BioShock has been hailed as one of the greatest games ever made, and when I first tried it, I didn't really see why. I didn't play the game for six months, and after being unable to get back into it, I made a new save around a week or two ago and fell in love with it. My appreciation for BioShock grew exponentially, and I'm really, really glad that I gave the game a second chance.

The strongest aspect of BioShock is its atmosphere. Rapture is an incredibly fascinating setting, with tons of lore and complex characters, and this already interesting setting is made even better thanks to its creepy, atmospheric sound design and beautifully unique art direction. Although it took me a while to get used to BioShock's gunplay, I loved how plasmids were implemented, especially with how they worked with elements from the environment, which makes each level seem less like just a simple area filled with enemies and more like a part of a dilapidated city.

Again, I'm really glad that I made that new save, because if I didn't, I wouldn't have been able to appreciate BioShock nearly as much as I do now.

This might be the one game that I own that I've started and stopped the most times over the years. I became so familiar with the first 2-3 hours of this game because I had played it so many times before switching to something else and not going back to it. I finally decided to sit down and properly play it and I'm happy to say that it was worth the experience.

As someone who values narrative over anything else and will often poke around online to find games with great narratives, it's no surprise that Bioshock came up fairly often. I've known for a while that there was some sort of "big twist" in the game that has become infamous, but I didn't know what exactly it was or when it would happen. As I played the game I sorta got the gist of what I thought it would be, but I was still fairly surprised by what happened.

The narrative here is the game's biggest strength, and I was really impressed by the quality of the writing. The fact that there are minimal in-game cutscenes and that most of the dialogue + exposition happen over radio is a cool choice that I think paid off here. It allowed the game's environmental and sound design to do the heavy lifting, particularly the environmental design.

Bioshock may have the best use of environmental storytelling that I've ever seen in a video game. Rapture is a fuckin cool setting, no doubt about it, and I learned so much about this world simply by exploring it. The audio diaries were a neat way to expand on the world, although I did find that the audio could be a bit hard to discern if there were enemies around who wouldn't stop talking. The different locations all felt unique and eerie in their own ways, and I never felt like I got bored with any of them and wanted to explore every inch of them.

The combat felt fine enough, nothing too special. Being able to swap between the powers and weapons was fun, and the sheer number of powers made for some fun combinations as my playthrough went on. The actual gun fights could feel a bit janky at times, but it's something I can forgive since I wasn't playing Bioshock for the gameplay.

I'm really glad I was able to finally cross this one off the backlog. As someone who has come to more deeply appreciate gaming as art in the last few years, Bioshock always felt like a must-play but I was never able to commit the time and energy for it. This was a blast to play, and I really did love the story that was told and count it among the best I've played. I've heard more mixed things about Bioshock 2, but I'm ready to experience it for myself firsthand.

Is it good? Ehhh not really. The big problem is that enemy AI consists entirely of shooting at you the second you're in sight, which is all well and good when your dodging around corners but there are lots of situations where you're stuck taking cheap hits. The devs seemed aware of this and gave you four lives per level that instantly drop you right where you died. Even with that some levels can be a bit annoying and take a couple tries, the manor and underground base especially.
Is it incredibly ambitious, impressive, and worth playing for fans of Max Payne? Abso-fucking-lutely. An incredible amount of work has been put in to faithfully demake Max Payne for the Game Boy Advance, with locations seemingly recycling textures from the main game and memorable setpieces recreated. When the gameplay works as intended you're shootdodging around familiar environments and it's all tied together with *fully voiced" cutscenes from the original game! A couple levels had to be cut - the boat and parking garage and the nightmare sequences aren't playable - so there are a couple awkward cuts in the story, but the amount of effort into making it all feel like Max Payne is incredible and worth a couple hours of your time if you're a fan.

An interesting port (one could also call it an official demake) which turns Max Payne 1 into an isometric shooter.

There's a decent amount of voice acting, the comic book panels are implemented well, the atmosphere is a good replica considering what they worked with and the developers did their best to include a good variety of weapons and make the gameplay as action packed as possible.

Your sight is a little limited which can sometimes mean taking a few cheap shots, but l didn't find this to be much of a issue with the exception of the semi-last level. That one can take a bit of patience.

The game is pretty short and can be finished in a little over 2 hours.

While not really something someone should go out of their way to play, if you're a fan of the Max Payne games, you could give this one a try and appreciate the ambition.

I love-hated Ultros and I do-don’t recommend it. Like as a love child of two visionaries, it’s a perfect game for your shelf; and probably worth having the physical edition purely for how it draws the eye and stands-out in a sea of similar looking games. On the other hand, it’s got some of the worst gamefeel of any metroidvania I’ve played in a while, often leaving me disoriented, confused, and unclear if I’m supposed to be banging my head against some spinning spikes or… something else? At least the shitty tools the game gives you are uniquely unlike other unlock able in games like it. So, yeah, it’s kind of a bad time, but also a part of an uncharted alien timeloop inside the guts of a space uterus / sarcophagus that I couldn’t say no to.

Okay don't get me wrong, there are some really cool and unique mechanics here and the soundtrack/art style is sublime. However there's a big obstacle that brings this game so far down for me. I started this game saying I wouldn't look anywhere for online help and just take my time moving through and experiencing it. For a game like this, that throws so many different mechanics at you in cryptic language, doesn't take the time to explain or retain any sort of explanation I felt I heavily misunderstood a few key mechanics like feeding animals to create more gardens, using compost to make plants grow faster, etc. But for the first half of the game none of that is really necessary at all to understand. So during the first half I had a great time, treated it just like any other metroidvania. But then you unlock this "living network" mechanism and realize you can connect up the shamasal you've already killed. Now again, I'm not using any outside help here, so I figured that in order to beat the game I not only needed to kill every shamasal, but I also needed to link every one up to the network. So I spend hours trying and failing to link up these different pathways, trying to pick the right plant, get the right seed, return back to the original spot, etc. I spend hours doing all of this tedious work and only connected 2 shamasal after giving up. This part of the game (if you choose to engage with it) is ridiculous and so very not fun. And it's not very clear that this is entirely optional and the game leads you into believing it's necessary (by providing you with all these different tools for gardening specifically). For me this was a very middle of the road experience, with some very frustrating stretches because I chose to engage with exploration and the mechanics that the game lays out for you. Without the gardening, this would have honestly been a decent game for me.

The best playing of the three Max Payne games but my least favorite story as well. Rockstar absolutely nailed the gunplay here - being able to slow down time and headshot every enemy in 5 seconds never got old. The guns were fun to use and the levels were varied, although it did fall into the early 2010s shooter trap of "run here, cutscene, shootout, run here, cutscene, shootout, repeat" after a while. I feel like Max's character was a bit under-baked compared to the previous entries, although the quippy one-liners and sense of malaise in the performance was just as good if not better than Max Payne 1 + 2. As a Max Payne game, 3 felt like a bit of a step backward (which isn't surprising given that this was Rockstar's attempt at the series) but as a shooter it's an absolute blast. Glad I was able to finish out the trilogy.

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.

really nice lil anime story, warts and all

gameplay was very fun but it did get a bit repetitive towards the end, with a strange mix of old and new, where even though they kept adding new stuff until almost the very end, all the additions struggled to feel relevant

still, it's a fun and polished and very cheerful game that's perfect for clearing your mind and just sinking into its rhythm

I am a musician - I’ve spent my whole life playing various instruments, writing and recording songs, performing very occasionally. But like a lot of you, my first real exposure to rhythm games was back in middle school at the height of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I must have poured a hundred hours into Guitar Hero 4, wailing away on the plastic instruments and singing my little heart out into the mic. I remember that time fondly, joking about Through the Fire and Flames with the boys at lunch in 7th grade, having friends over to blast through some Aerosmith or Paramore, and feeling just for a second that I was a rockstar.

Hi Fi Rush takes that second, the one when you nail the end of the solo, and blasts it into a 10 hour masterpiece the likes of which I have never seen before. Tango Gameworks and Bethesda have pulled together everything good about both early 2000's adventure platformers and Saturday morning cartoons with literally none of the baggage attached to the nostalgia.

You’ll take control of Chai, a cocky, young aspiring rockstar with a heart of gold - sorry, heart of iPod. In an experiment gone wrong conducted by suspicious cyberpunk megacorp Vandelay, his heart is replaced with a Tony Stark style contraption - the iPod is always playing music, and the world and his body always move to the beat of that sound. In an appropriately jokey aesthetic of a whimsical far future world, Chai must join forces with the mysterious hacker punk Peppermint, the gentle giant tech genius Macaron, the enthusiastic and comedic droid CNMN [Note: pronounced Cinnamon], and the musical robot cat 808 to stop Vandelay from mind controlling the entire world. Each of these characters experiences an arc, and every one of them resonated strongly with me. It's funny, charming, and distinctly aware it's a video game.

Right away, Hi Fi Rush captures the exact aesthetic it goes for - this game exists as a monument to the shows you remember on Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney Channel from the early 2000s. A little bit of Teen Titans here, a little Fairly Oddparents there, a splash of Kim Possible to top it off - you know the vibe. You miss the vibe. You miss the vibe so, so much, and you miss that time of innocence, and no one has managed to recreate that nostalgic ecstasy in your adult life without it feeling forced, or like a cash grab. Until now.

Our underground resistance force sends Chai forward as their weapon - his new robot arm turns a wrench into a guitar by magnetizing the gears around him, perfect for rhythmically landing the beatdown on these robo punks. Hi Fi Rush is a linear action rhythm game, set in a wonderfully realized dystopic future city where robots, mechanical limbs, mechs, and laser guns are all standard issue. Each level is called a track, and each battle within is a chorus while each platforming adventure part between them is a verse. At the end of most tracks you’ll encounter a boss battle, and oh boy, I will get to that.

The tracks perfectly mix together the platforming and combat segments, setting the pace so that one never goes on too long. Recall that the entire world is moving to the beat of the music - that includes platforms, enemies, puzzles, and more. Everything. Chai moves completely to the beat as well, snapping his fingers as you stand idle and keeping his footsteps in rhythm as you move. The platforming segments require precision jumping and timing that uses a full kit of moves.

You can also call your companions in during both platforming and combat sections. Through some future tech nonsense, they can teleport to your location instantly to attack or help with a puzzle segment before going on a short cooldown. However, you can flip between your three companions and summon each one the second the last disappears, if you time it right - that strategy is imperative to win later boss fights. Peppermint comes in for ranged laser pistols that break shields, Macaron slams down to bust open armor, and your third battle companion who I will not name brings wind power that puts out fires and knocks enemies around. Using these abilities to traverse the environments is all well and good, but it’s in battle that it all really shines.

Everything is to the beat. All of your attacks as Chai connect on the beat, regardless of when you hit the button. If you do hit the buttons on time, then your attack power ramps up for each consecutive hit you stay on beat. It’s a genius system, because it means that even if you fall off your cadence you still have the feeling of hitting in time, which makes it easier to get right back into it. 808 acts as a metronome, and you can watch the pulsing light on him for the BPM or if you’re having trouble, open a large metronome at the bottom of the screen. Each strike on an enemy adds a harmonic chord to the song playing, so it feels almost like you’re writing the music yourself.

X is a light attack, Y is a heavy attack. B is to parry, RB is to dodge, LB is to hookshot to an enemy, and RT summons your selected companion. As the rhythm flows through you and the wide variety of robots attack, you’ll have to harness your inner rockstar to execute amazing looking combos and the best feeling melee attacks I can recall in years. Are there any other games where you can surf on a flying guitar and ram through an enemy? No? I thought not.

But upgrades! Of course there are upgrades. Silly. The gears you collect as currency can be traded back at base in between levels for health upgrades, special powers, new combos, new permanent items, and chipsets with incremental upgrades you can level up by using them. Here’s a tip - at HQ, there’s a wall you can check to get gears for in-game achievements that I didn’t find out about til after I beat it. 217,000 gears wasted! Regardless, I was able to make it through alright with what I scrounged up in the levels.

Hi Fi Rush boasts several boss battles that I would call all-timers. I would actually put the Korsica fight in my top 10 of all time. I cannot stress how fun they are. During the Mimosa fight, something odd happened - I was actually so happy, so giddy and excited, that I had to stop playing because I nearly threw up. Every boss fight not only takes what you’ve learned previously and puts it to a grueling but doable test - it also introduces a completely new way to understand and express rhythm. Each is visually stunning, an artistic spectacle, and also a mechanical marvel. The final boss fight was the hardest, and I could feel the deranged look in my eyes as I made my fifth attempt to defeat Kale Vandelay and save the world.


I’ve gone a long time without talking about the music, but hopefully it can speak for itself. It is fantastic, top to bottom. A few talented folks at Tango Gameworks were joined by The Glass Pyramids to create a powerful musical score, each track following a different rock subgenre. The boss fights and high moments are punctuated with excellently utilized licensed music from Nine Inch Nails, The Black Keys, the Prodigy, and more. It’s the exact kind of music I love to chill and vibe to, and if you’re like me you’ll be speechless at how good the soundtrack hits. Different songs let you try out different BPMs as well, so each level inherently feels a little different than the last, on top of the wildly different environments.

Hi Fi Rush’s heartfelt story is full of twists and turns that never try to deceive you, only to delight. Wrapped around the core themes of found family, which you know I’m a sucker for, the culmination of everything at the top of Vandelay tower had such a profound effect on me I actually dropped a few tears. There is a part of many stories which I’ve heard referred to as “the theme restated,” when the protagonist realizes and harnesses the power of the story’s theme in the context of their own character. The moment is powerful in Hi Fi Rush, more than it should be.

You can’t see rhythm. No one can. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Whether you can read music or not, whether you’ve mastered an instrument or can’t manage to play Hot Cross Buns, you are a rock star. You may not know it, you probably don’t believe it. But you’ll tightly navigate those progressions, finesse those pull-offs, and slice through those harmonies until you do believe it. Hi Fi Rush is going to make you believe you are a rockstar.

There's a lot to like about this game, but enough to keep me from absolutely loving it. The idea of taking all the spooky Marvel characters and sticking them in an insane plot full of Darkholds, Cthon, and all that other crap is so up my alley it's nuts. I don't get why characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Spider-Man are here, but its' still fun. I just feel like some elements could have been tightened up. The whole card-based gameplay gets a little tedious after a while, and the game can just drag at certain points. I liked wandering around the grounds and befriending everyone, but it felt like it was so close to being a really fantastic game, and just didn't quite get there.

There's not a ton of complexity as to how Severed Steel operates and some elements need fine-tuning, but I can't help but appreciate how much the game accomplishes with surprisingly little. I'm a fan of the simple and effective UI; your aiming reticle is surrounded by two bars that convey how much ammo and slo-mo time is left (so these gauges are always near the center of attention) and the flashing light on your gun also changes color (from light neon colors to yellow to red) so you're constantly keyed in on when you'll need to pick up a gun early or engage/disengage when running low on supplies. Enemies stand out from the environment thanks to the cel-shaded enemy outlines, and upon death emit a distinct explosion sound-effect so there's no ambiguity when quickly rifling through targets during firefights or when picking off enemies from afar. Guns feel great to aim and fire in slow-mo, mainly because there's very noticeable recoil when firing in real-time; the contrast really helps sell the necessity of the feature. I also love Severed Steel's kick as both a form of attack and traversal; the obvious purpose is your primary melee attack while holding a gun if you don't want to expend your limited magazine to finish off an enemy as well as kicking open doors, but it can also be used to quickly ascend up walls or kick off of grounded/aerial enemies if your double jump isn't enough. The same goes for the arm cannon; you can fire holes into any surface if you don't feel like hunting down stairs/doorways for objectives, but it also provides a nice desperation option to instantly eliminate shielded enemies or drop heavy grunts down to another floor if you find yourself without a weapon.

Despite the appealing core gameplay, Severed Steel can often feel a bit repetitive. Enemy variety feels lacking since the player is usually approaching enemies in a similar manner (that is, entering slo-mo while using stunts to efficiently dispatch foes while firing into their heads/backsides), and I would have liked to see enemies that had to be specifically eliminated using the arm cannon or melee as mix-ups. The Rogue Steel mode does touch upon this with random enemy buffs that force such approaches, but at times I feel like this mode prefers to lengthen combat by overwhelming the player with excess enemies with more health. I do think the game could have also leaned a bit more into its parkour elements with additional stages that focused upon traversal and dodging/quickly disposing of enemies, as there were only a couple of timed story missions that necessitated a rush to the end. Finally, I have to agree with HotPocketHPE that the slo-mo gauge is unbalanced; you'll practically never run out of bullet time as long as you're staying in stunt mode (super easy since there are floors and walls aplenty to slide and wallrun), though this is again addressed from playing Rogue Steel via the "Rebalanced Bullet-Time" unlockable modifier. Even with these gripes however, Severed Steel is a pretty easy recommendation considering how content-rich the game is from its many different modes and extra campaign/workshop levels to tinker with. It was an absolute steal at 80% off on the Steam Spring Sale, and I can't wait to see how Greylock Studio iterates and improves upon their already fantastic formula.