Extremely cozy game. Obviously Half-Life 1 inspired. What if you played the scientist team and had to survive with your wits instead of your inexplicably amazing way with guns?

I'm generally anti-survival-crafter because they mostly seem to be about stripping the environment of trees and rocks and shit and building an extremely ugly-looking box house. This game recontextualizes that behavior into strip-mining an office complex to build little hovel-apartments to support your work exploring each zone. As a result it feels like the intermediary period between the start of the cascade and when you as Gordon Freeman run into some scientist guy huddled in a corner behind a makeshift barricade going "please help me!!!"

The other thing I super love about it is that so much of your time is about exploring a specific path until that path eventually loops back into the main "unlocked" part of your run. There's five billion shortcuts per area, all bespoke, all uncovered by digging through every nook and cranny. It's extremely rewarding to just wander around and get lost and follow some arbitrary path because it'll give you resources AND open up new parts of the level.

Brilliant stuff. Palworld could never.

YEAHHHH
ALRIGHT
WOOOOOOO
AW SWEET
YEAHH
YEAH

I need to sit on this for a while but it pisses me off that even before the game released, one of my most recurring thoughts was "I can't wait for the sequel to be way better", and that's most likely going to be true in the next 5 years! I just want to appreciate the fact that I get to have a spiritual successor to my 3rd favorite game of all time, but this really does feel like Jet Set Radio 1 at times, rather than Future, in the sense that it knows what it wants to be, but can't be it quite yet.

They've laid the groundwork for something perfect to come and I look very forward to that. What we have here is great though.

For half of my life, all I've wanted is Beat from Jet Set Radio to actually be a character with a story, and boy, I sure got my wish and then some with this game. Absolutely love the protagonist. The characters involved with the story have excellent designs. The unlockable crew members are pretty whatever though. Most people I know didn't even realize Shine for example was a recruitable character, she just looks too normal, even though she's just in place dancing for your attention. I was shocked Coil wasn't a story character, his design is much more unique than say Shine or Mesh, but he's just completely miss-able. He's all over the place in the trailers too! Also, why can I not play as Escher? Not cool. I also wish there was more voice acting on display throughout the story. We're missing a pretty big piece that made Jet Set Radio so special here in regards to that. I'm not sure what the equivalent to DJ Professor K would be in this world, but I hope to god we get anything comparable to him in a sequel. Not trying to be mean here, but I wanted to highlight Rise's voice acting. Were those lines selected after one take?

Also......you're gonna have a guccied down to the nuts dog design in this game, and just make it an NPC??? You couldn't make that design be this world's Pots the Dog?????? FUCK YOU!!!!!!!

The additions to the Jet Set Radio style tricking are nice, but I do feel like the addition of manueling created the requirement for way too many open spaces, like the 2nd part of the mall for example, that didn't need to be that big. Hopefully in a sequel, they can craft tighter environments. I don't mind the simplicity of the tricking as much as most people, as Jet Set Radio never had that in mind much. I never expected it to be THPS levels of complex in this game, and thank fuck it's not. Absolutely love the addition of bikes though. We don't see enough bikes in extreme sports games these days.

I like the spraying mechanic here. It's cool to see it take from JSR 1 rather than Future in this area, as it was a really cool mechanic in JSR 1 that was sadly scrapped for the much quicker spraying in Future. I wish they kept the sense of fear that came with spraying in JSR 1, where while you're doing it, the cops are still getting closer, helicopters included. To be fair though, the police in this game are already extremely annoying to deal with. So annoying in fact, that there are portapotty's you can use to make your heat meter go down to 0 stars. Thank goodness they were self aware of that. It sucks that past 2 stars, the police just despawn all civilians and make the world feel very empty.

The music is pretty good. This game has it's own things going on in that department, and I respect that it wasn't trying to be 1-1 with Future's flavors, but I did find myself getting really tired of a lot of the songs here pretty fast. I am a B-Side kind of person, but some of these picks are kind of C-Sidey to me. The Klaus Veen song especially made me feel that way. His contribution to the soundtrack was the thing I was looking forward to the most, and it turned out to be a track from one of his albums released a few years ago. I immediately recognized it because I've had it in my Spotify likes for quite a while. And Anime Break is a good song, obviously I think so because I just said it's in my Spotify likes, but would I expect it in this game? No. Do I like listening to it after the 10th time in game? Not Really. I guess I just expected more stuff that would stick around in my head than what I got. It's got flavor, but not as much crazy variety as the games this is trying to emulate have. My favorite tracks are pretty much all the songs used in the trailers for the game. I love Agua a ton. It is very cool that you get rival gang's playlists after defeating them.

I think the game is the perfect length. Both Jet Set Radio's are between 8-13ish hours, and it took me about 11 here. I don't want a 20 hour long Jet Set Radio, and neither would you man. It would get repetitive.

A lot of what I have to say at the moment sounds negative, but I love the game regardless. It is still an extremely fun time whether you've played either Jet Set Radio's or not. It's probably more fun for you if you haven't touched them. I just know that a sequel to this will probably be as perfect as Jet Set Radio Future, and I look forward to that dream being real eventually. I hate that that's my foremost thought at the end of this, looking forward to the Future rather than what we just got not even a week ago. But can you blame me? The Future is amazing as long as it has Jet Set Radio before it! I think the Future with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk before it will also be incredible.