Hey, do you remember Jet Set Radio Future?
The folks at Team Reptile certainly do, that's for sure. The concept of "fine, we'll make our own -ABANDONED GAME FRANCHISE-, with blackjack, and hookers!" is a very risky proposition. Sometimes the new game can surpass its inspirations (Stardew Valley), and sometimes it falls flat on its fuckin' arse (Mighty No. 9). It's a fragile balancing act, as you want the new game to be reminiscent of the original, without being a carbon-copy ripoff. It should add some new mechanics or twists on the familiar formula, but not so much that it becomes unrecognizable.
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, impressively, manages to contain the worst of both worlds.
In many respects, it's creatively bankrupt. Almost every area I entered resulted in me muttering, "oh, cmon..." because they're instantly recognizable as "we have JSRF at home." Versum Hill is Dogenzaka Hill, Brink Terminal is Shibuya Terminal, Mataan is a combination of Highway Zero and Benten-Cho, etc. Even your gang's hideout is damn near identical to the hideout in JSRF. However, these areas also look significantly worse than JSRF's due to how sparsely populated they are. They're far less dense to begin with, but also suffer from a bizarrely short draw distance that makes them look even worse. Sure, you can see a few people scattered around, often in cute little diorama-esque poses that reminded me of Katamari Damacy, but you can only see them when you get within like 20 feet of them. This feeling of lifelessness is made even worse by the lack of voice acting. Most of the characters have short "yeah." or "uhh" clips when they talk, and that's fine, but the absence of DJ Professor K type figure is very apparent. You get cutscenes introducing gangs or saying what's happening in the city, like the ones he would narrate, but with no voice they all fall flat.
On the flipside, everything new here actively makes the game worse. Instead of solely inline skates, you can traverse via skateboard or BMX. In general gameplay, this makes absolutely no difference. All 3 handle the same, and their only purpose is to get you into certain areas that require one of the three. This just means going back to one of the very sparingly-placed spots where you can switch characters (not marked on the map, by the way, and neither are fast-travel points) and backtracking over there, because sliding on skates can break glass floors, skateboards can grind on little fire hydrant things to raise them, and bikes can... open doors by standing in front of them. None of this is ever explained in-game, by the way. I think I was 90% done before I was aware of the skateboard thing.
Another major change is the graffiti system. Rather than being presented with motions you have to complete to throw up tags, you just do whatever you want. The motions you make determine what tag appears, but it's entirely cosmetic except for one achievement that requires unique tags in a level. That achievement is also bugged, by the way. Anyway, this also removes pretty much the only source of challenge that was present in JSRF. Spraying was The Game, and collecting paint cans so you would have enough when you reached the tag spot was pretty much the entire point. Now you have unlimited paint. You can paint the same spot over and over if you want. Who cares. Technically, it is possible to fail the tagging minigame, as there is a meter in the bottom left that depletes during it, but it's so slow that it's never going to happen. After all, for the aforementioned reason, you can just waggle the stick around with wild abandon and it makes absolutely no difference.
But hey, maybe they made tagging completely braindead because they had the INCREDIBLE idea to make cops even more annoying than they were in the games they're ripping off! And, even better, they added combat!!! For real, whoever came up with this idea is going in The Contraption and I will feel no remorse. Your character just kinda does some breakdance moves in the cops' general vicinity and then they get knocked away. There's zero sense of impact. You can hit them, jump, and do a tag minigame to, I think, do more damage to them, but it doesn't matter. You're better off simply ignoring them, because once the cops have showed up, they're not leaving. Pretty much every tag you do will raise your heat meter another level, accompanied by a cutscene showing you the Tools of the State coming to kill your ass and plant fentanyl on your corpse. You can clear your heat by going into a port-a-potty (guess what: not marked on the map!) but if you haven't finished an area it's pretty pointless because they're going to be on you again immediately.
But okay. Time for the positives: there are a couple of areas that I think Team Reptile did a good job. The character designs, when they're not aping JSRF yet again (Bel is Gum, Rave is Garam, etc), are pretty good. The story is decent, and I particularly liked the dream sequences. They're platforming levels in a surreal floating environment in the middle of a swirly void, echoing the final boss of JSRF. The gangs are another highlight. They're the only place that BRC approaches JSRF, with groups like The Franks (a gang of b-ballin' frankingsteins), Eclipse (hot ladies into astrology), and Demon Theory (guys dressed like oni).
The soundtrack is pretty good, too. There are a couple of tracks I found very annoying (I never want to hear Precious Thing or Hair Dun Nails Dun ever again), and for some reason there is no option to create playlists or mute certain songs, but for the most part it's a great selection.
That's about it! Finally, adding insult to injury, they announced a physical version abouuuut 2 weeks after the "digital-only" release. Normally this would really piss me off, but I guess I'm okay with it because there's no way in hell I'm going to buy this again. I want a Fresh Experience, not warmed-up leftovers. Somehow, Sunset Overdrive remains the most faithful successor to Jet Set Radio. Now, on to Lies of P...
The folks at Team Reptile certainly do, that's for sure. The concept of "fine, we'll make our own -ABANDONED GAME FRANCHISE-, with blackjack, and hookers!" is a very risky proposition. Sometimes the new game can surpass its inspirations (Stardew Valley), and sometimes it falls flat on its fuckin' arse (Mighty No. 9). It's a fragile balancing act, as you want the new game to be reminiscent of the original, without being a carbon-copy ripoff. It should add some new mechanics or twists on the familiar formula, but not so much that it becomes unrecognizable.
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, impressively, manages to contain the worst of both worlds.
In many respects, it's creatively bankrupt. Almost every area I entered resulted in me muttering, "oh, cmon..." because they're instantly recognizable as "we have JSRF at home." Versum Hill is Dogenzaka Hill, Brink Terminal is Shibuya Terminal, Mataan is a combination of Highway Zero and Benten-Cho, etc. Even your gang's hideout is damn near identical to the hideout in JSRF. However, these areas also look significantly worse than JSRF's due to how sparsely populated they are. They're far less dense to begin with, but also suffer from a bizarrely short draw distance that makes them look even worse. Sure, you can see a few people scattered around, often in cute little diorama-esque poses that reminded me of Katamari Damacy, but you can only see them when you get within like 20 feet of them. This feeling of lifelessness is made even worse by the lack of voice acting. Most of the characters have short "yeah." or "uhh" clips when they talk, and that's fine, but the absence of DJ Professor K type figure is very apparent. You get cutscenes introducing gangs or saying what's happening in the city, like the ones he would narrate, but with no voice they all fall flat.
On the flipside, everything new here actively makes the game worse. Instead of solely inline skates, you can traverse via skateboard or BMX. In general gameplay, this makes absolutely no difference. All 3 handle the same, and their only purpose is to get you into certain areas that require one of the three. This just means going back to one of the very sparingly-placed spots where you can switch characters (not marked on the map, by the way, and neither are fast-travel points) and backtracking over there, because sliding on skates can break glass floors, skateboards can grind on little fire hydrant things to raise them, and bikes can... open doors by standing in front of them. None of this is ever explained in-game, by the way. I think I was 90% done before I was aware of the skateboard thing.
Another major change is the graffiti system. Rather than being presented with motions you have to complete to throw up tags, you just do whatever you want. The motions you make determine what tag appears, but it's entirely cosmetic except for one achievement that requires unique tags in a level. That achievement is also bugged, by the way. Anyway, this also removes pretty much the only source of challenge that was present in JSRF. Spraying was The Game, and collecting paint cans so you would have enough when you reached the tag spot was pretty much the entire point. Now you have unlimited paint. You can paint the same spot over and over if you want. Who cares. Technically, it is possible to fail the tagging minigame, as there is a meter in the bottom left that depletes during it, but it's so slow that it's never going to happen. After all, for the aforementioned reason, you can just waggle the stick around with wild abandon and it makes absolutely no difference.
But hey, maybe they made tagging completely braindead because they had the INCREDIBLE idea to make cops even more annoying than they were in the games they're ripping off! And, even better, they added combat!!! For real, whoever came up with this idea is going in The Contraption and I will feel no remorse. Your character just kinda does some breakdance moves in the cops' general vicinity and then they get knocked away. There's zero sense of impact. You can hit them, jump, and do a tag minigame to, I think, do more damage to them, but it doesn't matter. You're better off simply ignoring them, because once the cops have showed up, they're not leaving. Pretty much every tag you do will raise your heat meter another level, accompanied by a cutscene showing you the Tools of the State coming to kill your ass and plant fentanyl on your corpse. You can clear your heat by going into a port-a-potty (guess what: not marked on the map!) but if you haven't finished an area it's pretty pointless because they're going to be on you again immediately.
But okay. Time for the positives: there are a couple of areas that I think Team Reptile did a good job. The character designs, when they're not aping JSRF yet again (Bel is Gum, Rave is Garam, etc), are pretty good. The story is decent, and I particularly liked the dream sequences. They're platforming levels in a surreal floating environment in the middle of a swirly void, echoing the final boss of JSRF. The gangs are another highlight. They're the only place that BRC approaches JSRF, with groups like The Franks (a gang of b-ballin' frankingsteins), Eclipse (hot ladies into astrology), and Demon Theory (guys dressed like oni).
The soundtrack is pretty good, too. There are a couple of tracks I found very annoying (I never want to hear Precious Thing or Hair Dun Nails Dun ever again), and for some reason there is no option to create playlists or mute certain songs, but for the most part it's a great selection.
That's about it! Finally, adding insult to injury, they announced a physical version abouuuut 2 weeks after the "digital-only" release. Normally this would really piss me off, but I guess I'm okay with it because there's no way in hell I'm going to buy this again. I want a Fresh Experience, not warmed-up leftovers. Somehow, Sunset Overdrive remains the most faithful successor to Jet Set Radio. Now, on to Lies of P...
rundeer
4 months ago