The true value of a game lies in what it leaves the player with after they've put it down. It follows thus, that the true job of any game developer, and by extension any artist, is to metaphorically fuck the viewer's mind and blow a hot sticky load of memetic material straight into their fertile cortical folds, ensuring the propagation of many healthy spiritual progeny. It was by this process of inspiration-impregnation that games like Bomb Rush Cyberfunk cum to be, and if Bomb Rush Cyberfunk went to my school I definitely would have bullied the ever-loving shit out of him for having such a stupid name. ButtFuck CyberTruck, CumSlut SiphonSpunk, Homestuck FuckingSucks, and possibly my favorite, ButtMush FiberFlush. I would be merciless, it would be so bad that he would go home early every day and his dad, Tony Hawk, would find him brooding in his room listening to old mixtapes on the Naganuma-compatible cd player his dead mother, Jet Set Radio, left behind. Tony didn't get why the boy held on to that stupid thing, and he could never figure out why that made him so goddamn mad. The way Jet Set Radio's eyes would wander when she did the pornstar grind, he knew she was putting on a show, but it wasn't for him. Now that I think about it, damn kid doesn't even look like me, doesn't trick like me... but the way he manuals, gliding effortlessly, perfectly balanced. I didn't teach him that. That's not skating, it's mockery, and I'm the one looking a fool, because he knows what I've always suspected but could never confirm, that I'm a real WashedUp SkaterCuck. You think you can hurt me? I've got news for you, kid: pain made the hawk a goddamn legend.

The belt lashes came hard and without warning, but Bomb Rush Cyberfunk's face remained a flat and inanimate mask. As the belt clattered to the floor, Tony hocked a loogie and spat on the poor skater.

"You're not even worth beating."

Bomb Rush starts the way you would expect every good gangbang to end, the team clearly poured a lot of love into that opening. It's a bold and bedroom-eyed promise for your forty bucks, but that's where the pretense drops and you're pop-n-locked in for 8 hours of mostly going through the motions. There's grinding, getting railed, turning tricks, and a dribbling climax, which admittedly feels kinda okay, but you gotta endure two awkward hours of post-nut clarity that leaves you wondering if "kinda okay" is the best you'll ever get, just like my fucking ex. Thanks, Lucy.

For a game about criminally defacing public property to unilaterally prescribe which sanitized street art jpegs you're allowed to raise the property value with... well, it sure as hell isn't vandalism, but it may as well be robbery for depriving the world of a better game. It's missing the point of graffiti so profoundly that I struggle to think of anything funnier to say other than to merely state as a fact that Jet Set Radio, the borrowed heart and soul of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, HAS a graffiti editor.

There is a version of this game where I could have taken a sniper bullet to the head and had my corpse stomped on by metal gear because I painted a mural of Mario spreading his gaping anus over New Amsterdam, and the world of gaming is poorer to have never gotten it.

But hey, modding would be hella boring if it the devs supported it.