It's important to know your roots.
Team Reptile is a company that's made one of my favorite games, Lethal League. It just absolutely oozes style like no other. Wacky character designs that look cool and striking, all with superb poses to make them each stand out. It's music would hit you heavy with it's banging synths from the most underground of underground artists, hand picked to create a feel for these sprawling urban environments these characters reside in. The game itself is deceptively simple yet mechanically rich. I had spent hours upon hours finessing ball movements, learning new character tech, and being absolutely demolished by the larger sharks above my skill level. It's a game I've bought tens of times for friends to play with me, and even rebought the game multiple times on different platforms. The soundtrack I have on CD, a precious treasure I call my own. All of this to spread the love for the game as far and wide as I could.
Upon seeing the initial teaser trailer for their next game, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, I had no doubt in my mind that this team could pull off the style, charm, and mechanical feel of a Jet Set Radio type of game. Trailer after trailer, my mouth watered with excitement. The sound, the look, the feel of it all just completely enraptured me.
And they nailed it entirely. So much so, that I believe they've strongly surpassed the series they were most influenced by. However, I don't necessarily think they've beat out the other spouse in this influential marriage, Tony Hawk Pro Skater.
... Okay, that sounded all kinds of wrong. What I mean is, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk stands proud and tall against Jet Set Radio, but doesn't quite reach the same levels of euphoric mechanical high as Tony Hawk does.
In Jet Set Radio, your goal was to tag as many areas as you could in a level, traversing on your roller blades and grinding on rails as you do so. Tagging was scored by performing quick time events that were often very stiff and precise, given they used the directions on the stick. As you tag, the police start to roll up and try to take you down. Funk on them with a spray can and carry on your way, Yo.
In Jet Set Radio Future, it was similar, except the areas were more free-roaming, were expanded greatly in size, and had less of an arcade loop focus. Instead of completing an area within a time limit, you'd do missions within these bigger areas, and that'd gain you more points. These ranged from races, jumping/grinding challenges, tagging challenges, etc. Usually this would end with you taking on the rival gang in a funkaholic challenge. In Bomb Rush, this is no different. Exploring open levels, trying to tag as much you can, doing missions, versing against your rival street gang, it's all there. The difference here comes down to the finer details.
The movement for starters is simply divine. No longer is your character this weighty yet fragile entity who gets knocked down easily, or who's so stiff you can't even precisely jump onto a rail. Now you can easily move around, with no friction between what you want done and performing it. Wanna jump around everywhere? Go for it, do some flips and tricks while you're at it. Have a boost that helps you mid-air and a jet blast to speed up even more on top of it. You can still grind on rails and sign boards, but now your method of travel has expanded. Skateboarding, biking, roller blading, the choice is all yours. Heck, you can even get off your board and run and slide around, doing flips and tricks to extend combos or speed up momentarily.
On top of movement tech, trick combos slide on in. Much like in Tony Hawk, these combos are ones you chain together as you move about the stage. In Tony Hawk however, the amount of tricks you can do depends directional inputs along with button inputs. This allows for a wide variety of tricks to be done, and makes scoring a lot more varied. The amount of tricks you can perform in BRC is limited to Y, X and A, which is a significant step down in complexity. To make up for this, they have you scoring multipliers to your tricks by using every part of the stage as you can. This entails making hard turns, dashing across signs, or flipping through half-pipes to increase your multiplier. This forces you to keep moving rather than sticking to a small loop that'll reward you with the best points, like in higher level play Tony Hawk games. The lack of tricks hurts the game a little in feeling complex, but it's still a dynamic system, where it requires you to plan out routes to obtain the best possible scores. The foundation of the movement system is enough to carry the rest of the combo system's short comings, making it addictive, but not as masterful as BRC's secondary influence. It'd be nice to have a bit more variety in tricks, maybe with the left stick like in THPS, but with what's there, it's a great system.
New Amsterdam makes for some real fun skateparks. Technologically advanced, yet still modern, these urban playgrounds are jungle gyms to monkey around on. Massive Mega Malls with shops littering every corner. Sprawling skyscrapers with massive monuments to golden men with heads of goats and cattle. A construction site in the shape of a giant pyramid. Urban streets and districts that are filled with all kinds of life. A bustling metro transportation depot, with never ending traffic. No trees in sight, all the oxygen is faked. Details like having your phone's camera take place physically into the game's world helps you become grounded the world. You use your phone's mini map as a way to navigate, controlling your music, and messaging with your buddies, all of which help sell you just a bit on being here. DJ Cyber's set list plays as you make your way through each environment, reflecting the vibe of the gangs that reside there. Funk, Hip-hop, electronica, future funk, all these fresh beats infect your earholes and stay there. Naganuma's presence in the Jet Set Radio games defined it's style, and he was brought back for a few tracks here. But the entire soundtrack is studded with multiple artists that bring to life these cultures and have some of the phatest beats imaginable.
The atmosphere to everything is heavily inspired by Jet Set Radio Future, and you can tell with many of the iconography they've picked and choose for the locations and music. It's inspiration is on it's sleeve, but they make large scale changes to these types of environments with the mechanics they've introduced, welcoming in their own ideas into the mix.
Lethal League wasn't exactly known for it's story. Blaze in particular has a story mode, but it wasn't anything substantial. Lethal League I believe takes place in the same universe as BRC, where street rats roam and play underground ball games. BRC's approach is fairly more substantial, with characters that have their charm. You play first as Faux, a legendary writer in New Amsterdam, who finds himself arrested. After breaking out with a new found friend, you find yourself getting your head cut clean off by a deadly disc thrown by DJ Cyber, another legendary writer. Apparently, someone has been collecting heads, so your body needs to be refit with a new one. Your new name is Red. Your friend wants you to go All City, which means taking over each rival gang and marking each street with your gang's name. King of All City.
The root of the story is a discovering a sense of identity. Finding out who you are, what you are, where you came from. You end up as a shell of a person. Through many twists and turns, your true identity is revealed, and you have to embrace that reality. The two personalities become interwoven into one, and you come out as a brand new you.
It's a strong arc for the story, but it's emblematic of the game as a whole. Your roots are a part of you. Your inspirations, your love, your culture, it's all a part of you. Embrace those parts of you, and create something new and inspiring from it. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is an amalgamation of it's inspirations, turned into something new and exciting. It embraces this wholeheartedly. And you can't help but love it for that fact. It knows what it is, and although it's not the picture perfect idealization of all the ideas it tries to execute, it's still a superbly tight game.
Team Reptile is a company that's made one of my favorite games, Lethal League. It just absolutely oozes style like no other. Wacky character designs that look cool and striking, all with superb poses to make them each stand out. It's music would hit you heavy with it's banging synths from the most underground of underground artists, hand picked to create a feel for these sprawling urban environments these characters reside in. The game itself is deceptively simple yet mechanically rich. I had spent hours upon hours finessing ball movements, learning new character tech, and being absolutely demolished by the larger sharks above my skill level. It's a game I've bought tens of times for friends to play with me, and even rebought the game multiple times on different platforms. The soundtrack I have on CD, a precious treasure I call my own. All of this to spread the love for the game as far and wide as I could.
Upon seeing the initial teaser trailer for their next game, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, I had no doubt in my mind that this team could pull off the style, charm, and mechanical feel of a Jet Set Radio type of game. Trailer after trailer, my mouth watered with excitement. The sound, the look, the feel of it all just completely enraptured me.
And they nailed it entirely. So much so, that I believe they've strongly surpassed the series they were most influenced by. However, I don't necessarily think they've beat out the other spouse in this influential marriage, Tony Hawk Pro Skater.
... Okay, that sounded all kinds of wrong. What I mean is, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk stands proud and tall against Jet Set Radio, but doesn't quite reach the same levels of euphoric mechanical high as Tony Hawk does.
In Jet Set Radio, your goal was to tag as many areas as you could in a level, traversing on your roller blades and grinding on rails as you do so. Tagging was scored by performing quick time events that were often very stiff and precise, given they used the directions on the stick. As you tag, the police start to roll up and try to take you down. Funk on them with a spray can and carry on your way, Yo.
In Jet Set Radio Future, it was similar, except the areas were more free-roaming, were expanded greatly in size, and had less of an arcade loop focus. Instead of completing an area within a time limit, you'd do missions within these bigger areas, and that'd gain you more points. These ranged from races, jumping/grinding challenges, tagging challenges, etc. Usually this would end with you taking on the rival gang in a funkaholic challenge. In Bomb Rush, this is no different. Exploring open levels, trying to tag as much you can, doing missions, versing against your rival street gang, it's all there. The difference here comes down to the finer details.
The movement for starters is simply divine. No longer is your character this weighty yet fragile entity who gets knocked down easily, or who's so stiff you can't even precisely jump onto a rail. Now you can easily move around, with no friction between what you want done and performing it. Wanna jump around everywhere? Go for it, do some flips and tricks while you're at it. Have a boost that helps you mid-air and a jet blast to speed up even more on top of it. You can still grind on rails and sign boards, but now your method of travel has expanded. Skateboarding, biking, roller blading, the choice is all yours. Heck, you can even get off your board and run and slide around, doing flips and tricks to extend combos or speed up momentarily.
On top of movement tech, trick combos slide on in. Much like in Tony Hawk, these combos are ones you chain together as you move about the stage. In Tony Hawk however, the amount of tricks you can do depends directional inputs along with button inputs. This allows for a wide variety of tricks to be done, and makes scoring a lot more varied. The amount of tricks you can perform in BRC is limited to Y, X and A, which is a significant step down in complexity. To make up for this, they have you scoring multipliers to your tricks by using every part of the stage as you can. This entails making hard turns, dashing across signs, or flipping through half-pipes to increase your multiplier. This forces you to keep moving rather than sticking to a small loop that'll reward you with the best points, like in higher level play Tony Hawk games. The lack of tricks hurts the game a little in feeling complex, but it's still a dynamic system, where it requires you to plan out routes to obtain the best possible scores. The foundation of the movement system is enough to carry the rest of the combo system's short comings, making it addictive, but not as masterful as BRC's secondary influence. It'd be nice to have a bit more variety in tricks, maybe with the left stick like in THPS, but with what's there, it's a great system.
New Amsterdam makes for some real fun skateparks. Technologically advanced, yet still modern, these urban playgrounds are jungle gyms to monkey around on. Massive Mega Malls with shops littering every corner. Sprawling skyscrapers with massive monuments to golden men with heads of goats and cattle. A construction site in the shape of a giant pyramid. Urban streets and districts that are filled with all kinds of life. A bustling metro transportation depot, with never ending traffic. No trees in sight, all the oxygen is faked. Details like having your phone's camera take place physically into the game's world helps you become grounded the world. You use your phone's mini map as a way to navigate, controlling your music, and messaging with your buddies, all of which help sell you just a bit on being here. DJ Cyber's set list plays as you make your way through each environment, reflecting the vibe of the gangs that reside there. Funk, Hip-hop, electronica, future funk, all these fresh beats infect your earholes and stay there. Naganuma's presence in the Jet Set Radio games defined it's style, and he was brought back for a few tracks here. But the entire soundtrack is studded with multiple artists that bring to life these cultures and have some of the phatest beats imaginable.
The atmosphere to everything is heavily inspired by Jet Set Radio Future, and you can tell with many of the iconography they've picked and choose for the locations and music. It's inspiration is on it's sleeve, but they make large scale changes to these types of environments with the mechanics they've introduced, welcoming in their own ideas into the mix.
Lethal League wasn't exactly known for it's story. Blaze in particular has a story mode, but it wasn't anything substantial. Lethal League I believe takes place in the same universe as BRC, where street rats roam and play underground ball games. BRC's approach is fairly more substantial, with characters that have their charm. You play first as Faux, a legendary writer in New Amsterdam, who finds himself arrested. After breaking out with a new found friend, you find yourself getting your head cut clean off by a deadly disc thrown by DJ Cyber, another legendary writer. Apparently, someone has been collecting heads, so your body needs to be refit with a new one. Your new name is Red. Your friend wants you to go All City, which means taking over each rival gang and marking each street with your gang's name. King of All City.
The root of the story is a discovering a sense of identity. Finding out who you are, what you are, where you came from. You end up as a shell of a person. Through many twists and turns, your true identity is revealed, and you have to embrace that reality. The two personalities become interwoven into one, and you come out as a brand new you.
It's a strong arc for the story, but it's emblematic of the game as a whole. Your roots are a part of you. Your inspirations, your love, your culture, it's all a part of you. Embrace those parts of you, and create something new and inspiring from it. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is an amalgamation of it's inspirations, turned into something new and exciting. It embraces this wholeheartedly. And you can't help but love it for that fact. It knows what it is, and although it's not the picture perfect idealization of all the ideas it tries to execute, it's still a superbly tight game.