Definitely had to check this game out after hearing all the hubbub surrounding it since its launch. I am both a fan of the rhythm game genre and the character action genre, and the idea of an action game where the game is played to the rhythm of the music and everything is synced to the beat sounded hella interesting. After playing it and seeing what the game has to offer, it's solid. I do think this game falls a bit more on the character action side of things rather than the rhythm side of things though. There are light attacks that can be done on every beat and heavy attacks that take two beats to pull off, and you can do one beat rests between attacks to do different combos. It is sort of like being able to freeform your own rhythms to take out enemies stylishly, which was exactly what I was hoping this game would be. That being said though, pretty much everything on this game falls on quarter notes and of what I can remember every song is in a 4/4 time signature so really its only the BPM that changes between levels. Basically on a gameplay level this game has a solid groundwork but I'd really like to see it expanded further, like having levels with songs at different time signatures, or like switchable weapons that have different attack rhythms than just your standard quarter or half notes. There are also short rhythm game sections that appear sometimes which are fun but I guess I'm just too deep into rhythm games to find them much of a challenge. The visuals in this game are insane, with PHENOMENAL animation and an absolutely stylish aesthetic. You really never can go wrong with a colorful cel-shaded world, eh? The characters are lovable and while I definitely can see some people thinking the writing is cringe, I personally really enjoyed the jokes the game made and liked just how confident the game was. The game is also a perfect length with just the right amount of content as well. Felt like a 6th gen game, and that's honestly one of the highest compliments I can give a modern video game these days. With both how enjoyable the characters, story, and aesthetic were and how much of a solid groundwork the gameplay has for expansion, I think if they ever make a sequel or follow up to this kind of gameplay it'd probably activate every single neuron in my monkey brain. Def would recommend checking this out.
Side tangent; it's absolutely crazy to me that this is an xbox/PC exclusive. AA games like this used to be playstations bread and butter but seeing as they've gone out to focus on cinematic nonsense, party pooping, and hating fun, it's insane seeing xbox pick up the pieces and greenlight fun stuff like this. It's like the outlooks and vibes of sony and microsoft have absolutely swapped places over the past few years. wack
Side tangent; it's absolutely crazy to me that this is an xbox/PC exclusive. AA games like this used to be playstations bread and butter but seeing as they've gone out to focus on cinematic nonsense, party pooping, and hating fun, it's insane seeing xbox pick up the pieces and greenlight fun stuff like this. It's like the outlooks and vibes of sony and microsoft have absolutely swapped places over the past few years. wack
jtduckman
9 days ago
but like man. I know it's not really the unpopular opinion these days especially on this website to go like "old games good, new games stale, praise be to indies", but like shits DIRE right now. Sony and Microsoft have been shutting down their studios with the most creative output, and Nintendo is resting on their laurels coasting on the Switch's twilight years by still reheating leftovers from the past. Back when I was playing through this game I had a genuine sense of faith that while Xbox certainly wouldn't be any savior of the industry or whatever, they'd at least try to be a foil to modern sony by caring about their legacy through backcompat and embracing weirder games made by smaller passionate teams like this and Psychonauts 2 (if they kill double fine, it's war.). It seems though like whatever gamble Microsoft did on trying to pick up the pieces that Sony has ignored clearly must not have paid off, so they just chose to go hard on buying activision so they can parasitically cling to the consistent supersuccess that is the Call of Duty series and tell any of their smaller teams to piss off and die regardless of what they've made. I thought Hi-Fi Rush was an incredibly polished and fun game that had arguably the coolest visual style out of any current-gen game I've played, though the combat left me wanting them to experiment more with the fusion of rhythm and action gameplay. A sequel could have expanded both of those things to a degree to make such an easy obvious banger video game as this is such a good groundwork, but nope. Even though a sequel was supposedly pitched already, kill the studio and lets instead focus on the big REDACTED BUT LETS BE REAL HERE IT'S THE CALL OF DUTY GAME WE JUST BOUGHT FOR A TRILLION DOLLARS direct next month!!!!! video games!!!!!!
I'm just tired. Why even get excited for new games when even success doesn't guarantee the stability of devs jobs to keep making the things they are good at that people like at a livable wage? If the future of video games continues to go this way, I think I'm fine with the games that are already out. I've been longing to go back to the times where I could genuinely be excited for upcoming mass-marketed video games again, but I think by now the death of Tango is a very telling red flag that the dream is dead, and modern gaming has finally killed it.