"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.