The little details of this world, from the adorable animations to the intensity of music complimenting every hit and combo ender, are an absolute buzz.īeyond just being phenomenal, HI-Fi RUSH reminds us why the medium is as important as it is. Hi-Fi RUSH elicits a light-hearted joyousness that I haven’t felt from a video game in some time. It feels as if each moment was crafted to move the player along with the world rather than treat them as an observer, making it easy to fall in love with Hi-Fi RUSH and its flawed cast of rebels. I could go on forever talking about the adorable expressiveness behind 808’s animations, CNMN drawing on his face with a marker to showcase his emotions, or how every character dances to the beat when you’ve summoned them by your side. The things mentioned above are somewhat small details, but those little moments make this game as special as it is. Between every wave of enemies in a battle, the game cuts to Chai saying something funny while dropping his guitar, 808 licking herself, or the two of them fistbumping before the camera turns towards a selection of new enemies to fight. Each interaction is brought to life by the game’s non-stop energy, with incredible moments like Chai getting sucker-punched so hard that he’s sent flying into a window pane, and at that exact moment of contact, the animation shifts from 3D to 2D as he crashes through several walls. Hi-Fi RUSH’s character animations and vocal performances are lovely as well, with a script full of quips that isn’t afraid to get ridiculous. Yes, most of them are typical hack-n-slash exchanges where they have multiple phases and you have to find the right time to strike, going wild with your combos, parrying and dodging whenever necessary, but some subvert expectations and focus on other key mechanics of the game, all adhering to its wonderful sense of rhythm. This charisma is visible even though certain boss fights where the developers decided that not every big battle needs to be traditional. After all, it would be really frustrating to have the pacing constantly interrupted by failure. This isn’t to say Hi-Fi RUSH didn’t have challenging moments, but it is focused on allowing the player to feel the beat in a comfortable setting rather than testing their limits. This is partially thanks to your hits staying on beat regardless of whether or not you actually pressed it at the right time, but the game is forgiving in general.įoes telegraph attacks for long periods of time, every mini-game is pretty easy to get right on your first try, and enemies don’t do all that much damage. It instead offers an accessible hack-n-slash that allows the player to perform well even when they don’t know what they’re doing. Boss fights are especially euphoric, as I felt constantly elevated by the transition from the first or second phase of a fight into a later one, where the chorus and vocals come in full swing as Chai says some cheesy one liner.īayonetta and Devil May Cry don’t expect the player to understand how to execute the greatest combos immediately most find themselves getting poor rankings and dying a lot on their first playthroughs (I’m one of them). But when I was calm and let the game take me, it felt like my entire body would adapt to the world’s language of musical movement. Since I was playing on very hard difficulty, this ingrained rhythm went off-track whenever I was in a difficult fight, as my mind is programmed to spam buttons during moments of panic. There were moments where the music subconsciously infected my brain, as I didn’t even realize how perfectly I found the melody and was pressing alongside it in combat. It took me a couple of levels to get used to it, but nearly every dodge, parry, jump, attack and special move I executed was in-tune with whatever track graced my ears. When immersed into a world where everything moves with a song, the player will adapt habits where they do so as well.
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