![]() ![]() Previous attacks show you the timing to keep the combo going. Perhaps most importantly, because all of your attacks always land on the beat, you can throw out an off beat attack, then press the button again when the attack connects, knowing you’ll be on beat for the next attack. UI elements bounce to the beat, Chai walks and runs to the beat, barriers and signposts bop to the beat, and players can even press the select button at any time to turn on a clear metronome visualiser at the bottom of the screen to help further show the beat during gameplay. ![]() While certain in-game moments will require beat precision to progress, such as boss fights centred on parrying attacks or specific optional challenge rooms, the game features different difficulty modes that allow things like increased leniency on beat timings, to try and help make those aspects of the game easier to follow.įor players who, like myself, sometimes struggle to clearly follow a beat in amongst multiple layers of sound, Hi-Fi Rush goes out of its way to inundate the player with visual cues to help them keep track of the beat. If you mash buttons off beat you’ll still throw out attacks, which on normal difficulty will usually be enough for most situations, but you’re rewarded as a player for hitting your attack button correctly on beat with combo extenders, and the ability to unleash more powerful finishers at the end of combo strings, which lend combat more audio visual flourish, as well as helping you get a better style ranking at the end of combat. When, as the player, you hit the light or heavy attack button, for example, no matter when you press the button, the attack will always land and hit the opposing robot enemy on the next beat of the music. While playing on the beat is rewarded, it is not required for basic play, and it’s definitely possible to progress through the game while struggling with a sense of rhythm. Everything in the game, from enemy attacks to platforms moving, player block animations to boss phase changes, all happen in time with the beat of the music playing during the level. Hi-Fi Rush is a character action game, with music rhythm elements. He feels at home in the way that many shonen anime protagonists do, as a safe but uninteresting default hero, surrounded by characters with more personality than himself. It’s worth pushing through, he gets better once the game surrounds him by people who recognise his incompetence and acknowledge it to his face, but the game is great in spite of some of his early lacklustre characterisation, and not because of it. ![]() Over time he does develop an interesting narrative niche as part of the game’s team of adventurers, but at least initially he’s a one note hero carried by everything that’s going on around him. That all said, Chai as a protagonist is the least interesting character in this game’s ensemble by far. The comedic pacing of its exaggerated animation is delightful, and it had me constantly engaged throughout. I love the overall exaggerated anime aesthetic and design sensibility of this game. Now, before I get into the gameplay, I want to get one of my main criticisms of this game out of the way. Alongside his new magnetic powers, which form trash into a makeshift guitar, he begins a journey to fight his way to freedom, and take down the cartoonishly evil corporate leaders responsible for selling him a false promised life of musical fame. You play as Chai, a young man desperate for fame and rock stardom, who unquestioningly signs up for the ArmStrong project, a corporate campaign designed to turn fame and success hungry youths into corporate worker drones equipped with cybernetics suited for jobs like magnetic trash collection.ĭue to a mishap, Chai’s iPod is mechanically wired into his body during this process, allowing him to see the world as moving in time with the beat of the music. Gone are the dark and gritty setpieces, replaced with a colourful anime art style that is perhaps the best use of cel shading I’ve ever seen, and gameplay that mixes Devil May Cry style character action combat with music rhythm elements more comparable to games like Crypt of the Necrodancer. So, what actually is Hi-Fi Rush? Developed by Tango Gameworks, previously best known for survival horror titles The Evil Within and The Evil Within 2, as well as handsign magic action title Ghostwire Tokyo, Hi-Fi Rush is a stylistic and tonal departure from the studio’s previous work. While Hi-Fi Rush isn’t without its issues, and things that I would change if I could, I cannot deny that I have fallen head over heels in love with this game. Having now completed the game’s core story mode on normal difficulty, played through the post game challenges to unlock the secret ending, then gone right back into replaying the levels to aim for a ranking of S on each stage in hard mode, I can say that my initial impression an hour into playing this game has held true. ![]()
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