It's so easy to squint and imagine how earlier Platinum would've knocked this out of the park, how it was probably pitched as a full-fat spiritual sequel to Okami, but they didn't, their worst instincts activated and they put annoying gacha grinding and gear leveling and stripped it down until there was nothing left, superb character/enemy design and music wasted on a nothing game, like a case study on how exactly my favorite studio has fell off
Not a terrible game though, there's things to like here despite its best efforts to make you dislike it, you guys would've been all over this if it came out on the Vita, or the Wii, oh wait it did it was called Muramasa: The Demon Blade and it was boring and without actual meaningful level design that time too
The most exciting moment in World of Demons is when you get to fight Ninetails and she has her own boss theme and your heart swells because you are remembering that sick as fuck boss fight in Okami, and then you are brought crashing back down to reality
Thank god I was able to return my Apple TV to Walmart just in the nick of time, playing this before it shut down didn't cost me a cent

Where do I even begin with this game I can't play, that vanished right out from under me?
It kills me that they ported the incredibly underrated Devil's Third multiplayer from Wii U to PC as you see here in the form of the renamed RockShot, and then killed it off in THREE MONTHS, by the time I heard about it, it was already over. In the words of infamous Wanted: Dead filter boss August, is that all?

This is a cry for help shot in the dark tree falling in the forest with nobody around to hear it, but could somebody please reverse-engineer this game?
I'd give anything to play it and host LAN parties with it, [here I'll even give you the URL to install it on Steam] (steam://install/1368430) and yes, that trick I did with the URL there by changing out the app number from the delisted store page, works for LawBreakers, a game that did actually have its multiplayer revived recently (therefore proving that nothing is impossible), and a myriad of other F2P delisted Steam games, and only F2P games.
If it worked with all delisted Steam games it'd be too good to be true.

I found out about that install trick mentioned above because people spread it for acquiring Streets of Kamurocho and the other games from that time Sega released a bunch of freebies for Golden Week and paraded around the corpse of a modern Golden Axe vertical slice from years ago, which they then received backlash for not properly crediting the devs whose unfinished work they humiliated them over, thus ensuring Sega never does a thing like that again. But that's a story for another time, or actually this time, because I did just go off-track to explain it even if it hardly made sense.

I inadvertently expose some facet of my nature when all the multiplayer games I want are the ones that I can't have, I miss you Devil's Third, I miss you Anarchy Reigns, I never even got to play Rumbleverse, that one looked pretty good, the online melee combat multiplayer deathmatch genre, the only genre of online games it seems like I actually enjoy, or OMCMD for short (rolls off the tongue doesn't it) is an elusive species that is not fit for natural selection and would not, could not survive the winter. I love them but they never make it. ...If MMORPG could catch on surely that one should too, right?

And I love Soleil Game Studios too, they're one of my favorite extremely underrated game studios, dare I say they may be the next Platinum (or at least the next Alvion, and if you know who they are without having to look them up, you and I are friends now), formed out of the remnants of controversial Ninja Gaiden I, Black, & II director, difficulty maven, breast-man, and gooner auteur-ner Tomonobu Itagaki's Valhalla Game Studios, they are composed of the people who made Devil's Third operating under a witness protection program and now that I've effectively blown their cover they're going to need to move to the Netherlands, so I'm sorry about that guys. Depending on who you ask, Itagaki either left Tecmo because he didn't get $1.4m in unpaid bonuses for completing Dead or Alive 4, or because he me tooed and his time's up, so he's not traveling with them anymore.
They made Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time, Valkyrie Elysium, but more importantly split from Itagaki and continued to refine their ideas from Devil's Third by forking off in two separate directions, one towards fleshing out their multiplayer in the ill-fated RockShot, towards which they displayed an utter lack of confidence by only giving it three months, and the other towards fleshing out its campaign in the form of Stefaniejoostenlike instant cult classic Wanted: FUCKING: Dead (which, by the way, was basically commissioned by some odd rich dude who almost paid Remedy to make it instead of Soleil), and upcoming instant cult classic Stefaniejoostenlike Vanquishlike, Vengeance is Mine

I might be overselling Wanted: Dead there with the profanity, but despite not being a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination it's a definite improvement on the admittedly not great Devil's Third campaign, and serves as evidence that despite being a game from one year ago, 7th gen nostalgia is beginning to come into vogue, as people yearn for the bygone creature comforts of turning off your multiplayer game to boot into a jank-ass singleplayer game with a title like MindJack or NeverDead or Quantum Theory or Shadows of the Damned or WET or Devil's Third or Wanted: Dead because you were tired of being called a slur by a guy sending you a God of War wallpaper

But they've yet to fully realize their original vision for Devil's Third, which by earlier trailers back when the game was being published by THQ and people were actually hyped for it once, was going to be a much more seamless campaign and multiplayer fusion. Maybe they'll realize it in their upcoming Project EDO, the latest in their OMCMD lineage, which they have nothing but concept art and breathless hype for, proclaiming loudly to the world on their front page that their ultimate goal is to make Project EDO one of the most loved and played games of all time. Big talk coming from a small team under the auspices of Tencent, who keeps repeatedly poaching creators like Yakuza's Toshihiro Nagoshi or Suda51 to then have them work tirelessly on some vaporware game that seems to be perpetually just out of reach like a desert mirage, but I guess sooner or later we'll see if it pays off for them. Eventually. For being what they perceive as a future Fortnite, their new NINJA x High-end Action Online Multiplayer title doesn't even have a Backloggd page, so I have my reservations. Hell, Soleil themselves doesn't even have a Wikipedia page yet!

That was a lot of tangents for a game I haven't even been able to try...in summary, what did we even learn today, if anything?

- The only time I'll ever get to play Devil's Third MP and Ace Combat Infinity ever again will be when my brain is being flooded with time-dilating flashback DMT as I experience multiple organ failure
- You can still download delisted F2P Steam games and if like myself you like multiplayer necromancy, the art of bringing back dead games, you could go play LawBreakers through said method
- Please reverse-engineer RockShot, I'm begging you, it can't be that hard right? Surely one of you is a genius?
- Devil's Third multiplayer was cool, you could parkour off a building and throw a katana through some dude's torso
- OMCMD games are too cool and "niche" to live (honestly, I don't believe in the concept of a game being niche, either you have faith in your concept or you don't, any game can be a success with the right word-of-mouth and marketing)
- Tomonobu Itagaki is attracted to women
- Soleil Game Studios is about to hit it big and is another in the long line of things I caught onto before it was cool
- Herzog, deal with this shit
- Nicely done Cortez

Class dismissed

My long journey to Hi-Fi Rush began when I was 7 years old, during the absolutely sweltering summer of 2003. It was one of those weekends where my family and I were "driving into town", because everything good was in Chattanooga and not where we were living. They took me to the local Circuit City (lol) and on the clearance rack they were "pennying out" (selling for a single penny to remove from the inventory system) a variety of cast-off video game and computer merchandise. One of these cast-offs was a little demo disc known as the Nintendo GameCube Preview Disc. It contained four demos, but my parents would have had a shared aneurysm if they saw me playing Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, so really, it only had three.

- Sonic Adventure DX, which was what got me to pick it up in the first place after playing the absolute shit out of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle.
- A strange game called Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, which I had a close eye on because they were talking about it in Nintendo Power and it was from the Sonic guys.
- And finally...a little game called Viewtiful Joe that absolutely blew my little 2nd grader mind.

I played that demo over, and over, and over, rewinding and fastforwarding and slow-moing with my newly-acquired VFX powers, and my parents, bless them, actually cared about and paid attention to what got me excited and passionate, because being inured to child-raising with a then-in-vogue-but-now-outdated pediatric dogma that children with autism are "stuck in their own little worlds" meant they felt an intense pressure to pay attention and reward any sign of neuron activation.
My dad thought it looked promising, because he's always had a fixation on superheroes, and he was online but not extremely online enough to differentiate "superhero" from "tokusatsu", so they preordered it for me.

Maybe I'm overstating it, but what followed on October 7th, 2003, was something of a religious experience. We picked it up from Rhino Video Games (rip, you're excused if you're too young to remember when there were tons of cool video game store chains before GameStop bought them all just for the land value), and I played that game like crazy. Back then I could never get past the absolute brutal boss rush that has you fight every boss you've already fought back to back, ending in a fight with the vicious and cruel boss of bosses Fire Leo, which, if memory serves, sends you all the way back to the beginning of the boss rush if you fail. Pretty far for a 3rd grader though it may be, I didn't quite have what it takes to reach the ending, but that game planted a seed that altered my personality for good. Henshin-a-go-go baby!

A few months later my dad handed me down his GameFAQs.com forum account so I could ask for help being stuck on the opening stage of Sonic Heroes where you play as Team Chaotix. With not a ton to occupy my time, I went on the the online to go "surfing" on this new and exciting ""web"". GameFAQs had this sidebar where they would show game industry news from their sister website, GameSpot. This meant I started paying attention to industry news, and it became apparent to me that Viewtiful Joe didn't just come out of nowhere, it came from a small outfit within Capcom called Clover Studios, that benefited enormously from institutional knowledge imported from other parts of Capcom.
I gobbled up every mention of Clover, they quickly became my favorite of all studios from the moment I even had a concept of developers.
I learned that games were not the subject of immaculate conception but rather an intense process of iteration and cultural feedback, that they existed within a canon.
I learned that Viewtiful Joe was part of a miniature canon of five games for the Gamecube known as the Capcom Five, which was really more like the Capcom Four because one of them, Dead Phoenix, got cancelled before I even heard about it. You know, for a game that never was, its title is so on-the-nose you'd be excused for thinking I just made that up.
I learned that I was supposed to be angry at an evangelical Floridian lawyer named Jack Thompson.
And, most influentially, I learned that Viewtiful Joe was the singular vision of a cooler-than-cool motorcycle-riding custom-Oakleys-wearing 80s John Hughes movie protagonist character of a man named Hideki Kamiya.

The very next year (wow, remember when amazing sequels used to only take a year? what the fuck happened?) I got Viewtiful Joe 2 on release date. I followed every bit of news about Clover Studios, heard about these wild new games they were making called Okami and God Hand, had my little pre-teen heart absolutely shattered by the news that Clover had shut down, and then subsequently kintsugi'd by the news that they had reformed into a new studio fittingly named Seeds. And then Seeds merged with another studio, and became this new studio called PlatinumGames, and that the auteurs behind Viewtiful Joe, Okami and God Hand had went with them, and they signed a contract with Sega to give them a whopping FIVE new games, all of them being next-gen, paralleling the famous Capcom Five.

In 2003 I played Viewtiful Joe. In 2004 I played Viewtiful Joe 2. In 2005 I played Viewtiful Joe Double Trouble for the Nintendo DS (and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney! but aside from Shu Takumi's bromance (and possible unrequited love?) for Hideki Kamiya that's not particularly relevant).
In 2008 we were really really poor that year (huh I wonder why) so that Christmas my parents bought me a used PS2 Slim to replace the PS2 that had broke to where it keeps showing that scary red screen, and with it came a newly-released Greatest Hits reprint of Okami, which had me jumping up and down with joy that I had finally found a copy, because it had become low-print-run eBay scalper bait from pretty much the moment it came out. I subsequently do every sidequest and acquire every Stray Bead, leaving absolutely no stone unturned to adequately pay tribute to my idol Hideki Kamiya.

In 2010 I finally find a sunfaded-to-the-point-of-disintegrating copy of God Hand at the local outdoor drive-in theater/swap meet, for the low low price of 5 dollars. I remember it got bad reviews which is why I never played it, that on top of the aforementioned parental-aneurysm-inducing M-rating, but hey, I'm a teenager now, my parents just said they think I'm mature enough for the M-rating, and I end up playing the fuck out of that too. My online Venezuelan pen-pal who ended up introducing me to so, so many games I adored due to South America's vibrant culture of piracy, I mean, he said God Hand was fantastic, and I trust his word, so why not? (we haven't talked in probably a decade but we're friends on Backloggd so a shout-out to you if you're reading this, thank you for everything! thank you for Deadly Premonition! I hope we get to talk again one day, so much has happened!)
God Hand was directed by a man named Shinji Mikami, and word of mouth got around that he was really, really good at designing action games. 4chan-adjacent contrarians exalted it and used the famous IGN 3/10 review as fuel for their paranoid distrust of and superiority complex to game journalists. It became the subject of a meme comic template based on how the game's hidden excellence took everybody who played it by surprise. Tim Rogers then writes a review wherein, among many other extremely colorful metaphors, he compares moments in God Hand to "the feeling of catching a bully's punch, effortlessly uncurling his fist, and snatching out a fifty-dollar-bill". My bullied 15-year-old self nods, agreeing with his assessment.

In 2012, I played Devil May Cry 1 and 3 out of the HD Collection after the sage advice of the net told me to skip 2, and I played Ninja Gaiden Sigma Male, and I played the return of the Mikami and God Hand design ethos, a game called *dramatic title-screen-announcer voice* VANQUISH. I adored Vanquish, and I spent the next 11 years rawdogging estradiol and waiting for, finally, another action game bearing the stamp of Shinji Mikami. Thank you for reading so far into something this personal, you probably get where this is going, yeah? Keep going though.

In 2013, I buy the last game of Platinum's Sega deal, Anarchy Reigns, and I have an excellent, very fun month with this hypermasculine game while its online was still alive, getting my mind off the crippling anxiety of having just came out to my parents. The next month, I play Platinum's Metal Gear Rising, the first game they've made outside their deal with Sega, and like Jack, it rips. In 2015 I finally, finally get to play Bayonetta, because I always heard the PS3 version was bad, so I avoided it until I got a Wii U, and I am reminded of my intense fondness for Hideki Kamiya's trademark embracement of stylish action, camp, and cringe. Meanwhile, the man himself begins blocking basically everybody who speaks English to him on Twitter because most of them are begging for Bayonetta 2 on their preferred system and calling him slurs.

In 2016 I play Furi, a particularly inspired indie game specially crafted for "genetic freaks!" who are "not normal!" such as myself, while living out of a motel, on a Wii U Pro Controller while my dad sleeps in the same room. I finish the game at like 5 AM. The credits give a very special thanks to Shinji Mikami, Hideki Kamiya, Keiji Inafune (lol, I'd put Akira Kitamura if only for Cocoron), Hideo Kojima, Hidetaka Miyazaki, Genyo Takeda (director of Punch-Out), Platinum Games, Grasshopper Manufactures (sic), and Treasure Co, in that exact order, probably close to the order I'd put them in too. Thank you for all the great games and memories! so they wrote.

In 2017, under conditions of more stable housing, I play Nier:Automata from Platinum, and it's great! But this review isn't about how I've been Facebook friends with Yoko Taro since before Drakengard 3 came out. Where are you, Yoko Taro? I miss you.
Also in 2017, Hideki Kamiya's next big effort, Scalebound, is cancelled by Microsoft, making me shake my fist in anger at the Xbox brand and how anything good it produces seems to be in spite of themselves. I make a post online about how they should retrofit it into Drakengard 4.

In 2019 I back The Wonderful 101 Remastered Kickstarter, because somehow I hadn't got around to playing it yet. Surprise surprise, as expected from a Hideki Kamiya joint, it was incredible. In 2020 I buy Vanquish AGAIN, the moment it got released on PS4, and in the midst of intense anxiety over an incoming plague and Bernie Sanders primary results, I finally accomplish the infamous "Tactical Challenge 6", iykyk. Sega has posted a survey for people who bought the Bayonetta/Vanquish collection, I spam every field with "VANQUISH 2 VANQUISH 2 VANQUISH 2". My longing for the return of Shinji Mikami intensifies like a kid on their birthday remembering their dad who stepped out for a pack of smokes and never came back.

It is 2021. I finally play another Capcom Five game from way back when, Mikami and Suda51's Killer7, in 4K widescreen. They never collaborated again, anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. It is everything I was told it was. The m4m craigslist guy was right. I continue to miss Shinji Mikami so fuckin bad

It is late 2022. God Hand is selling on eBay for the high high price of 160 dollars, and people are buying, because it's worth it. I am reading the r/gamingleaksandrumors subreddit, as I am wont to do, even though I don't have a Reddit account. Some guy is posting about Microsoft registering a trademark for a new game called...HI-FI RUSH. They think, via process of elimination, that it could be an unannounced project from Tango Gameworks, Shinji Mikami's studio. They think it might be an action game! I excitedly message my one friend who watches my streams, similarly obsessed with this canon as I am, in the hopes that it could be that fabled second coming of God Hand. Could it be? Do I dare to hope?

It is January 25th, 2023. Microsoft just straight-up drops the game I've been waiting for for most of my life during a presentation I'm not watching, with zero fanfare. I immediately buy it based solely off reflex from my sympathetic nervous system, before my conscious mind can even comprehend what just happened. Despite having been ravenous for this for most of the time I've been a conscious human being, I save it for a rainy day.

It is late 2023. I am on mushrooms. I remember there is a new Shinji Mikami produced action game I still haven't played, and so I boot up Hi-Fi Rush. I quickly realize that by my personal barometer, it is one of the greatest games ever made, and that I would still be feeling this way even if I wasn't on drugs. It means the world to me that this game was allowed to exist, it feels like coming home.
The character action genre is my favorite genre of game, and I’ve always considered it the most pure, joyous, evocative genre of video game, they represent everything uniquely special about the medium while radiating a tangible aura of inspired fun, mechanical depth, flashy setpieces and an effortless sense of “cool” that shaped my personality more than I could ever untangle from myself.

I guess what I'm trying to get at by autobiographizing like this, is that I am glad this game exists at all, and from a young age, younger than I should have been to learn such a life lesson, the shutdown of Clover Studios taught me something really important. Don't be sad because it's over, be happy because it happened. Because it could've been so easy for it not to, you know? Everything about your life and mine only happened because everything landed in the right place, this game only existed because everything landed in the right place, it's so incredibly easy for something to never come together, or get cancelled before we ever even heard about it. With how many minds are warring for supremacy, it's an absolute miracle anything ever gets made at all, let alone a game this good and coherent and visionary. And just like I saw growing up alongside them, watching them rise from the ashes like a (dead?) phoenix with how Clover became Seeds became Platinum became Tango, you can kill a studio but you can't kill their spirit, the influence they have on the family tree of design. Tango will return.

It is February 29th, 2024. Leap Day, a liminal space that only comes around once a presidential term. I am on mushrooms again. I decide now is the time to finish Hi-Fi Rush. I beat the game a couple minutes after midnight, which disappointed me slightly because I wanted the achievement date to say the 29th. My first playthrough was on Very Hard difficulty of course, because this personal history has made me into quite the tryhard. I sit through the credits as a gesture of respect, of course. How could I not? I waited most of my life for this game, it's the least I could do. The director himself starts serenading me. I look around nervously, wondering if I am hallucinating this or something. I am not. Everything I wrote about in this review comes flooding back. It becomes apparent to me that the world is filled with overwhelming beauty, that it is truly beautiful that people can collaborate and make something with so many moving parts, and that it is beautiful that everything I've experienced and the ways those people like Mikami, Kamiya, and now Johanas contributed to a shared lineage made me who I am, and I feel loved and personally spoken to in a way I've never felt before. Of course, of course I cry my goddamn eyes out.

We somehow made it through

All of this.

Making things is hard,

Things never go as planned.

Too many features, not enough time.

We want the best

But can only do so much

With what we have.

So this is what we made.

We've never been more proud.

A game, a song, a million different pieces working together

Brought to you by all of us.

It may not be what you expected,

Everything

(Everything that you want)

But we did our best

And here it is:

A piece of our heart,

The hard work from all of us.

So please don't complain

And just enjoy.

Because at the end of the day, it's all just a game.

One we spent thousands and thousands of hours

Arguing, building, and polishing.

But hey,

No sweat. 😅