Every once in a while you get where you play it and think to yourself – “They had one idea, one very good idea and then iterated and polished it until it was perfectly executed.” Hi-Fi Rush is one of those games. Developed by Tango Gameworks and published by Bethesda Softworks, this one truly did just come out of nowhere. As far as I know there wasn’t even a teaser trailer before the game just like…appeared on store fronts everywhere.
This game dropped at the perfect time for me. I had just finished a playthrough of The Witcher 3 and was looking for another single player game to sink my teeth into. Lo behold, Hi-Fi Rush. A game with a eye-catching aesthetic which combined rhythm game elements with action game elements into a delightful little treat that had me going, “hell yeah let’s fucking go that was so cool!!!”.
I absolutely loved the concept of everything in the world moving to a beat. Everything. Your attacks, enemy attacks, your little robot cat buddy, various other objects in the world. Its just wonderful.
Every level in this game is unique and very well done. Every boss encounter is a treat, a surprise, new mechanics each time. The game keeps things interesting even as you near its end. Speaking of mechanics, this game /feels/ good to play. Especially when I am able to match the beat and when I hit those perfect parries? Whoo boy, it feels really fucking good. I am about average at this game but I do wish I was better just so I know what it feels like to have a perfect level with all S ranks.
As far as characters go I love almost all of them. Korsica of course is my favourite but I also really like Peppermint. 808 the robot cat is my beautiful cat child. The only character I didn’t like was the main character Chai. He just feels like the worst kind of Anime Protagonist Dude. I wish I was playing as Peppermint instead to be quite honest.
The music in this game was I would say slightly above average. For a music rhythm game some of the tracks didn’t particularly stand out all that much. The game does make use of licensed music in some of the levels and the only thing I will note there is that I recognized none of the songs. So for a while there I thought that was just music they composed for the game. Oops.
One last small criticism I would like to make is that the platforming in this game just doesn’t feel good. I ended up missing a lot of jumps because of this. Thankfully there isn’t too much of the platforming in the game but it was enough of an annoyance for me to note it here.
Overall, I really enjoyed my experience with this game and it is an early entry to my list of GOTYs for this year. More like this, please and thank you.