Hi-Fi Rush (2023)

Note: this is for the PS5 (Pro) version!

Marrying well-implemented rhythm with a varied and flashy character action system make Hi-Fi Rush a surprise classic that feels truly innovative in a space where we thought everything had been done before.

A man (Chai) with a dream to become a rockstar gets a cybernetic limb replacement and accidentally becomes infused with his music player, causing him to feel the beat and becomes key in the fight against a corrupt robotics corporation. A variety of colorful characters follows but the main meat of the game is Chai platforming from space to space with arenas to take on a variety of enemies. In character action style the better the player plays (varied combos, no damage, on the beat) the higher the ranking, allowing quite a bit of replay value. Every movement in the game moves to the beat, and if the player presses buttons on that beat they get a variety of bonuses (just timing for score, more dodges, cool visuals, etc). Everything moves to the beat and feels incredibly intuitive but the game has plenty of accessibility and assist options for the rhythm-challenged, as well as training rooms for difficult enemies and situations.

Along with battles the player can explore and master small platforming challenges (somewhat reminiscent of Crash Bandicoot perspectives) and do additional minigames to press in rhythmic sequences. Partners will also join Chai on his adventure and help to unlock new areas, especially on level replay where finding upgrades and extra money to shop for extra attacks comes in clutch.

Difficulty-wise the game has something for everyone, whether it's modes where rhythm doesn't matter too much to modes where the player will game over if their score falls below a certain value. The game is finely tuned to whatever challenge the player needs and rewards interacting with all its mechanics.

Visually and aurally the game is bright, cel-shaded, and bursting with color and rhythm. Apart from a toon art style that resembles a Western take on anime (think My Adventures With Superman) the tracks are a vibrant mix of licensed alternative, garage, even industrial metal with original versions that are high quality and safe for streamers. The voice actors get the job done in style and the writing is quite hilarious and sentimental throughout.

Hi-Fi Rush feels like a miracle of modern game development, combining innovative ideas with finely tuned design across a wealth of modes and options, providing an action packed experience no one will forget anytime soon!

Ok. Wow. At first glance, this game should not work for me. It is a genre I’m not typically gravitated but I heard so many good things about it about it I felt intrigued enough it try it out. And oh my gosh, it blew me away.

The characters and story in this game were just pure and utter fun. The plot had me hooked immediately and then each character that was introduced made it better and better. I felt so invested in seeing how this unlikely group of allies would work together to take down the corporation that was taking over. Everything was well written and each character had a unique vibe and feel to them which is truly awesome. There were a few twists thrown at you plot wise and everything concluded in a really nice way and I even got chills a little bit.

Combat is never really my thing or something I am able to easily get a hang of in games so I really appreciated having the ability to change the difficulty settings to tailer the game to better fit my skill set. Although there was one aspect of the combat that I really loved doing which was the perry/dodge sections. Having everything set to music for battles also made them extremely more fun. I don’t think fighting without a beat will ever feel the same again!

The movement in the game was also really smooth and felt so natural. I love that they even found a way to include 2D platforming sections, they were so fun! It took a second for me to get used to controlling the camera but once I did, it started to feel like second nature and it was a blast to be able to find all the nooks and crannies where items might be hiding.

Just fully blown away by this game. I can’t stop thinking about how amazing it is that everything was tied into rhythm, the movement, the fights, and even the environment around was in sync and I couldn’t get enough. The music, story, characters, combat, and comic book art style all work together to create such a fun and enjoyable game that I would highly recommend.

Most games nowadays I feel like they fall in a few buckets: they want to be hardcore, they want to be realistic, they want to be retro, or they want to be played endlessly. Maybe a mix of them sometimes.

However, what if you decide to make a game that is fun as your main goal? I feel that's what hifi rush mission statement was right off the bat and they nailed it!

Everything about the game is fun and joyful. The music, the beats, the visual effects, the rythm, characters, dialogue, text. Everything about the game just screams fun, it doesn't concern with things like "does this make sense?", it simply ask the question "is it fun?"

Are it's core is an action game with some rythm elements. That may scare a few ppl but the developers were clear on the vision that the game should be 70% action and 30% rythm, and it shows. Doing things on bears usually means more damage, more rewards, more pickups, more dodges, etc... The game automatically triggers your next move to be on beat, so it doesn't matter if you hit it right on the mark or not, the game will trigger it at the right time. You just get bonuses associated with it if you hit it on the tempo.

But then you say, I want to get all those bonuses! Not a worry! The whole game has a gazillion ways for you see the tempo visually with environment elements: lights flash on tempo, objects jump on tempo, even enemies attack on tempo! You even have a tempo bar if you really want to!

Everything about the visuals and sounds has so much juice, I was always looking out for what was going on in the world and it never disappointed. As an example the main character snaps his fingers on beat, just that little detail has so much charm and it just that the whole game was designed with that in mind.

The game plays DMC or bayonetta, you have all sorts of combos and you get bonuses for keeping your combo going. Just like in those games you can take this as far as you want to. You want to get perfect on the whole level? You just want to do your best and get Bs or As. It is up to you! You can go as in depth with the mechanics as you wish!

The game clearly focuses on easy to play and hard to master. And while I didn't go as deep as I would like to in the combat, the little I explored left me wanting more, there are strategies that might work well for one type of enemy, but switching things around could work better against other enemies. In some challenging fights I had to change my strategy and moves that I normally do, and it would take the fight much easier. There is a lot of room to experiment and get creative!

The main character is a lovable good, and his supporting cast is just as lovable. Each one is beaming with personality, even the bad guys are fun to watch. And I was hoping to see more if their interactions through the game.

The dialogue is extremely charming, it is funny and there is a lot of going jokes that really made it worth it to pay attention and grab those secret conversations

One of my favorite jokes which I won't spoil starts as one of the documents that you find on the level, it is funny on its own and then it grows and has me cracking up by the end of the game.

The game uses a mix of licensed songs and original tracks and ask if them are bangers.

Cutscenes are a joy to watch and are well executed. The animation is top notch. While the animation is Japanese like as far as I know, the game was written in English and English as the main language, and it shows, the voice acting is out of this world. The characters really steal the show.

The game has a clear vision and direction and it was executed perfectly. Well almost perfectly!

I do have 3 negatives to say about the game, but they are very minor:

The beginning of the game has too much hand-holding, I can see why they do it, but I would have loved to get introduced to some mechanics and let me do a few longer fights to test things out. As it is, you learn a move, then you have fight that is essentially over in a couple of hits and you barely get to experiment some nuances of the moves. And this constant stop and go can get tedious specially when you feel in the grouve!

2nd: the fancy visual can sometimes get in the way of action. Executing certain moves and the VFX associated with it (even some enemies) can cause the screen to be too busy and not being able to see incoming attacks

3rd: there are about 2 or 3 fights that I would consider hard and they feel at odds with the rest of the game and I can see these fights turning off some casuals as they can be tricky.

I can't recall if you can change difficulty midway but maybe that would be a way to get through the game

Overall the game is a fun ride and highly recommend for some to check out. This is really one of those games that would come up in my mind when people ask me "what's your favorite game?"

We really need more of these just plain fun games

Really loving the game. Super fun and oozes personality. The combat is great and feels great. My only issue is that I don't feel pushed to using various combos. This is partly because I'm not a huge "combo person" but also because I don't get a feeling of what each combo is good for. For the most part, I can smash my way with very simple combos.

A second slight issue is that I feel that there's too much dead time grabbing items and breaking boxes which kind of breaks the flow a bit.

But those are minimal. I'm loving this game.

I’m a little over half way through this and having a blast. I’ve got the same problem I had with Bayonetta which is that as soon as I enter combat my brain refuses to recall all but the most basic combos, but that doesn’t matter. It’s super fun and super funny, and despite a range of questionable accents I like the characters a lot.

Interestingly I did find my timing was noticeably better (+10%) for the one level I played on PC—not sure what’s going on there as my TV is pretty good latency wise.

Funny combat, decent story and great character design.
Art was awesome and the world design was super good too.

Fighting was entertaining but not difficult, if you just spam the "abilities" while attacking it becomes a shitfest where you can't see much in the screen but the enemies die easily xD. Wasn't annoying but if fighting is a big aspect for you then yeah, at least you know.

Would recommend to everyone :)

This game was a huge surprise when it shadow-dropped after the Microsoft announcement. I love rhythm games, but have never played a combination of a 3rd person fighter and rhythm.

Characters are the perfect amount of goofy and endearing, and the art style is just...perfect. The variety in levels was way more than I was expecting, and the colors were super vibrant but not overwhelming.

The gameplay...wow. It feels so good to play, and by the end of the game I felt so in control of the character and his abilities and how they can be combined with the others. It is a testament to the game that even though I stepped away to play some other games for a few weeks, within an hour of coming back and playing this game I felt right back in it.

Finally, the length of this game was perfect. It was long enough that I felt I was invested and felt good growth throughout the game, but it didn't feel too long it was a drag. I was starting to feel overpowered by the end, but that's kind of the point. The continual drip of complicating gameplay was tuned perfectly.

Stop reading and play this game now!

Hi-Fi Rush isn't the type of game I'd pick up and play, but I heard so many things about it that I just had to try it (thank you, Game Pass). It sorta ended up being what I already expected, with a few surprises along the way.

This game is downright gorgeous! The animations, vibrant colors, cutscenes, character design and even the visual cues were amazing. It makes you feel comfortable to play, while doing it all in style. The level design is also quite amazing. At times I loved the platforming moments, little puzzles and just traversing through areas way more interesting than the battle system.

Unfortunately, the story and writing are very dumb and obvious. I know that its silliness can actually be intentional, but I just couldn't do it with the dialogue and the lack of development on the plot and its characters. I loved the presentation and the cast/villains were quite charming, but I couldn't care for them. Honestly, the worst aspect of the game.

But the real deal here is the combat. A cool weird mix between Devil May Cry and, I don't know, Guitar Hero, I guess. For me, it worked. Not always, but it did work. It took a long time to click, but it was fun when it did. The thing that bothered me the most was that, sometimes, it didn't really feel like I was doing combos on the beat when I KNEW that I was. And yes, I checked and tweaked things in the options menu. Also, sometimes I was more focused on the beat than in actually moving forward. It's very strange, but there is beauty in it.

The bosses were hilights for me, the enemy variety is interesting but sort of lacking (some of them, like the bird and the samurai, are annoying as hell), the environments look very good but are somewhat repetitive and combos were cool to pull off but buying them on the store didn't seem to shake up the combat that much.

The parry mechanic left me a bit conflicted as well. Hitting perfect parries made feel like an untouchable badass, but I HATED the obligatory parry moments as they were more of a nuisance than an impactful quirk.

One other thing that was a bit of a hit or miss for me was the music. I think that's what kept me from enjoying this game more. The licensed music is great. I never thought I'd actually fight a video game boss to the sound of NIN, Number Girl and even a Flaming Lips cover. That was amazing.

As for the original music? It was bland and forgettable. And for a game that puts music as the forefront of its design, it needed to be awesome.

Hi-Fi Rush is not my type of game, but it's a fun experience, for sure! I liked how entertaining, charming, imaginative and technical it is, but I did not fall in love with its cast, story, world and, most importantly, music.

If you have Game Pass, though, you should definitely give it a try!

Between Hi-Fi Rush and Metroid Prime Remastered it's been a hell of a month for shadow dropping games. Haven't grabbed MPR yet, but I can say nice things about HFR.

Fantastic. It feels like a 20 year old game in the best way possible. Chai is the dumbest boy and I love him. Rhythm character action game isn't something I thought would be excellent, but it absolutely exceeded my expectations from the trailer.

If you have Gamepass, get this game. If you don't, I still highly recommend it for character action game fans. It's not as technical as something like Devil May Cry or Metal Gear Rising, but it's still excellent and fun.

What a great, great title. Even if, like me, you're not into rhythm games, you owe it to yourself to give this a go. Hi-Fi Rush oozes with style and personality at every beat, every stage, every combat section. The overall moment-to-moment gameplay feels fantastic, and even if you’re rhythm-deaf you’ll have something to enjoy here.

While it is virtually impossible to separate it from its musical beats - it informs and breathes life into every single thing in the game, from running pace to backgrounds -, Hi-Fi Rush stands out from most other rhythm games due to the fact that it never punishes you for not being in sync with your hits. It rewards you if you play in tandem with it, but even if you don’t, your experience won't feel diminished. However, if you lean into its awesome soundtrack and the intuitive morphing between rhythm and action, the game can at times feel like a high octane dopamine dose is being transferred from its very vibrant, very colourful world directly into your brain. Combat is, by far, where Hi-Fi Rush is at its absolute best, so much so that I almost felt slightly annoyed when I wasn't fighting, a testament to how cool and energetic those moments actually feel. Bosses are great, varied and they always feel fun to engage with. The abilities and moves you’re gradually introduced to are all awesome and useful. And even the parrying, arguably the most contentious aspect in the game, feels pretty good once you get it down. Platforming is also pretty enjoyable on the whole, though here I wish they had made it a tad tighter (it’s loose enough to take a bit of getting used to).

I do have some criticisms, such as the slowish first level (it essentially serves as a prolonged tutorial section), the fact that, in my opinion, the game takes you out of the action a bit more than it should (for the sake of a story that isn’t exactly S tier), the sameness of some sections if a few of the levels, and the impression that dialogue doesn't always land. But none of these are relevant compared to everything else you get. Hi-Fi Rush feels a bit like a seminal moment in gaming: it looks great, it sounds great, it plays great, and it came out of absolutely nowhere. I wish these types of moments weren’t so few and far between. 8.5/10