Rez is one of the only games that one can truly say was made ahead of it's time, and that's mainly due to the fact that every new piece of technology the game is ported to makes it that much better. Seriously, having played the game back on the PS2 playing this with a VR headset is a genuine transcendental experience. It's like how this game was always designed to be played.
The thing is, it WASN'T designed to be played that way though. Tetsuya "The Miz" Mizuguchi, as cool as he is, probably didn't see the rise of consumer grade headsets decades after his game released, and if he did base his design on somehow knowing that he would've been insane (that would be like packaging a vibrator with your game...). It DOES however speak to the absolute Rock Solid strength of his unified design ethos here. Taking Synesthesia as the main point of where every design choice flows from, you can see this in every aspect of how the games plays. You flow through the levels, vibing to the pulsing electronic music as you hover your cursor effortlessly over enemies that you dispatch with equal ease as you release a button. The visuals and music throb and pound and almost ache with every action you take or don't take, because it's actually like jazz you see, only if a supercomputer tripping on LSD was the rest of the ensemble and it was still perfectly comping your solo.
The stages are great enough but the boss battles are the highlights of the show and easily showcase every design decision at their best, with Stage 4's being the best of the bunch. Rock Is Sponge blasting, the drums absolutely hammering as you fly down a twisting hallway while that shifting mass of cubes flies, and then runs, past you is unforgettable. Area 5 as a whole, also, deserves special mention for it's pitch perfect ending to the game, which somehow latches on basically the entire plot and some theming to the game and wraps it up in some absolutely incredible music and visuals that makes it all work. If you actually play that level perfectly and are in The Zone and you do not come out Transformed (or at least somewhat emotionally effected), I don't know what to say to you.
The simple fact that Area X exists proves how forward thinking the design of Rez initially was all those years ago. Here's a completely new level made just for Infinite, that took everything "The Miz" and his friends learned in the interim time and it absolutely shows. Perfectly tuned for VR but still incredible without it, Area X is a minor miracle with lush visuals and music that is in every way an evolution of Rez. Rez on it's own was good enough, but the addition of Area X in Infinite simply solidifies this as one of the best video games of all time (in my humble opinion, of course).
The thing is, it WASN'T designed to be played that way though. Tetsuya "The Miz" Mizuguchi, as cool as he is, probably didn't see the rise of consumer grade headsets decades after his game released, and if he did base his design on somehow knowing that he would've been insane (that would be like packaging a vibrator with your game...). It DOES however speak to the absolute Rock Solid strength of his unified design ethos here. Taking Synesthesia as the main point of where every design choice flows from, you can see this in every aspect of how the games plays. You flow through the levels, vibing to the pulsing electronic music as you hover your cursor effortlessly over enemies that you dispatch with equal ease as you release a button. The visuals and music throb and pound and almost ache with every action you take or don't take, because it's actually like jazz you see, only if a supercomputer tripping on LSD was the rest of the ensemble and it was still perfectly comping your solo.
The stages are great enough but the boss battles are the highlights of the show and easily showcase every design decision at their best, with Stage 4's being the best of the bunch. Rock Is Sponge blasting, the drums absolutely hammering as you fly down a twisting hallway while that shifting mass of cubes flies, and then runs, past you is unforgettable. Area 5 as a whole, also, deserves special mention for it's pitch perfect ending to the game, which somehow latches on basically the entire plot and some theming to the game and wraps it up in some absolutely incredible music and visuals that makes it all work. If you actually play that level perfectly and are in The Zone and you do not come out Transformed (or at least somewhat emotionally effected), I don't know what to say to you.
The simple fact that Area X exists proves how forward thinking the design of Rez initially was all those years ago. Here's a completely new level made just for Infinite, that took everything "The Miz" and his friends learned in the interim time and it absolutely shows. Perfectly tuned for VR but still incredible without it, Area X is a minor miracle with lush visuals and music that is in every way an evolution of Rez. Rez on it's own was good enough, but the addition of Area X in Infinite simply solidifies this as one of the best video games of all time (in my humble opinion, of course).