"Ages ago, life was born in the primitive sea."

What is Rez? Depending on who you ask, it stands for "Resolute," "Resolve," or a fun little reference to Tron. As a game, however, Rez is a on-rails shooter that aims to be so much more, pulling the player into a state of synesthesia with its pulsating beats and trippy visuals. It is a game so concerned with conveying a mood that it was at one point in time simply titled Vibes. Unfortunately, despite praise being heaped upon it in magazines at the time, Rez never really sold well, and my younger self struggled to find a copy, leaving me with an unsatisfied need to stick a vibrator under my ass and play Tetsuya Mizuguchi's so-called "masterpiece."

Now that I've finally gotten my hands on it, I think it's safe to say Weatherby has a new favorite on-rails shooter. I just played Panzer Dragoon Zwei like, a month ago, but considering a significant share of Rez's staff was pulled from Team Andromeda, maybe it's not too surprising I like this a whole lot, too.

Suffice it to say, if you've played any of the Panzer Dragoon games, you probably have a very good idea of how Rez plays, with the main conceit being how your shots time in beat to the music. You're able to evolve your avatar over time as well, ascending to more transcendental states. I really like how this sort of evolution ties into Rez's greater themes about singularity and consciousness, you lose when your state of mind totally bottoms out, and you're at your zenith when you've effectively turned into the baby from the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Eden, the AI you're journeying to awaken, has shut herself off after becoming self-aware, overwhelmed with the tremendous amount of data she's tasked with processing and fearful of her awakened state. There's very little setup to this outside of the tutorial/manual screen, with scarce dialog towards the end from Eden being the primary way it's conveyed in-game. I think you get just enough, anything more would kind of spoil the game for me, and anything less would devalue the experience.

Rez Infinite also comes with Area X, a sort of proof-of-concept for where Rez could potentially go from here. The visuals are very reminiscent of Tetris Effect, and it similarly managed to trigger the same sort of meditative state in me. At least until the very end when my motion sickness started to kick back in, which... Man it would suck if that prevented me from playing a full version of Area X, because I love what it's going for. Infinite is also PSVR compatible but... I ain't doing that. Sorry, Sony, all my disposable income is going towards expensive repro carts of Sega Genesis games and used Xbox 360 titles, I don't have enough cash left on hand to get a headset I'll use for like, maybe two or three games. I'm sure if I did, however, it would only heighten the experience of playing Rez, as it seems extremely well-suited for it. The trance vibrator aimed to further immerse the player in what was happening on screen, and VR is nothing if not the modern equivalent of this gimmick.

Rez is great. Critics at the time were telling everyone it was great. Nobody listened and nobody bought it, but now it's here again, easily accessible through the Playstation store. If you like vibes-ass vibes games or on-rails shooters then you should probably pick it up.

Difficult to put synesthesia magic into the right words. All I'd be doing is describing pictures, attempting to make impressive in letters the evocative audiovisual experience. I can point to the threads that connect together into this technological celebration of culture, life, etc. I could point out that it's honestly a pretty solid attentive rail shooter in its own right (when I first played it baked I was so bad that it was honestly detrimental to the experience lol). My real only criticism is that it's deceptively harder than it looks to where sometimes there's just too much visual information on screen really!! Go play it! It's short!

Kurt kışı geçirir ama Rez'in, Stage 5 son boss'unu unutmaz.

Oyunun görselliği Epilepsi krizininizi tatmin edemeye fazlasıyla yetecektir, bide soundtrack ler çok ii

https://open.spotify.com/track/38TW4C6Ozqvpc93ay4E1xO?si=42c63894dc774a15

I find it hard to believe that this game is as fantastic and fun to play as it is for how incredibly simple it is to play. For how abstract it's presentation is, it still manages to pull you in so successfully and completely that I didn't realize I was on the last stage of the game until I finished it.

Rez Infinite is a game that managed to impress me more and more as it went along, with every stage and boss fight somehow being even better than the previous in ways I can't honestly understand, but I know that all of it is damn good and this is definitely something everyone should play.

This is the definitive way to play Rez, VR-enabled or otherwise. Rez is already a banger game that pushes the boundaries of the unification of video games and music in a stylish and fun way, so to basically have an HD version of that game with all the bells and whistles that it entails is very cool.

The real upgrade comes from the VR support, as Rez itself is already a rather trippy and immersive game so to have it completely surround your senses feels like an extension of the original vision. Only one minor problem hinders the experience for me: i can't really play this for long periods of time without feeling really bad. Rez is a pretty fast moving rail shooter, and it does spin around pretty frequently at times, so I usually can't play more than one level at a time before calling it quits for the day. Doesn't help that the aiming is most precise with the quick head tracking so you are constantly moving your head around in an already moving environment, it does me in real good.

This game also includes the new Area X mode which is a neat short bonus level that has a ton of the visual upgrades you'd expect from Rez on a modern platform. It's more free-moving though, likely to let the player control the pace in VR to not get super sick, but I still didn't feel that good playing it since turning around basically spins you in place with your head already sideways. blegh.

Overall I legally cannot hate it because it's rez but honestly I think playing this on a nice 4K OLED could be a bit more comfortable and cool than playing in VR.

The way this game has enemies that are just non-antagonistic is wild. And the way it messes with perspective having big enemies in the background and small enemies in the foreground and rewarding shooting things far away is such an inverse on the rail shooter mentality of things being far away being harder to hit and not a threat.

That and just the mere act of interpreting the shapes as antagonistic is flexing a brain muscle nothing else in the entire world has ever done.

I also played this high, the way God intended, so I don't even know what I'm talking about right now.

\*WHO ARE YOU ?*

My comfort. Ever since I learned how to emulate, I've returned to this title with semi-regularity just so I can trip through it again.

\*DON'T COME ANY CLOSER !*

Rez is like if Char Davies' 1995 art installation called "Osmose" was a shmup. Experimental explorations through 3D spaces that, while primitive, are teaming with vibes, life, and anthropologic influences. There's such a grit to it all, it's like decoding the earth's DNA, weaving it into strings to pluck, and playing along to the universe's heartbeat. Did you know that all the data on Rez's PS2 disk amounted to 91mb? That's how much a soul weighs.

\*WHY ?*

You could definitely say it peaks early by starting with the best level - its music is incredible, the escalation in instrumentation and aesthetic complexity is unmatched, you can't power up enough to become one of the forms with annoying sound effects. It's worth playing the slightly less spectacular middle levels just to eventually hear Fear is the Mindkiller again. Never dull, always reinventing itself and finding new ways to overwhelm the player, enemies and patterns that never show up across levels - it's a journey.
The Area X level they introduced for the Rez Infinite port is welcome optional content that isn't hurting anything. Many people love it, I'm kinda nonplussed. Empty void of Unreal Engine particles and none of the progressive trance choons that keep my heart bumpin.

\*AREN'T YOU AFRAID ?*

Still about as visually spectacular as games ever got!!! This is up there with Zone of the Enders 2 for Apex Graphics.

\*SAVE ME .....*

Audiovisual hyperbombast coated in that sweet, sweet Sega Dreamcast slime, a synesthesia-induced trip through techno-dreamland sculpted in wireframe and cast in the chromatic sheen of neofuture web-scapes. Following the steps of an allegorical hackerman, you annihilate endless waves of antivirus battalions as you fast track your way to each area’s AI boss battle. Along the way, beats mix with the game's pseudo-experimental approach to sound design, to form a rich sound system of eclectic cadences tightly wired in orchestra hits and synth crashes.

Themed broadly on icons of civilization and humanities broader evolution, each level leading up to Area 5 is a tease at what the game represents, a build to the game’s grander view of humanity and the inevitable future of human life. Speaking less pretentiously: You are here for Area 5, backed by the flawless masterpiece “Fear”. A crescendo on the themes the game is throwing down, the level spins a tale on the birth of human life, rising from the oceans as millions of species ebb and flow with the tide of time, culminating with the final step of live, another evolution to the afterlife, the void, the Other.

Weightlessness and audiophilia are the key components of Rez, in design and in execution. Flawlessly, the game encapsulates this ephemeral bliss I can only associate with Detroit Techno and 90s Hollywood Hacker pop culture, a flashpoint reflecting on a prior decade’s genre evolution, razed to the ground and resurrected as a new, hi-tech, form. A crisp single-hour runtime packs in a feeling that can only be associated with the era it comes from, inseparable from the past while looking to the future in cautious optimism.

Speaking as simple as possible: Rez rips. Play Rez. It’s on so many things. Go for it. Mess around with Area X too; such a fun addition.

while i think Rez Infinite is a perfectly well made score attack game that i overall enjoyed, i also have a host of issues with it that i think will prevent me from replaying it in the future

i quite strongly dislike the aesthetic first of all, it's got like a computery wire-framey thing going on and it's incredibly boring on my opinion, none of the background elements stick out and all the enemies are just kinda shapes with an eye with like other shapes attached to them, they don't really have like a clear identity to me

this goes for the bosses as well like i can't really tell what they're supposed to be nor do i really care, i do quite like the guy that like turns himself into different stuff made out of blocks like a snake and a big robot guy but even this idea feels a little played out

the music generally was also quite weak or in some cases just straight up annoying, like the stage 2 boss which is very whiny or the stage 4 boss that sounds like a load of monkeys fixing cars like it's soooooo full of itself omg like academy award search party over here

it is cool that shooting stuff like adds to the song though it does make it feel more satisfying

the gameplay is generally quite solid but it also feels a little limiting, i haven't played the Panzer Dragoon games yet but i've watched a friend play through them and are familiar with how they work, and apparently a lot of people who worked on those games also worked on Rez and this is a sort of spiritual successor to those games

in Panzer Dragoon you're able to make quick 90° turns and this adds another layer of challenge as you need to be more aware of threats coming from all sides, making for more dynamic and engaging play

Rez has camera changes too but rather than putting the onus on the player to execute them they happen automatically, which is not only far less interesting to me, but in places where you have a full range of motion, usually in boss fights, you have to make these slowwwww sweeping turns behind you when the guy you're shooting at suddenly zips behind you, which is one of those things that just doesn't feel good

this rears it's head especially in the stage new to Rez Infinite, Area X, which is far more open which makes navigation feel even more clunky and tank-like, though they did add a useful option to move backwards as well which helps, i assume it feels much better in VR which it seems clearly designed for but normal mode is kinda rough, it also has a weird issue where you have to tap A again to start aiming at stuff again every time a new section starts, where normally just keeping A held down is enough, which was mildly annoying and also killed my family

as well as being able to turn quickly, Panzer Dragoon also had a minimap to help keep track of threats coming from all sides but Rez has no such thing so the only way to check for stuff off camera is just to slowly turn around like a dork, probably opening yourself up to more danger in the meantime

the challenge of the game is also like in this weird place where sometimes it's incredibly easy and it feels like nothing is fighting back, to suddenly a million tiny pieces of shit are right in front of you and you don't know how they got there and you take like seven hits and die instantly which is infuriating

i keep harping on about the bosses but i really don't like them like what are they even doing especially the first two like the first one periodically will just shoot at nothing like an idiot and the second one has this stupid attack where he just keeps making these walls that come for you really slowly and you have to shoot four bits on them and it's like the easiest shit in the world but he just keeps doing it, they improve a bit after that but even then they still feel like they take too long and are too repetitive without enough really going on in them, with some very awkward streches of just nothing happening

i've also had the stage 4 boss like weirdly rubber-band to me and instantly doing damage without any of the wind-up because i was like beating him too quickly or something

a lot of the stages don't really stand apart from one another for me but i think the final area is fantastic, it has a distinct look, really cool music in the background that keeps building and keeps getting cooler, and even a little story going on about the universe or something that i admittedly didn't really care about but it's well told since it's just a couple of sentences each in the transitions between sections with like a cool background change

the stage also demonstrates how to do a boss rush well by having the rematches be much shorter than their first encounters, but also having new attack patterns and movement, so they still resemble their first forms but they feel like new fights, rather than being boring padding like boss rushes usually are

the final boss is a bit dull though and getting interrupted to watch an unskippable cutscene of a woman being rebuilt over and over throughout it, even in score attack mode, feels like needless pomp and circumstance and a case of mixed up priorities, the story just struck me as one of those things that wants to be all up in your face looking like it's saying something really deep but not actually saying anything at all, but it's possible i could be being close minded about it though but either way it failed to engage me personally, and feels a bit at odds with an hour long rail shooter you're meant to replay a bunch

this review is just a collection of stuff i've written at like 3am which is just things i was thinking about while playing the game and i fear i sound overly negative and whiny, but i really did enjoy myself, building the highest combos you can and memorising enemy patterns is inherently satisfying to me, even in the more uneventful sections there's always some stuff to shoot so i was never like bored bored

i liked the game enough to get all the achievements and spent a good deal of time in score attack mode just trying to perfect the first couple of levels, this along with some cute extra modes and unlockables mean there's enough hear to keep me occupied for hundreds of hours probably, but unfortunately, all those little issues i brought up really added up for me over time and i could start to tell that i'd had my fill

i had my fun, but my hyperfixation lies elsewhere

The original Rez has been on my gaming bucket list for close to 20 years. 12 year old me made a mental note to check it out after Jane Pinckard’s famous article about the Trance Vibrator lead to the video games message board I frequented in 2002 exploding in incandescent rage that someone would sexually defile a video games peripheral. As a result of this, Rez lead to me discovering what vibrators and other sex toys were, so I guess you could say this game changed my life two decades before I even got a chance to play it.

Back in 2002, video streaming wasn’t quite a thing yet, and you could forget about checking out video game OSTs that weren’t in midi format. So over the next couple of years, descriptions of Rez took on a hyper-imaginative form in my mind... it wasn’t one of those games like Super Mario Sunshine or Metal Gear Solid 2 that you could reasonably picture in your mind’s eye, so I had all kinds of childish visions of what a “transcendent” game that could give women orgasms would play like. But alas! I never found Rez in my local game shops, and it eventually faded from my memory.

Despite making a specific point of wanting to play this game, I’ve actually played every Mizuguchi game apart from this one in the intervening time since 2002. As such, playing Rez post-Tetris Effect, Child of Eden, Space Channel 5, et al kinda feels like going back to discover a favourite band or director’s sophomore work after already experiencing all the stuff that it went on to influence and evolve into. Not necessarily disappointing, but too coloured by expectations of what you know an artist can do at the heights of their talent and resources.

I love a lot of what the original game is doing, but trying to mix intense gameplay with A/V spectacle that doesn’t always follow a coherent design language left me kinda frustrated at times. Which floating objects are gonna kill me? Which ones are just set-dressing for me to pass idle moments on the journey with? It sucks to lose a 20 minute flow because you didn’t realise that the pretty beam of light that dipped off screen 5 seconds prior was actually a game-ending death-bolt. It’s a problem that other Mizuguchi games have had (Tetris Effect is guilty of throwing its most intense flurries of technicolour sparks in your face right as you’re trying to pull off a T-Spin at TGM speeds), but it feels more pronounced here because the core gameplay is relatively slight and time-consuming. Having to retry the lengthy Area 5 again lifted the hood on the technical aspects of what should have been a transcendent experience (and I don’t wanna hear that California Soul sample for the thirtieth time!!), but for the most part I can forgive these wrongdoings because this is a 20 year old PS2 game that could easily pass for something made in the past few years. Not quite the transcendence I hoped for, but still something special.

It’s almost as if Mizuguchi and his team had the exact same thoughts as me, because the Infinite’s all-new Area X mode sets out to directly address all the complaints I made above. It definitely favours Experience over Challenge, but who can blame them when it feels this good? Now THIS is a game I’d happily play with a vibrator down my pants! It’s beautiful!

Rez Infinite is a very difficult game to describe, it's a very unique experience to say the least, so much so that when I try to talk about it with friends and say what it is my mind becomes a little hazy, and it becomes hard to describe it in a way that they understand, so please excuse me if my recanting of this game isn't clear enough.

I originally got this game when Sony was holding there "Stay At Home" initiative, an event that happened so people could stay home and play some free games due to COVID, while I played the original Rez a couple years before hand in high school when I got my PS4 I never had any intentions of actually buying Infinite, even though I thought it was a neat game.

come the day I could download this and I was blown away, this game in my opinion probably has some of the best incorporation of Rhythm and Musical mechanics in a game that isn't a pure Rhythm game (take any of the Hatsune Miku games for example), most people including myself describe this game as a musical rail shooting game in where you shoot down enemies that are also trying to take you down, and when you shoot enemies down enemies you make your own rhythm to the music, basically think of adding beats and other noises to an already existing background song.

honestly even though this probably doesn't sound like a good Idea I feel it flows together quite nice and hardly ever sounds like gargled crap, the game itself is a very trippy experience, filled with nonsensical imagery, blinding lights through ever changing environments.

that aside the bosses in this game are quite neat, they feel like mini pseudo stages in where bosses try to throw crap at you and you have to shoot them down, eventually getting to the point where you can shoot they're weakness, honestly I think my favorite being the 4th boss, in where you float through a hallway giving chase to the boss itself while it changes forms from a bunch of cubes that can throw missiles at you, to a running man made out said cubes running way from you.

honestly Rez Infinite is such a trippy game that I can't help but love it, even though the game itself is very hard for me to grasp I can tell a lot of love and care went into the final product, from it's visual design, music and the environments, to the extra mode "area X", which is a single level similar to the base game but a bit bigger in comparison to the main game, mainly cause you can fly around at your own pace and freely change direction.

but yeah me jacking this game off aside I thought Rez Infinite was an excellent experience, to the point where I legitimately cannot think of a single thing I disliked about it, if you like Rhythm games I highly recommend giving it a shot!

Estilo sob substância? Eventualmente, em algum ponto conforme escorregava pela ciberesfera, meu avatar de bebê 2001 atirando ponteiros em vírus geométricos variados, entrava em um transe que me balançava entre pensar no mundano que tinha pra fazer na segunda-feira e me deixar levar pela maluquice descabida que estava correndo diante dos meus olhos - o cérebro não aguentava os petabytes de maneirice ou a jogabilidade às vezes entediante e me dissociava, parece. Embora linda, a Area X não tem a mesma energia de “capotando na deep web” que o jogo original tem.

This HD remake of the PS2/DC classic Rez breathes some new life into a very old gem, however the update only harms its own image due to simple design mistakes and the enhancements that only highlight those mistakes further.

The PS2 controller made targeting slow and the game was intentionally timed to the slow pace at which you could target enemies. This meant the sound fx and visuals tied to targeting and shooting were all in sync with the music - that's at the core of the Rez experience. However the massively improved VR controls make targeting and shooting VERY fast. As a result all the sound effects and visuals play at once in a cacophony, the enemies die, and then you have a long 4 - 8 beat stretch of nothing as the backing track plods along, waiting for new enemies to spawn.

What makes this worse is that the graphic updates end up being largely absent. Enemies filled the middle ground of the scene, captured your attention, and were the source of many particles, effects, the music, and animation - but since they all die quickly you're often left staring at the sky box with nothing happening. Then looking around in VR during these wait periods you can see how empty and simple the levels are because the HD parts are in the effects not the environments.

This all becomes especially noticeable in Area 5 when you demolish a mini boss and you're left sitting for 2-3 minutes floating through a desolate low-poly void with half the song missing. It feels like the game is broken. They should either have put a limit on the speed at which you can lock-on to enemies (matching to the BPM of the track), added more enemies to match the faster pace of this version, or filled the spaces with stuff to interact with so you can trigger the SFX/VFX where the music and visual upgrades are hiding.

No new player is going to know that the game is -meant- to be synced to the music and even if they try it is entirely out of sync with itself. This aspect demolishes the intended audio/visual experience which is the point of the entire game. It's very sad to consider how stunning Child of Eden was when it took advantage of the expanded memory, gpu, and peripherals it had available, and it goes to show how much potential has been squandered here. This would have been obvious if it had been properly play tested.

To add salt to the wound, Area X (the new VR part of the game made for Infinite) failed to work on my Quest 2. I couldn't target anything so I just couldn't play that at all (I hear it's basically just 1 extra 15 min level anyway). Truly disappointing in every way.