you to give motion inputs for each tag, the actual trick/combo system is incredibly shallow. 3 face buttons are tied to their own trick, and that trick only changes when you're jumping or time it with the boost button. There's some depth. But when it comes down to it, and you're facing off for score (and once you get told your multiplier goes up by leaning into rails), the meta is to grind around the map and mash every face button. Say I've been jaded from Skate 3, but it gets old fast, and there really isn't any kind of combo exploration.
Same goes for the different equipment. The skateboard operates the same as the inlines which operate the same as the BMX. The game feels no different on either and which you use is purely up to preference. You'd expect some areas to be accessible only by using one of the types or something, but there isn't. They're just there to give some illusion of variety. While I understand this is an indie game and only so much can be done, it shouldn't be much to expect some kind of ride-specific interaction. Though, they do toy with the idea of characters offering some form of special interaction, but never actually go through with it, only using it to tell you that you can swap between Writers.
The "combat" is equally shallow, offering even less variety, telling you to just mash one button 2-7 times. It's aggravatingly boring, making every time you gain heat an annoying occurrence. Despite that, the enemy variety is pretty good, and despite the lacking combat, the boss fights are pretty fun. The combat is serviceable in each boss setting, but in the open world it feels very out of place and just an afterthought. This is probably due to the fact the bosses require you trick and attack, while regular combat doesn't really allow you to use the trick system in tandem. Had BRC let you use tricks as attacks or let you seamlessly use both in standard combat, maybe it'd be more enjoyable. It doesn't, though, simply breaking the flow of the game.
The story itself is fine for a while. The setting, despite lack of background, is fun and the overall premise is interesting. Somewhere in the midpoint the game pulls out a series of twists that make the story far less interesting than its original premise, and the foreshadowing for the reveal is so heavy handed you kind of figure it out way before the game tells you. Lot of details are given that hold no real bearing on the story / are just forgotten about (like Felix's mask), and character motives get hard to fully understand. Without spoiling anything, had this game kept its initial premise and kept the roles each character was given as they were, I think the overall narrative would have been much more interesting. The twist exists to try and give the game something to say, and it feels so forced that it doesn't really achieve anything.
BRC is probably close enough to JSR that it achieves what it wants to, which is to be a JSR successor, so if that's really what you care about, you'll probably have a fine time. Otherwise, it's a very room temperature title hidden behind a really pristine coat of paint.
There's this running joke with my industry friends about forcing a handful of artists to make a game and being given the best-looking walking sim you've ever seen. It's the most boring piece of shit ever, but damn, does it look good.
This is what BRC feels like. A really nice art demo. Sure, it has gameplay, and the writing is halfway decent, but it's all very shallow.
Before being a game BRC is first a tribute to Dreamcast era titles. It bleeds inspiration from Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure, and most evidently, Jet Set Radio. This adds to a lot of the charm of the game, be it the modern takes on JSR's style of music, the wacky character designs, and lack of facial animations. You feel the dev's love for this era, assuming you're at least somewhat acquainted.
Though, it feels like so much time was put into paying homage to Sega's last console that they forgot to make a game. The core gameplay is skating around town tagging walls and running trick combos. Very JSR. And while the graffiti system is pretty cool, allowing you to give motion inputs for each tag, the actual trick/combo system is incredibly shallow. 3 face buttons are tied to their own trick, and that trick only changes when you're jumping or time it with the boost button. There's some depth. But when it comes down to it, and you're facing off for score (and once you get told your multiplier goes up by leaning into rails), the meta is to grind around the map and mash every face button. Say I've been jaded from Skate 3, but it gets old fast, and there really isn't any kind of combo exploration.
Same goes for the different equipment. The skateboard operates the same as the inlines which operate the same as the BMX. The game feels no different on either and which you use is purely up to preference. You'd expect some areas to be accessible only by using one of the types or something, but there isn't. They're just there to give some illusion of variety. While I understand this is an indie game and only so much can be done, it shouldn't be much to expect some kind of ride-specific interaction. Though, they do toy with the idea of characters offering some form of special interaction, but never actually go through with it, only using it to tell you that you can swap between Writers.
The "combat" is equally shallow, offering even less variety, telling you to just mash one button 2-7 times. It's aggravatingly boring, making every time you gain heat an annoying occurrence. Despite that, the enemy variety is pretty good, and despite the lacking combat, the boss fights are pretty fun. The combat is serviceable in each boss setting, but in the open world it feels very out of place and just an afterthought. This is probably due to the fact the bosses require you trick and attack, while regular combat doesn't really allow you to use the trick system in tandem. Had BRC let you use tricks as attacks or let you seamlessly use both in standard combat, maybe it'd be more enjoyable. It doesn't, though, simply breaking the flow of the game.
The story itself is fine for a while. The setting, despite lack of background, is fun and the overall premise is interesting. Somewhere in the midpoint the game pulls out a series of twists that make the story far less interesting than its original premise, and the foreshadowing for the reveal is so heavy handed you kind of figure it out way before the game tells you. Lot of details are given that hold no real bearing on the story / are just forgotten about (like Felix's mask), and character motives get hard to fully understand. Without spoiling anything, had this game kept its initial premise and kept the roles each character was given as they were, I think the overall narrative would have been much more interesting. The twist exists to try and give the game something to say, and it feels so forced that it doesn't really achieve anything.
BRC is probably close enough to JSR that it achieves what it wants to, which is to be a JSR successor, so if that's really what you care about, you'll probably have a fine time. Otherwise, it's a very room temperature title hidden behind a really pristine coat of paint.