"Hi-Fi Rush" Review [200th Review!!!]

Available for: Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X/S

Reviewed for: Microsoft Windows

If you haven't yet heard of Hi-Fi Rush, chances are good you either live under a rock or don't really follow along with the news surrounding this hobby in real time. With that in mind, I'm going to make the assumption that you belong in the latter camp! Hi-Fi Rush was shadow-dropped (meaning released to the public with exactly zero marketing materials, leaks, or any other kind of prior knowledge of the game) during an xbox livestream earlier this year. Brought to us by Tango Gameworks, the developers behind The Evil Within and The Evil Within II, a trailer was shown during this showcase that capitalized on the fact that the game was a cartoony, cheery rhythm action game (a far cry from the horror affairs the studio is known for). Then, after that trailer, the game was released. For a publisher to do that without spending a cent on marketing implies a great deal of confidence that what they have is a winner, and we need only look at the results to see the truth behind that confidence! The comparison has already been made by everyone and their dog, but allow me to take my turn to make it. Earlier this year, Square Enix released Forspoken after a lengthy ad campaign spanning a couple years, if memory serves. Setting aside the fact that the game looked horrendous from the outset, this was still a game with a massive budget behind its development and massive budget behind its marketing, and it was naturally being sold at the usual full price for a AAA game ($60-$70). Through word of mouth alone, not a cent of marketing, and at half the price, Hi-Fi Rush outperformed Forspoken pretty much from the outset, despite having come out after the Square Enix disaster had a couple weeks to a month to generate sales. Word of mouth alone, dear reader. At half the cost of a game with AAA publisher backing. That speaks volumes about how good Hi-Fi Rush is, even if every critic on the face of the earth weren't already speaking about it. So allow me to give my not-at-all controversial two cents on this: Hi-Fi Rush is exactly as good as you've heard...and in fact, depending on who you are, it may even be better than you've heard. 

Hi-Fi Rush puts us in the loose-fitting converse of Chai: a college dropout and wannabe rock star who has all the prerequisite confidence and attitude, but can't play the guitar. He signs up for an experimental robotics enhancement at the obviously evil megacorporation, Vandelay Technologies, because he thinks it would be cool to have a robot arm. The operation doesn't quite go as planned, and as a result, the mp3 player that Chai had on his person at the start of the operation becomes fused with his body, allowing him to feel the natural rhythm of the world and act along its beat. Now branded as a defect and hunted by Vandelay's robots, Chai must team up with a Saturday morning cartoon treehouse club of lovably eccentric new friends to take down the upper management of the corporation and put a stop to their plans. Right off the bat you can probably tell that this story isn't exactly the most original one on the planet. You'll be well aware that the company has some evil ulterior motive, etc, etc. But it's worth noting that while it's predictable, it's only 99.9% predictable...there are little things that you're likely going to incorrectly predict. Nothing big enough to write home about, but enough to keep the story feeling somewhat fresh. What surprised me the most about this game was the comedy and the characters. See, I knew I was probably going to end up playing it, but I wasn't exactly jazzed to do it. 

The trailer that kickstarted the game's success rubbed me the wrong way. This is largely due to my very specific disdain for the very specific character archetype the trailer implied Chai to be. I can't stand the wannabe rockstar character that spends all his time playing air guitar and simulating crowd's roaring by lightly exhaling, and that's really all I got about him from the trailer. But it turns out, that's just how we're first introduced to him. He may in fact be a wannabe rock star who does all those things, but that's just an aspect of who he is: an imminently lovable dorkasaurus who accidentally steps on the backs of his shoes as he tries to put them on without untying them. An overly confident dullard in the most wholesome way possible who will come up with the single dumbest plans you've ever heard of with a smile so contagious that you won't be able to keep from wanting to indulge him. In case it hasn't yet come across, I love our hero so, so, so much. He's a precious little cinnamon bun who needs to be protected at all costs. And that's just the main character, to say nothing of the aforementioned scooby gang he picks up along the way. 

I'd like to let y'all experience the rest of the cast for yourselves, so let's move on to the comedy. It isn't going to be for everyone. If you're the kind of person who hates puns even being used ironically, the game's sense of humor may grind your gears. If you're the kind of person who needs your humor to be more on the risque side, or if you're actually a child who got access to your dad's xbox and are looking for something with a lot of fart jokes, you aren't going to find what you're looking for here. Rather, what you're going to find is a nice, wholesome comedy affair akin, again, to a Saturday morning cartoon driven by excellent physical execution and a flawless sense of comedic timing (fitting for a rhythm game). Every character is animated to be as expressive and vibrant as possible, so the prerequisite amount of overexpression is present on Chai's face as he, for example, has the ground fall out from under him and looks towards the camera, hanging in the air for a moment a-la Wile-e Coyote. Furthermore it seems like every time a character needs to deliver a punchline, the writers knew exactly how many beats to let pass before it gets delivered. Explaining why comedy is funny is a futile endeavor, so it's going to be up to you to see what I mean. But suffice it to say that this game had me howling with laughter through most of its runtime. And I use the word "most" intentionally. See, the writers also seem to clearly grasp how to gradually tone the comedy down to allow for genuine heart to seep through. As the story progresses, we come to love our cast of characters through the laughs we all share, but in the latter third or so of the plot, we start to see these characters actually develop through their journey. The laughs gradually give way to genuine smile-inducing moments of friendship and teamwork (with laughs still included, in a way that the MCU should really take a hint from). That's part of what makes it so ok that the overall plot is as predictable as it is. We always knew that we were gonna have to take down the big bad boss, but because of how expertly crafted the script and these characters are, we actually have an investment in seeing them win. There of course comes a moment when the heroes believe all is lost and eventually overcome that adversity and rise to the challenge. And while I can never say what game or aspect of a game is going to win what at my end of the year awards, I can say with certainty that every game for the rest of the year is going to have to try really hard to beat this moment out for moment of the year. It's just a silly Saturday morning cartoon kind of thing, but the way it weaves in the themes of the story, the way that Chai's relationship with his friends has grown alongside him as a person, and a little bit of a subversion of Saturday morning cartoon tropes makes it an early shoe-in for that award. 

With all that said, what about gameplay? Well, it's terrific, as I'm sure will come as no surprise. On the most basic level, you have a light and heavy attack. The light attack lands on every beat, while the heavy attack lands on every other beat, and while these attacks will always land on time, you earn extra damage and points towards your final score by actually pressing the buttons in time with the beat. If you're like me this can be a little off-putting at first, but you get used to it. It just takes a little bit to get used to your button presses not being exactly 100% aligned with what's going down in the animations, that's all. But on top of this basic package, you also have a parry system, a grappling hook to close the distance between you and enemies, a dodge, a set of special attacks that charge up as you play, and the ability to summon one of your scooby gang to fight alongside you for a few seconds. Eventually you're able to unlock even more, but let's just stick with the basics for the purposes of this review! 

Like Chai and his attacks, everything in the world moves to the beat of the music, including enemies. With that in mind, the parry window isn't as hard to decipher as in something like Sekiro, and the dodge timing is even more straightforward. Combine this with the fact that you'll never technically land an attack off-beat, and you have a gameplay formula simple enough for just about anyone to enjoy. If you don't have great rhythm and just wanna experience the gameplay and the story, there are easier difficulties. If you don't have great rhythm, but you'd like to still give performing well at it the old college try, there are a handful of accessibility settings that can help (such as a visualized metronome at the bottom of the screen, an increase in the size of your floating cat companion's beat indicator, etc). Meanwhile, if you're the type that wants to prove you're a rockstar, the higher difficulties force you to earn your high scores with picture perfect timing and breakneck-paced use of all the tools you have available. The difficulty can be changed for any level, and doing so doesn't reset any kind of progress (so if you went 5 levels on normal difficulty, you wouldn't lose progress towards beating all the levels on normal difficulty if you switched to easy on the 6th). All of this is to say that the fun of Hi-Fi Rush goes exactly as far as you want to take it. 

On the most basic of levels, the sensation of smashing up robots on beat with rock music is a fantastic time to be had by all, and if that's all you want, you're going to get your money's worth already! It's a complete, self-contained, satisfying gameplay experience at half the cost of your usual AAA affair, so I really and truly mean it when I say that if all you do with this is turn your brain off for some mindless action fun, you're getting the full bang for your buck. But if you want to challenge yourself or if you find yourself wanting more after the credits roll, the game also features an embarrassment of post-game riches. After you beat the game, you get access to the level selector, wherein you can play any level at any difficulty at any time. Not only does this give you the ability to try for better scores and tackle higher difficulties at your own pace, it also grants you access to special doors that offer specific challenges that actively make you a better player. But again, even the fun of this goes exactly as far as you want to take it. Maybe you wanted more after the credits rolled, but all you wanted was to do the same mindless action experience again? Well, you can have that! You can have that as many times as you want, in fact! So, really, I feel confident recommending Hi-Fi Rush to almost anyone from a gameplay perspective! For the full extent of the game's accessibility, I'd consult Laura K Buzz's (as always) excellent coverage, but concerns such as those listed in that coverage notwithstanding, I feel confident recommending this game to anyone. 

That being said, I do have one or two small gripes. The first gripe concerns the game's platforming. The game's platforming isn't good, and it never gets good. There's simply no sense of how far one of Chai's jumps is going to take him, so any given platforming section is made up of a bunch of guesswork. This is rarely an actual problem, as you take far too little damage from failing a platforming section for it to be noteworthy...but if you're like me and you're trying to do the whole "100% completion" thing, you're going to have to complete a level without taking any damage at all....so no matter how good you get at the combat, you're likely to be foiled by the platforming, and that's quite frustrating. The second gripe is even smaller. While you can skip some tutorials on repeat playthroughs of levels, you cannot skip all of them, which does make replaying certain levels a bit of a pain. But you've likely noticed something about those gripes....both of them are more about subsequent playthroughs than the game itself. Do with that what you will!

Technically speaking, the game is flawless. The actual songs that play in the levels are a little on the generic side, but they work perfectly well for their gameplay contexts, and there aren't any caveats to anything else. The framerate is consistently solid, the textures never fail to load in, I never faced any hard or soft crashes, there aren't any audio/animation glitches to speak of, the transitions between animated cutscenes and in-game cinematics feel practically nonexistent, there's just nothing at all to take points away based off of.

So with that in mind folks, I think my stance is pretty clear. Hi-Fi Rush is a winner on every conceivable front, and I believe it'll be viewed that way by players of just about every skill level. Whether you're talking with the denizens of the game's world or engaging with its mechanics, this is a game that it 100% captivating for its full runtime. As I already mentioned, I do have one or two small issues with it, but these were issues that only reared their heads in any meaningful ways after the credits rolled. If you have an xbox console or a gaming PC, I beg of you not to miss out on this lovable group of friends' adventure, and if all you have is a PlayStation console or a Switch....then I'd encourage you to pray that Xbox sees the potential money in releasing to a broader audience. 

Let us review:

-postgame woes - 0.2

The final score for Hi-Fi Rush is...

9.8/10 - Near Masterpiece 

Excellent work, Tango Gameworks, excellent work!