On a random day in 2005, after binging a few Quentin Tarantino flicks and a couple of Fist of the North Star chapters, Shinji Mikami looked at his masterpiece that was Resident Evil 4 and said "What if RE4 but Kenshiro and Tarrantino fr" and God Hand was born (This is my headcannon).

God Hand was a game I was ready to drop in the first 2 - 3 hours of playing as I was struggling with some of the earlier bosses and didn't wanna give myself an aneurysm while barely making it out of every fight that I've died to multiple times. But then I looked at the huge following this game had and saw all the singing praises, and I wanted to be a part of that camp too. So I decided I wasn't gonna be a little bitch boy and try to properly figure out how this game works.

When the game clicks, it finally CLICKS and you feel like a boxing god (intentional with the title?), but at the same time no matter how good you get the game will just get harder thanks to it's dyanamic difficulty system, just one of the mechanics borrowed from RE4. Unless you spend a good chunk of your life playing this game, it will remain challening no matter what. This is honestly, quite one of the hardest games I have ever played. Keep in mind though the game is also one of the fairest games I have ever played. I don't think I've ever died once thinking it was the games fault. Everything done by the enemy is clearly telegraphed and you are given a window to deal with it in multiple ways. And when you die, the checkpoints are mostly frequent bar a few exceptions, and it's generous enough to give you all of your health back when you die.

In regards to fairness and difficulty, the way it's hanlded here makes you not wanna put the controller down because as opposed to other what is considered to be "hard" games like Souls games, while challenging, are pretty punishing usually sending you back a bit if you die at a bossfight, and at the risk of losing some of the experience you gained. God Hand is hard hard in the sense where you need good reflexes and awareness for every single fight, but also very fair because of it's generous checkpoints. In a souls game, there are plenty of ways to cheese things if you're at a wall, but here you cannot cheese at all. It's just you and your skill, and you aren't getting past a point until you get better. Best way to put it, this is a discipline simulator.

When this game was initially released, the game was mostly overlooked by critics due to the criticism of the combat not being robust. This is far from the truth about the combat and to put it, God Hand's combat was way ahead of this time. What we have now as modern God Of War over the shoulder combat, which has endless praise from critics, was clearly inspired by God Hand. Similar to Resident Evil 4, God Hand employs the same control scheme where it is an over the shoulder tank controlling game, with not much control over the camera. This was highly ambitious for an action game back in the day, where action games were mostly 3rd camera-pulled-away types of games. It works really well in God Hand as the right stick is now used as it's dodging system, which is implemented insanley well.

God Hand is not an offensive based game where it's about pulling the best combos you can. In fact, there really aren't much button combos here.. 90% of the time you will be just mashing the square button to the tune of your preset combo. God Hand's gameplay is mainly defense and crowd control focused. 1 on 1 fights are pretty straight forward and purley defense focused. In these fights you are dodging attacks and retaliating when there is a window of opportunity, wheras if you put more than one enemy in a fight, the strategy has suddenly changed and it's about positioning yourself in a way where you don't get blindsided or stockpiled. Crowd fights are more about putting yourself in a position where you can get into a 1 on 1 with a enemy for a moment, before going back to controlliing the crowd again. Once the game systems click, you will be dodging and taking out baddies one by one like a champ.

The game isn't perfect, there were moments that kinda sucked for me, like that one section with the big claw machine. Moments like these are few and far between, but when they come it kills the momentum you have.

Apart from the gameplay, the setting and style reminds you of a Quentin Tarantino movie which brings immesne charm to the whole package. There are so many goofy cheeky moments that bring a laugh out of you in between all the chaos, it makes getting through the hard moments so much more worth it just to see these goofy scenes.

By the end of the game I felt like I had just conquered a mountain. Despite at the beggining feeling like this is game I probably couldn't finish, I made it to the end and had so much fun while doing it. I am now apart of the God Hand cult and "I love it".

Ed, Edd n Eddy: The Mis-Edventures is the reason my dad owns a PlayStation 5 and became obsessed with The Last of Us for a year. I'm not shitting you.

The year was circa 2009, or something like that, and my brother was obsessed with Ed, Edd n Eddy. Kind of. Back then, we had a small collection of licensed games. There was a copy of the Robots game that I thought the House Fairy (my mom's way of getting us to clean up after ourselves) gave us once, and a copy of a weird Animaniacs game that I don't remember at all. Those are the two that stick out to me the most. So my older brother's frothing at the mouth at the thought of playing a game based on one of his favorite cartoons, and lo and behold, one exists. So he goads my dad into going to the nearby GameStop we bought a copy of Animal Crossing: City Folk and a mic for our Wii at. No cheddar. But they have a copy of it for the PlayStation 2. At this point, we're using our Wii as a glorified Gamecube and boot up Goldeneye on our dad's old N64 to scream at each other. All hope is lost for my older brother until he remembers that, 'wait, doesn't the PlayStation 3 play PS2 games?' Neither of us Google that, and the thought of watching my older brother play it inspires me to add a PlayStation 3 to my wishlist come December out of the blue. Cue the gift card my dad gets from work that Holiday season being the perfect amount for a new console; cue our brand new PlayStation 3 getting unwrapped next to a copy of Mind Flex that will gather dust in the years to come and a copy of The Beatles Rock Band for Wii that probably went to a Goodwill somewhere. Cue the memories spawned from my neighbors: the kids who went to our house for the trampoline we had in our backyard and LittleBigPlanet; the kid who lived right next to us who was so obsessed with Call of Duty that his birthday cake was literally the cover art of World At War one time; the copy of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood sold to my older brother for five dollars and promptly ignored; and, anecdotally, the kid who had to get sent to the ER after a pop-it was thrown at his head. That last one isn't related, but it comes up every time I remember these things.

If this game didn't contribute to my childhood, I don't know what did.

Too bad it kinda blows.

Rollerdrome is a game that would fit in perfectly with the PS2 library, meant as a good thing. It harkens to back to that generation where all you needed for a videogame was a cool idea and some good gameplay.

Taking a lot of inspiration from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Rollerdrome is best described as a Tony Hawk game with guns. The concept is very similar; you're given stages and in order to unlock new stages you need to complete some of the listed challenges e.g. Get a score of X, Do this trick on this grind rail etc etc.

As opposed to playing against the timer, you are rather playing against enemies. This is where the guns come in. In order to complete a level, you simply have to kill all the players on a stage using your 4 different weapons. You have controls that are very similar to THPS except not as complex. The question is why would you focus on doing tricks when this is mainly a shooter then? Well, in order to get back some ammo for your guns, you need to perform tricks. This is where the cool gameplay idea comes where you will constantly shooting and flipping, grabbing, grinding and spinning which results in very stylish gameplay once you master it.

The first 2 hours of the game is extremely fun, however the novelty quickly wears off once you realise you've seen all that the game can show you in those first 2 hours. The game itself is about 5-6 hours so it's not too long, but in those last 3 hours you will just be basically doing the same thing by facing the same enemy types you have been facing in the first 2 hours and the repetitiveness kicks in.

The idea of Rollerdrome is so good, the gameplay is great, it's just the content itself leaves so much to be desired. There are a couple of stages, but you are getting the same 3 biomes which quickly wear out. There is so much potential with Rollerdrome to reach high highs, which it does at the beginning, but everything quickly wears off hoping you'd see much more variety.

It's still a very good game and I would like to see a sequel with the same concept but with much more variety and ideas.

As far as atari2600 games go, this isn't that bad!
I expected a barely playable mess and not being able to finish a single level, but once I realized that I couldn't aim directly at objects (like the super bomb) with the web I had a way easier time.

The best part of the game is the diagonal web swing physics, I was impressed with that (sure it's a low bar but it's atari). The game as a whole is quite fun, and I wouldn't be disappointed if I had bought it at the time when it released.

Oh and one last thing, everytime spiderman ate shit on the floor I just couldn't stop laughing. That crunchy sound is perfect.

I recently 100%ed the storymode on the good path. I had fun and now I'll go for the evil path on hard mode.

This game really feels like a product of it's time: A big open map with stuff scattered for you to collect. You're free to attack anyone and you traverse the map by doing parkour. I wonder what came first...Infamous, Assassin creed, Prototype... the bionic commando reboot? The graphics look good but it slightly has "that filter" from that era.

Then there's Cole. Storywise he's fine but take one look at him... he's just a bald white dude wearing casual clothes. Cole has to be the most generic looking whitest videogame protagonist ever.

The actual story is alright. It has some moments that hit but most of the time I felt that scenes just happened. The more (intended) powerful moments just didn't hit for me because of the the morality system. Everything is so black and white is hilarious. For example, the very first moral choice is: either you power a bridge so you can cross a big gap, or you overcharge it and burn a settlement full of innocent people.
So you have the obvious good choice or the comically evil one, and the game has the courtesy to point these "opportunities" on the map. Oh you want to to be eeeeevil? There are some cops for you to kill right here! and a random street musician across the street, look!
You wanna be a good boy? Here, some injured civilians for you to heal! Also, can you deactivate the bomb over here?

Eventually the good choices are personified by Kuo and the bad choices by Nix (a...lightly dressed black girl...🤔).

Well whatever. Juvenile story aside the gameplay is good. Moving around the map is not as fun as in spiderman or prototype but things get better when you get more powers.
The combat is mostly button mashing on close quarters but ranged combat is more like a 3rd person shooter, and there's more varied stuff you can do; like grab and throw anything close to you like cars, push enemies, deflect projectiles, shoot lightning bullets and grenades.

I'll see if the evil playthrough changes enough stuff for me, but for now I feel that Infamous 2 is in the good but not great category.

Rhythm games are not ones I play a lot, but when I do, I usually have a great time doing so. Metal: Hellsinger is one of my favorites for the longest time for its rhythmic style gameplay combined with a First-Person Shooter. Now what do you think happens when you combine a game like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta but make it a rhythmic hack-and-slash action game? The simple answer is: You get Hi-Fi RUSH, my personal game of the year for 2023, and my current favorite game of all time. This is an amazing game. And this is coming from a company who’s made games like Ghostwire: Tokyo and The Evil Within 1 & 2, Tango Gameworks. And this is a Bethesda game, so it’s no surprise it’d come to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox Game Pass. But the game is also out for PC via Steam and Epic Games as of now. If you haven’t played this game as of yet, PLEASE get it as soon as you are able to. Any hack-and-slash fan may love what Hi-Fi RUSH has to offer.
The funny part of all this was that Hi-Fi RUSH was announced on a Developer Direct on January 25th, 2023, and it released the same day. I found that to not only be pretty awesome, but surprising considering that nothing was said about this game for a long time. They just full-on shadow-dropped it in an Xbox Developer Direct. This game is the best one I have ever played so far and I wonder if it’ll keep that merit. With that said, I’m going to divide this review in some sections:
Story
Gameplay
Characters (+ Voice Actors)
Music
Boss Fights
Post-Game Content
We shall begin with the story.

STORY:

This story is a coming-of-age where our main character, Chai, is disabled due to his right arm having nerve damage. He finds out about a program named “Project Armstrong”, which gives disabled people much needed enhancements so that they can get back onto their feet. So Chai signs up for this program so that he can have a new arm. Why is that? Because he has a dream that he wants to accomplish. Chai wants to become a rockstar. He ends up getting the cybernetic enhancement that he wanted, but it comes at a cost. His music player that Kale Vandelay, the CEO of Vandelay Technologies, threw onto him became a mechanical beating heart of sorts. And for that, he is deemed a “defect” by Kale and the company. But fortunately for Chai, this gives him some “musical robot powers” that lets him fight enemies to the beat of the music playing from the amazing soundtrack (and trust me, I will be talking about it A LOT during this review, so please bear with me). He actually fights his way to a bunker where Chai meets Peppermint, the deuteragonist who helps you on your way. You also get to meet other characters like Macaron and CNMN (his actual name is quite…something. It’s an acronym of Conscious Review Allocation Personnel, which…you can guess what he’s actually called.) Chai and his team fights the bosses, which gives him and his team the passkeys needed to override SPECTRA, a new program Kale has launched that will let him control those who have gotten their Project Armstrong enhancements. During the story, the team finds out that Peppermint is the sister to Kale Vandelay, and the daughter of Roxanne Vandelay, but instead of running off on her, they stick with her the whole way through. Chai and his friends defeat Kale and disable SPECTRA once and for all…kind of. They find out that SPECTRA was about to restart by itself, and the AI Kale was ready to destroy our heroes WHEN…a cleaning robot unplugged it while trying to clean. Chai considers the problem solved and he leaves a note to not touch the plug.
And that’s the story of Hi-Fi RUSH! I loved it. John Johanas and Morten Brunbjerg created a story that is not only very fun, but also pretty comical as well. It has its serious moments, obviously, but it has great funny moments. There is a great balance between the two, which is great. This might be one of my favorite stories in video games ever told (next to Red Dead Redemption). It was an amazing time from start to finish for me.

GAMEPLAY:

Hi-Fi RUSH is a rhythmic Devil-May-Cry type action game. The basic rundown is this: Since Chai now has his music player in his chest, the whole world is synced to the beat of the music. Not just the whole world, the gameplay is synced to the music. You have your light attacks and your heavy attacks. Light attacks have one beat each, while heavy attacks are two beats; you attack and wait one more beat to attack again. It took quite some time to getting used to at first, but I gotta say…I absolutely love it. It has a pretty high skill ceiling, ESPECIALLY on difficulties like Rhythm Master, where you HAVE to memorize the beats of not just the song, but your ATTACKS as well. You have multiple combos you can pull off once you buy them with gear parts. Thankfully, they’re not like microtransactions that you buy off the digital store like Xbox and PlayStation, no no no. You earn them in-game by collecting them in the level OR by defeating enemies. You get even more when you pull off combos AND time your attacks to the beat, which is very much amazing. During your playthrough, Peppermint will have a terminal to let you buy chips that give you specific strengths, you can buy combos with the gear parts you have, and you can even buy health tanks and reverb gauges. On top of that, you can equip combos and chips. You can customize them to your liking, and it’s always fun to do different combos when fighting other enemies and even bosses like Rekka and Roquefort. There are moments where you have to partake in QTEs, especially when you’re riding a magnet zip-line. They’re few and far between, but they’re a fun time.
An update brought some Arcade Challenges to Hi-Fi RUSH, and they are HELLA fun. Let’s go over these challenges.
First up is:

POWER UP! TOWER UP!
This mode is simple. Chai has been powered down and you need to build his strength back up. This mode is kind of similar to Bloody Palace from Devil May Cry 2 to 5, even including DmC: Devil May Cry. As you fight through many enemies, you have a ton of options; keep going as is, gain some strength, replenish your health, get some chips (no, not food) to help even the odds a bit more, so on and so forth. This mode can get increasingly harder bit by bit but it’s fun through and through. Playing through this mode, I’ve felt the challenge and it’s really good.

BPM RUSH!
This is my favorite mode in Hi-Fi RUSH. BPM Rush is a mode in the game where you go through many stages of fighting endless enemies and having to adapt how fast the BPM will go. The BPM will go as far as 200, and it is PRETTY fast so you need to adapt and attack as fast as you possibly can. It is an awesome mode. EX Mode starts you off at 185 BPM and makes you go through 6 rounds of 200 BPM. Once you complete Power Up! Tower Up! and BPM Rush, you will be able to enter “Vandelay Gameworks”, an area that’s very similar to the Tango Gameworks development studio, and then FINALLY, you get that gift basket that Zanzo flicked away in Track 4: Less Budget, More Problems.

And that was the gameplay! It may take some time getting used to at first, and there is an option to have Rhythm Assist to help you with the timing of your attacks. But once you get it down, it’s very fun to do the combos.

CHARACTERS!:

Let’s go over the main characters of the game, plus the performances of each from their respective voice actor!

Chai (Voiced by Robbie Daymond [Kenshiro, Megumi Fushiguro, Goro Akechi] and Hiro Shimono [Zenitsu, Scott Pilgrim, Alear])

Chai is the best written character for a game that has a comedic and rockstar tone. He’s that kinda character where he’s all rad and gung-ho, ready to jump into action at any given point, but he’s kinda an idiot, but a loveable one at that. Him being voiced by Robbie Daymond definitely helps as Robbie’s performance is SPECTACULAR. He matches Chai to…quite a SCARY degree, so much so that I can’t even imagine who else would voice Chai had Robbie not signed on. Hiro Shimono’s take on Chai is great too. I’ve not played the game much in Japanese but his performance isn’t something to ignore.

Peppermint (Voiced by Erica Lindbeck [Loona, Black Cat {Felicia Hardy}, Futaba Sakura] and Toa Yukinari [Casca, Karin, Edge])

Peppermint is the smart girl who had her robot leg thanks to Roxanne Vandelay, and she’s very gifted in robotics. Sister to Kale Vandelay, she is the most useful person on the entire team, next to Macaron. She CAN be easily irritated (all due to the museum scene that I HIGHLY recommend you watch), but she is quite compassionate and willing to stop Kale by any means necessary. Erica Lindbeck matches this tone to a TEE, most likely because of the voice work she’s done like Loona from Helluva Boss, where THAT character was easily irritated so…those two could be friends. Maybe. Toa Yukinari’s performance is great as well, especially with that museum scene as well.

Macaron (Voiced by Gabe Kunda [Bat Devil, Digby Vermouth, Atlas] and Yasuhiro Mamiya [Hugo Kupka, Viviano Westwood, Groot])

Macaron is a non-combative employee at Vandelay Technologies. It’s evident through his mannerisms, and he’s a genuine nice guy who was pretty devastated that he was pretty much fired. He wanted to get back at the company, and his strength REALLY helped in the long run. Gabe Kunda embodies Macaron perfectly, bringing the genuine, but always careful tone and attitude to the character, making him one of my favorite characters in the entire game. Yasuhiro Mamiya is pretty good as Macaron too, and I don’t really see any other voice actors in Japan embody the character well.

CNMN (Voiced by Sunil Malhotra [Kung Lao, Prince Wu, Jinx] and Hiroyuki Yoshino [Ed, Piroro, Yaten])

CNMN is literally the most entertaining character in the entire game, bar NONE. He tells the truth, no matter how harsh it is. He’s genuinely got great dialogue that more than fits the mood of the game. His sarcastic nature is the funniest thing I’ve ever listened to. Sunil Malholtra, the voice of Kung Lao in Mortal Kombat 11 and Mortal Kombat 1 (2023), is just way too perfect for this character and that is very high praise. Hiroyuki Yoshino is also perfect for CNMN. I, honest to god, cannot think of anyone else to play CNMN.

Korsica (Voiced by Sarah Elmaleh [Despondent Pyre, Apollyon, An Underground member from Spider-Man: Miles Morales] and Yū Kobayashi [Rudi, Twizzly Gummy Cookie, Bonyu])

Korsica is a no-nonsense, bossy type character, until she joins Chai and the gang that is. But she’s very understanding of any situation she’s in, given the circumstances. After hearing Sarah Elmaleh’s voice in this game, I went ahead and listened to her other performances, and honestly? I dig it! She’s quite a perfect fit for Korsica. Now, Yū Kobayashi’s performance is REALLY good. I can’t really prefer Sarah over Kobayashi, but both are still just as good as the other.

Kale Vandelay (Voiced by Roger Craig Smith [Sonic the Hedgehog, Ezio, Batman] and Takehito Koyasu [Toji Fushiguro, DIO, Peacemaker {upcoming Suicide Squad Isekai}])

The big bad bossman himself, Kale Vandelay. He’s VERY authoritarian, shown in the first hand-drawn animation cutscene, and he hates any and all defects. He hides his true intention with SPECTRA. I think you may know why I really like Kale. He, like Korsica, is no-nonsense, and he gets to business straight away. Roger Craig Smith is a perfect embodiment of this type of character. And RCS is one of my favorite voice actors so I really like this character. Takehito Koyasu is also perfectly well suited for this type of character, given he’s played powerhouses like Toji and DIO from Jujutsu Kaisen and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Love his performance as well.

Yes there is a lot of characters, so I’ll just list the remaining main characters here.

Mimosa, Rekka, Zanzo, and Roquefort (all voiced by Camilla Arfwedson and Kikuko Inoue, Misty Lee and Kimiko Saito, Todd Haberkorn and Wataru Katagi, and finally David Fane and Fumihiko Tachiki respectively.\

Mimosa is all about the glory of the stage. She would put on a great performance with her robot band. Camilla and Kikuko are great at this role.

Rekka is the tough woman who doesn’t like slackers and wants them to get the job done, or she’d fuckin PUMMEL them to oblivion. Misty and Kimiko’s performances are PERFECT for this character.

Zanzo is the one with big ambitions, yet is very much SPENDY with his budget. This is shown in the fight in the AR Labs. Todd Haberkorn, the voice of Natsu Dragneel, is just the most perfect for Zanzo EVER. Same goes for Wataru Katagi.

Oh Roquefort, the budget man. Once lying in his death bed, now an integral part of Vandelay by handling any and all money. David Kane and Fumihiko Tachiki brought this character to life in the best way possible.

That’s pretty much the main cast of Hi-Fi RUSH! One character I didn’t mention was Roxanne Vandelay, the woman who started the whole company. She’s kind of not really a big character, but in fairness, she was pretty important to Peppermint and Roxanne gave us a great ending to the game. The performance by Rahnuma Panthaky and Naoko Koda is great too. I really do like this character, and in a potential sequel, I’d love to see Roxanne have a much bigger role.

MUSIC:
I don’t have to linger on this one for too long. The music for this game is top-fuckin’-tier. There are so, so, SO MANY great songs in this soundtrack, especially with its free B-Side OST. I’mma just list my favorite tracks from the game by far:

Reflection
The Beacon
The Pulse
The Rush
So This Is Where The Magic Happens
Some People Call This Teamwork
Heatwave (Original AND the VÄRRT remix)
Through the Halls of History
It Was All for This
Synesthesia
BPM Rush!
Help! I’m Trapped in a Video Game Development Studio!
Title Screen Medley

And of course there are some licensed songs, and they fit perfectly within the tone and setting of the “Track” or level you’re playing in. For example:

Lonely Boy by The Black Keys
1,000,000 and The Perfect Drug by Nine Inch Nails
Free Radicals (Cover by Elsinore and Original by The Flaming Lips
INAZAWA CHAINSAW by Number Girl
Fast As You Can (Cover by Elsinore feat. Kayla Brown and Original by Fiona Apple)
Invaders Must Die by The Prodigy
Honestly by Zwan

The soundtrack was mostly done by The Glass Pyramids, Shuichi Kobori, John Johannas, and Masatoshi Yanagi. These guys put out all the stops for a soundtrack like this and it is unironically my current favorite video game OST right next to games like Sonic Frontiers, Devil May Cry 5, and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance as examples.

BOSS FIGHTS:

Another spot of the review I don’t really need to stay on for too long. The boss fights in this game are actually quite fun and challenging depending on the difficulty you chose in the game. The music that accompanies the boss fights are immaculate. There have been times where I did rage against some of the boss fights (cough cough ROQUEFORT cough), but I like the game design around them all, especially Roquefort. And then there’s Kale. I’ve played Kale on Very Hard difficulty, and that difficulty is right on target because HOLY SHIT I’ve had a lot of trouble on that difficulty. But I was able to beat Kale and I gotta say, he was pretty fun to fight, even if I got frustrated at times.

POST-GAME CONTENT:

Now THIS is where the fun really begins.
Once you beat the main story, a LOT of post-game content is open to you. First, there is Rhythm Tower, which is basically Hi-Fi RUSH’s own take on Bloody Palace from Devil May Cry. Rhythm Tower is a boss and enemy rush where it is easy to farm gears so that you can level up everything. At the time of this writing, I’m up to the 23rd floor of Rhythm Tower and honestly? This is the type of post-game stuff I’d really like for future games. Rhythm Tower isn’t the only post-game stuff, as there are the Arcade Challenges like Power Up! Tower Up! and BPM Rush!, AND there are the SPECTRA doors. There are 8 total, but afterwards, 8 more challenges arrive after you complete the SPECTRA doors. That’s where you get the ending I talked about in the story segment.
Arcade Challenge was an update that came out on July 5th, 2023 and it was a very welcoming addition to the game. Now I kinda wished we got that in the final release of Hi-Fi RUSH, but you know what, it’s a free update, and it’s a damn great one, so it gets a pass. The game is very much polished across the board, as I’ve not once encountered a single bug or glitch (doesn’t mean they don’t exist, I’m sure some people have run into some).
And finally, there is a new difficulty in the form of Rhythm Master. And this difficulty is no joke. You HAVE to, and I do mean that you HAVE to stay on the beat with your attacks. If the rank goes to D, it’s an immediate game over. This kinda is like the Extreme difficulty of Sonic Frontiers, but way harder than it shows.
And with everything out of the way? Let’s get into the final verdict.

THE FINAL VERDICT.

Hi-Fi RUSH is a game I have never thought I wanted, but it’s legitimately peak, and I will stand by it. Hi-Fi RUSH is a rhythmic action game that takes advantage of the gimmick it has, which is a synchronized, musical action hack-and-slash that is very fun from beginning to end. The post-game stuff definitely helps a lot. The music, the characters, the setting, the story, it’s all sublime. If there is a game that I cannot STRONGLY recommend enough that you try out, it’s this game. PLEASE play it. It’s on Xbox Game Pass, Steam, and now PlayStation 5. And soon it may come out for the Nintendo Switch 2 since there was a leak that has been proven legitimate with the PS5 release; there were the new shirts that were the anniversary bundle that depends on the platform you had the game on. For example, if you were playing on Steam, you got the “Be Positive” shirt, and for Epic Games, you got “This is simply Epic”, and now for Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo, you got the “Shadow Dropped”, “I’m Here, Baby!”, and “Rock Out! Anywhere!” shirts.
Anyways, my ranking is…


RANKING: PEAK EXPERIENCE/MASTERPIECE.

[ATROPOS_SCOUT_LOG_#01]://“DualSense"

The drizzle of rain rippling through my fingers. Stone hearts pulsating, shocks to my system. A fog unending. This ain’t home but the place where I must be. The ghost of Sisyphus lost in a dark forest where the rivers run red with neon-blood at her feet.

This is not an ordinary planet. Everything here wants [to kill] me. The worm-fed wolves and the speckled colossi uncoiling their endless garments of tentacles. Selene gets bashed into her suit by a biological blade slicing through the bullet rainbow. Azure echoes, a scan. Soft waves washing over my palms, producing new images, forming a sense of space built on the past-pulled directions of her previous deaths - rubber-banded triggers and reflexes snatching at the pressure of our fingers, dashes across a yard of grass, concealing its cosmic horrors, gestating new ones, each loot chamber a tomb filled with little dilemmas like a gun or another gun or a malignancy that’s worth the bite it will inflict on your virtual corpse once the creeper’s been fed if only I could survive that long - come through the other side of the mirror not unscathed but changed, finally, freed from the kind of anxious death-drive repetition forces upon you with its binaries of risk and reward. The sepulchral horror of Returnal’s feedback loop isn’t so much the impossibility of our escape as it is the unveiling of desire’s deepest seat; Selene - and by extension the player - are exactly where they’re meant to be, embedded within this unbelievably tight system of dashes and haptics, movement mechanics that thankfully prioritize responsiveness over groundedness complimented by an array of weapons each embodying distinct ways of approaching and eradicating our outer demons in this inner hell - and god does it feel good to burst this Hollowseeker open, watch Ixion fold into a cloud of golden dust; to see polygons devolve by my hand and understand this information in the skin directly then commits the player to kinesthesia as a form of immersion in which Returnal refuses subjugation and offers a direct line of conversation with the text instead - the best rumblescape since Rez’s Trance Vibrator. I’d go one step further even : Atropos as a sexual device. Of parasites latching onto my arm and skin saturated in power-ups. Digital matter that burrows in my brain's DualSense, carries me over this teleporter and away. Pop the bubble bath. Selene crumbles like the feeble being of particles that she is before reappearing somewhere else. Another room, another reverberation, this time I fail miserably at dispatching the heretic Phrike but I’ll soon be here again no doubt, and if not here then perhaps up in this spire that festers into infinity, grinding the score, collecting poppy flowers, attempting to make sense of the frenzy of it all. Bared tendrils at the mere sight of me, so I respond in kind - they tear me to pieces, they send me under.

Hihi, Atropos.

-

[ATROPOS SCOUT LOG_#02] :// “DreamSequence”

“Her name was Echo and she made the mistake of helping Zeus succeed in one of his sexual conquests. Hera found out and punished Echo, making it impossible for her to say anything except the last words spoken to her. Soon after, Echo fell in love with Narcissus whose obsession with himself caused her to pine away until only her voice remained. Another lesser known version of this myth has Pan falling in love with Echo. Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pieces, burying all of her except her voice. Adonta ta mete. [—Adonta ta… = “Her still singing limbs.”]”

- Chapter V, House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

Between every crash, a vision. Dreams in cathode ray-tubes and ocean-memories leaking through [her] with each failed attempt, a corrosive force of time itself, a marriage happening in reverse. Days falling into darkness; back to the beginning. In that particular fold of forest green a house stands - stood - still. Upon entrance, on the left wall just before a flight of stairs resonates with unknown footsteps, there hangs, I remark, the wooden-carved face of a sun left alone long ago. My son. Her daughter. Someone else’s Pandora's box - the soft voyeurism of play as metaphor. If DualSense’s intent was to obfuscate, to render tenuous and tactile the delineation between player and character then the house serves an opposite function - it sings with echoes, granting my poor astronaut the corporeal presence she so desperately craves in order to grasp the dream sequence and tear this body away from me. In her first-person perspective, at last, a new symbolic layer of reality touched in artifacts. Each passage through the house's pristine innards bores new holes in the narrative whilst grounding Selene in a larger picture of Returnal as an object both about her and itself - incapable of escaping its own maze of contradictions. But it's never enough. For me, for her. Even in death the proverbial rug is pulled from under us; to end her life on Earth means the same for Selene as it does on Atropos. We never escaped. And in this realization something shifts in our perception. Biomes of meaning begin to coalesce as crimson wastes become fractured and composed again, a ruin overgrown no longer and instead echoing our knowledge of design, confronting it to that of a decaying specter - except there's no one to race against but ourselves, frolicking in lasered flesh, taking a certain pleasure in charting that tract of scorched earth turned calcified snowmetal, in knowing that the planet glances back at us with every variation of its arcade terminologies. Sometimes on the ground you find a music box. Couple of omens, couple of tunes. Suddenly Returnal shrinks - and then expands. This planet is real, I’m convinced of it and the more Selene remembers, the more she seems to forget. I was lost in a forest once but now, it seems, I am trapped at the bottom.

Smile, Atropos.

-

Further journal entries will be added, in due time.