Hi-Fi Rush is like the video game equivalent of a McDonald's Sprite. This game is overwhelmingly refreshing, energizing, and it just makes me really happy.
The standout part of the game is the sound design, which is instrumental (no pun intended) to pretty much every single aspect of the game. The combat, movement, animations, puzzles, parkour, all of it is synced to the music playing around you, something that to my knowledge, no game has ever done before, so Hi-Fi Rush deserves major props not only for fully realizing this concept, but also making it fun. Also, the soundtrack is amazing, Hi-Fi rush is a game where there always has to be music playing for the game to function, but the soundtrack never gets boring, stale, or repetitive. The developers knew when the music needed to blend into the background and when it needed to be at the forefront of the scene.
You know how sometimes you'll see videos on YouTube of where the music in a videogame's level or boss fight will happen to sync up in time with an attack or something and it'll be super cool, like it's out of a movie? So that's like, every single battle in this game. It is so satisfying to smash robots to pieces in time with the music, and the boss fights in particular stand out because you're dodging these over-the-top combo chains to the beat of whatever crazy song is going on in the background! This game gets your adrenaline pumping like nothing else.
Now, the combat itself is kind of similar to games like Bayonetta and Devil May Cry, and it works really well. It's not like Tekken where there's a million combos to learn, there's like maybe twenty or thirty, I don't know for sure. My point is, there's not so much that it feels overwhelming but not so little that you feel limited. All of the combos look really cool and perfectly timing that beat hit (the circle thing) is always super satisfying. There's also a handful of special attacks and partner attacks which are equally cool. Team attacks are like one of my favorite mechanics ever in video games, and the team attacks in this game SLAP, so nice job designers. Also, Chai fights with a guitar and a lot of his attacks are named after guitar/music terms, and I play guitar so I got a lot of enjoyment out of that. As mentioned earlier, the boss fights are all really fun too.
Now, as for the story and characters, I'm going to be a little lenient with the developers here. It's obvious that they weren't going for anything crazy when they were writing this story or the characters. You have seen this plot and the character archetypes several times before, but in my opinion, it's a tried-and-true formula. I enjoyed the story and characters, and I thought the writing was pretty solid. I think the writing team is definitely talented, they just played it safe with the general plot, which isn't a bad thing. One thing the characters never failed to do was make me smile. It's a very lighthearted and upbeat story where you play as a carefree little goofball as he assembles his wacky little team of rebels to take down equally wacky villains. Even though the story is relatively short, I still found myself caring about all the characters and I will say that the "twist" that they have in the game is pretty good, though I imagine many people probably saw it coming.
If I haven't mentioned it already, I do like the social commentary and critique on corporations. Each of Vandelay's department heads (except for one ofc, iykyk) is a hilariously overexaggerated satire on different aspects of corporations.
I also think it's hilarious that Vandelay exclusively uses robot employees, yet the robots are always stressed out about their jobs, trying to slack off whenever possible, or complaining about how terrible their bosses are. You know something's wrong with your company if your robot employees are complaining.
I also have to talk about the art style for this game. I am in love with the visual style of this game. The character designs are so creative and expressive and really fit with the character's respective personalities. This goes for the robot enemies as well. I'm not an artist at all, but I think that shape language was used very effectively here. The art direction is so vibrant and expressive as well, the colors are very bright and loud and add so much life to the world. There are times in the game where it'll do a freeze frame and the game will drop the hardest shot you've ever seen, it's awesome.
Also, the animations in this game are very fluid, smooth, and expressive. I am not exaggerating when I say that this game has one of the greatest boss intros that I have ever seen in a video game. I'm not going to give major spoilers, but all I'll say is that it's synced to a certain classical symphony and it is the coolest thing ever.
Overall, great game, and I'm really glad that it's coming to consoles soon.
The standout part of the game is the sound design, which is instrumental (no pun intended) to pretty much every single aspect of the game. The combat, movement, animations, puzzles, parkour, all of it is synced to the music playing around you, something that to my knowledge, no game has ever done before, so Hi-Fi Rush deserves major props not only for fully realizing this concept, but also making it fun. Also, the soundtrack is amazing, Hi-Fi rush is a game where there always has to be music playing for the game to function, but the soundtrack never gets boring, stale, or repetitive. The developers knew when the music needed to blend into the background and when it needed to be at the forefront of the scene.
You know how sometimes you'll see videos on YouTube of where the music in a videogame's level or boss fight will happen to sync up in time with an attack or something and it'll be super cool, like it's out of a movie? So that's like, every single battle in this game. It is so satisfying to smash robots to pieces in time with the music, and the boss fights in particular stand out because you're dodging these over-the-top combo chains to the beat of whatever crazy song is going on in the background! This game gets your adrenaline pumping like nothing else.
Now, the combat itself is kind of similar to games like Bayonetta and Devil May Cry, and it works really well. It's not like Tekken where there's a million combos to learn, there's like maybe twenty or thirty, I don't know for sure. My point is, there's not so much that it feels overwhelming but not so little that you feel limited. All of the combos look really cool and perfectly timing that beat hit (the circle thing) is always super satisfying. There's also a handful of special attacks and partner attacks which are equally cool. Team attacks are like one of my favorite mechanics ever in video games, and the team attacks in this game SLAP, so nice job designers. Also, Chai fights with a guitar and a lot of his attacks are named after guitar/music terms, and I play guitar so I got a lot of enjoyment out of that. As mentioned earlier, the boss fights are all really fun too.
Now, as for the story and characters, I'm going to be a little lenient with the developers here. It's obvious that they weren't going for anything crazy when they were writing this story or the characters. You have seen this plot and the character archetypes several times before, but in my opinion, it's a tried-and-true formula. I enjoyed the story and characters, and I thought the writing was pretty solid. I think the writing team is definitely talented, they just played it safe with the general plot, which isn't a bad thing. One thing the characters never failed to do was make me smile. It's a very lighthearted and upbeat story where you play as a carefree little goofball as he assembles his wacky little team of rebels to take down equally wacky villains. Even though the story is relatively short, I still found myself caring about all the characters and I will say that the "twist" that they have in the game is pretty good, though I imagine many people probably saw it coming.
If I haven't mentioned it already, I do like the social commentary and critique on corporations. Each of Vandelay's department heads (except for one ofc, iykyk) is a hilariously overexaggerated satire on different aspects of corporations.
I also think it's hilarious that Vandelay exclusively uses robot employees, yet the robots are always stressed out about their jobs, trying to slack off whenever possible, or complaining about how terrible their bosses are. You know something's wrong with your company if your robot employees are complaining.
I also have to talk about the art style for this game. I am in love with the visual style of this game. The character designs are so creative and expressive and really fit with the character's respective personalities. This goes for the robot enemies as well. I'm not an artist at all, but I think that shape language was used very effectively here. The art direction is so vibrant and expressive as well, the colors are very bright and loud and add so much life to the world. There are times in the game where it'll do a freeze frame and the game will drop the hardest shot you've ever seen, it's awesome.
Also, the animations in this game are very fluid, smooth, and expressive. I am not exaggerating when I say that this game has one of the greatest boss intros that I have ever seen in a video game. I'm not going to give major spoilers, but all I'll say is that it's synced to a certain classical symphony and it is the coolest thing ever.
Overall, great game, and I'm really glad that it's coming to consoles soon.