In the wise words of Thom Yorke, my experience with Hi-Fi Rush was "Let Down and Hanging Around. Crushed like a Bug in the Ground."
When I first saw this game during MIcrosoft's studio showcase a few weeks back I made a remark to my friends about how it looked a little... not great. They agreed and we went about our life. The next day I began to read reviews, reception was extremely high across the board between critics and normal folk like myself. My brother downloaded it via Gamepass and beat it in a whim, speaking very highly of the entire experience. I convinced myself to play it based upon the near universal acclaim that Hi-Fi Rush had gotten after initially panning it.
I wish I hadn't made that choice, you can probably stop reading here if you're a fan of the game as my qualms do get a bit nitpicky.
The first issue I had was with the setting of the world. I appreciate the fidelity and how well-created the assests were that lined up the comic-book aesthetic all throughout Hi-Fi Rush's near twelve hours, but the environments to me felt drab and boring. Nothing going throughout the game excited me, as it felt like low effort recreations of cartoons I'd seen in years past. It's rough to play through a game when you're confronted with something you don't like that is present throughout the entire runtime. I just couldn't get into the robot-city vibes that the game runs with, it's not new and not necessarily enjoyable to exist within. I felt like I had been teleported into the PS2-Xbox-Gamecube era once more of 3D platformers with cyber-futuristic settings that sort of melded together in forgetfulness. There's no area or zone within Hi-Fi Rush that I'm going to look back on and remember as a fond gaming experience.
Now that I've noted my issues with the world and environments of HFR, my bigger negations with the game stem from the actual playing part of it. You basically do two things: Platform and fighting, and man, both of them are rough. Depth perception is apparently an unheard of concept, as many of the jumps between platforms in HFR are poorly shown with your character's capabilities. Often in my playthrough did I find myself falling into the abyss because Chai didn't double jump high enough, even if I clearly hit the inputs. There were moments where I'd jump between two platforms and miss because they were just a little too far away for a casual jump. That sounds like a nitpick but this issue persisted from chapter one to chapter twelve. Beginning to end. Platformers excel in their level creation, in making a flow to movement between combat zones or boss fights and HFR missed the mark on that one by a wide margin. It also became very monotonous, sentenced to mostly basic jumping and timing said jumps to the beat of the game. When you unlock new buddies like Cinnamon and Macaron, you have to use their abilities to progress through each level. Conceptually this is intriguing, because pretty much every 2D & 3D platformer alike do this, however the addition of these in HFR adds next to zero. It becomes just another button to press in a slosh of un-exciting movement.
Oh man and that combat. I played Metal: Hellsinger last year and gave it a 4.5/5 stars, largely in part to how the combat clicked with the timing of the music. Agency was left up to the player in how they wanted to tackle blowing through the hordes of the undead, weapon kits freely optimisable to suit your playstyle and the timing was legitimately perfect. In Hi-Fi Rush, this was unfortunately very much not the case. It's not hard to time your beats to the rhythm per se, but it does run in contrast to legitimately every character action game I'd played until this point. Speed is the name of the game and maximizing damage in between boss/enemy attack windows is key. HFR asks the player to weave combos in between your character's musical heartbeats. They do a decent job at making this work, but I'm not entierly sure why it mattered? I was able to make a solid perfect hit ratio but I honestly don't think it added anything to the game other than sticking with a theme. In Hellsinger I felt like I was glued to the action because the rhythm attacking worked in tandem to the enemy encounter rate and intensity. In HFR it only makes the battles feel longer as you're not fighting to win ASAP but fighting to win at a pre-existing pace. These battles grew tired almost as soon as the game gets into its own groove around chapter three. Once your arsenal opens up with your friends and grappling hook, it becomes the same encounter with enemies cycled out over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. My biggest problem with Scarlet Nexus was that the enemy encounters once you walked into an encounter room were solved like flowcharts. If you saw an enemy of one type that means you had to employ a certain character's special power to defeat it. HFR is no different, other than that you have less tools at your disposal. When you walk into a room that clearly is meant for fighting, which there are many, you usually get a mix of jobber-bots and then gimmick bigger bots. These gimmick bots require utilizing a certain strategy to defeat. If it's a shield enemy, you use Macaron. If they have an energy shield, you use cinnamon. If they are a duelist, you make sure you parry. Rinse repeat. Not having a freedom of choice in deciding how I wanted to tackle taking down enemies felt needlessly restrictive. I recently played Bayonetta 3, that series (along with Kamiya's DMC) perfected giving agency to players in relation to conquering foes. In HFR you are kept in a lane and more or less have to defeat each enemy archetype in the same way. I really never felt a flow of combat, no moment in which I was excited to fight because I had prepared myself to use a system of fighting that I already used.
Most other users seem to have an attachment to the characters, yet I too found them to be drab and one-note. I had no care or passion for any of my fellow party members and honestly not even the main character Chai. He felt like the main character of a poorly aged cartoon from my childhood, and after reading HazeRedux's review calling this a "Johnny Test ass game," I think he was onto something. He's a dumb dude bro with few redeeming qualities and doesn't ever get better throughout HFR's narrative. The jokes are quickly played out and the punchlines are predictable. I don't know, I know this game doesn't need a perfect protagonist to make it great but I like my character action games to have an enjoyable character that executed enjoyable action (like DMC/Bayonetta) but this just, misses on all that. I didn't really take part in conversing or listening to my party members outside of combat in the hideout because they felt like tropes of games past, and without enough new or captivating qualities to craft them into believable friends and allies. They're just kinda there, as voices instead of fun teammates to bant and joke with. Also I'm still not actually sure what 808 does. Everytime they made a joke or did a bit with 808 or they showed up in combat I had to stop, pause, and ponder what they actually did. As I'm writing this review, I still don't actually know.
The music of HFR is supposed to be a selling point, after all it is a game about music but man, it became extremely grating. Have you ever been bitten by a mosquito and once you itch it, you can't stop? That's what the soundtrack to this game is like. Once I realized that it was the same grating funky guitar loops, I couldn't take it anymore. Each loop became more and more intolerable until I eventually turned the music off for half the game, and that made playing it that much easier. I understand they were going with a sound to match the comic-book aesthetic of the game's design and the cartoony atmosphere of the environments but it sounded like royalty free music you'd use in a Youtube video. Some of the original tracks were alright but the Black Keys and Nine Inch Nails songs that jumpstart HFR were pretty poor tracks.
Play this on Gamepass if you're that curious, but my real recommendation would be to not play this at all. It felt like a use of time, not like a fun game or an experience I'll really recall five to ten years down the line. I'm looking forward to jumping into narrative titles again with TLOU Part II and Persona 3 Portable on my docket soon. I hoped Hi-Fi Rush would be a refreshing title between some longer story-driven titles that I'd played, but I found myself engaging in a mediocre experience.
When I first saw this game during MIcrosoft's studio showcase a few weeks back I made a remark to my friends about how it looked a little... not great. They agreed and we went about our life. The next day I began to read reviews, reception was extremely high across the board between critics and normal folk like myself. My brother downloaded it via Gamepass and beat it in a whim, speaking very highly of the entire experience. I convinced myself to play it based upon the near universal acclaim that Hi-Fi Rush had gotten after initially panning it.
I wish I hadn't made that choice, you can probably stop reading here if you're a fan of the game as my qualms do get a bit nitpicky.
The first issue I had was with the setting of the world. I appreciate the fidelity and how well-created the assests were that lined up the comic-book aesthetic all throughout Hi-Fi Rush's near twelve hours, but the environments to me felt drab and boring. Nothing going throughout the game excited me, as it felt like low effort recreations of cartoons I'd seen in years past. It's rough to play through a game when you're confronted with something you don't like that is present throughout the entire runtime. I just couldn't get into the robot-city vibes that the game runs with, it's not new and not necessarily enjoyable to exist within. I felt like I had been teleported into the PS2-Xbox-Gamecube era once more of 3D platformers with cyber-futuristic settings that sort of melded together in forgetfulness. There's no area or zone within Hi-Fi Rush that I'm going to look back on and remember as a fond gaming experience.
Now that I've noted my issues with the world and environments of HFR, my bigger negations with the game stem from the actual playing part of it. You basically do two things: Platform and fighting, and man, both of them are rough. Depth perception is apparently an unheard of concept, as many of the jumps between platforms in HFR are poorly shown with your character's capabilities. Often in my playthrough did I find myself falling into the abyss because Chai didn't double jump high enough, even if I clearly hit the inputs. There were moments where I'd jump between two platforms and miss because they were just a little too far away for a casual jump. That sounds like a nitpick but this issue persisted from chapter one to chapter twelve. Beginning to end. Platformers excel in their level creation, in making a flow to movement between combat zones or boss fights and HFR missed the mark on that one by a wide margin. It also became very monotonous, sentenced to mostly basic jumping and timing said jumps to the beat of the game. When you unlock new buddies like Cinnamon and Macaron, you have to use their abilities to progress through each level. Conceptually this is intriguing, because pretty much every 2D & 3D platformer alike do this, however the addition of these in HFR adds next to zero. It becomes just another button to press in a slosh of un-exciting movement.
Oh man and that combat. I played Metal: Hellsinger last year and gave it a 4.5/5 stars, largely in part to how the combat clicked with the timing of the music. Agency was left up to the player in how they wanted to tackle blowing through the hordes of the undead, weapon kits freely optimisable to suit your playstyle and the timing was legitimately perfect. In Hi-Fi Rush, this was unfortunately very much not the case. It's not hard to time your beats to the rhythm per se, but it does run in contrast to legitimately every character action game I'd played until this point. Speed is the name of the game and maximizing damage in between boss/enemy attack windows is key. HFR asks the player to weave combos in between your character's musical heartbeats. They do a decent job at making this work, but I'm not entierly sure why it mattered? I was able to make a solid perfect hit ratio but I honestly don't think it added anything to the game other than sticking with a theme. In Hellsinger I felt like I was glued to the action because the rhythm attacking worked in tandem to the enemy encounter rate and intensity. In HFR it only makes the battles feel longer as you're not fighting to win ASAP but fighting to win at a pre-existing pace. These battles grew tired almost as soon as the game gets into its own groove around chapter three. Once your arsenal opens up with your friends and grappling hook, it becomes the same encounter with enemies cycled out over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. My biggest problem with Scarlet Nexus was that the enemy encounters once you walked into an encounter room were solved like flowcharts. If you saw an enemy of one type that means you had to employ a certain character's special power to defeat it. HFR is no different, other than that you have less tools at your disposal. When you walk into a room that clearly is meant for fighting, which there are many, you usually get a mix of jobber-bots and then gimmick bigger bots. These gimmick bots require utilizing a certain strategy to defeat. If it's a shield enemy, you use Macaron. If they have an energy shield, you use cinnamon. If they are a duelist, you make sure you parry. Rinse repeat. Not having a freedom of choice in deciding how I wanted to tackle taking down enemies felt needlessly restrictive. I recently played Bayonetta 3, that series (along with Kamiya's DMC) perfected giving agency to players in relation to conquering foes. In HFR you are kept in a lane and more or less have to defeat each enemy archetype in the same way. I really never felt a flow of combat, no moment in which I was excited to fight because I had prepared myself to use a system of fighting that I already used.
Most other users seem to have an attachment to the characters, yet I too found them to be drab and one-note. I had no care or passion for any of my fellow party members and honestly not even the main character Chai. He felt like the main character of a poorly aged cartoon from my childhood, and after reading HazeRedux's review calling this a "Johnny Test ass game," I think he was onto something. He's a dumb dude bro with few redeeming qualities and doesn't ever get better throughout HFR's narrative. The jokes are quickly played out and the punchlines are predictable. I don't know, I know this game doesn't need a perfect protagonist to make it great but I like my character action games to have an enjoyable character that executed enjoyable action (like DMC/Bayonetta) but this just, misses on all that. I didn't really take part in conversing or listening to my party members outside of combat in the hideout because they felt like tropes of games past, and without enough new or captivating qualities to craft them into believable friends and allies. They're just kinda there, as voices instead of fun teammates to bant and joke with. Also I'm still not actually sure what 808 does. Everytime they made a joke or did a bit with 808 or they showed up in combat I had to stop, pause, and ponder what they actually did. As I'm writing this review, I still don't actually know.
The music of HFR is supposed to be a selling point, after all it is a game about music but man, it became extremely grating. Have you ever been bitten by a mosquito and once you itch it, you can't stop? That's what the soundtrack to this game is like. Once I realized that it was the same grating funky guitar loops, I couldn't take it anymore. Each loop became more and more intolerable until I eventually turned the music off for half the game, and that made playing it that much easier. I understand they were going with a sound to match the comic-book aesthetic of the game's design and the cartoony atmosphere of the environments but it sounded like royalty free music you'd use in a Youtube video. Some of the original tracks were alright but the Black Keys and Nine Inch Nails songs that jumpstart HFR were pretty poor tracks.
Play this on Gamepass if you're that curious, but my real recommendation would be to not play this at all. It felt like a use of time, not like a fun game or an experience I'll really recall five to ten years down the line. I'm looking forward to jumping into narrative titles again with TLOU Part II and Persona 3 Portable on my docket soon. I hoped Hi-Fi Rush would be a refreshing title between some longer story-driven titles that I'd played, but I found myself engaging in a mediocre experience.