I have been (by my own volition) swinging at the air for half an hour in the tutorial and I'm already content with saying this is one of the greatest games ever made.


time to make an actual review now that I've finished the game cus something like Hi-Fi Rush deserves it

Lets get bias out of the way; this is my favorite game ever made, I was lucky enough to have something close to my actual dream game be developed randomly and shadow-dropped without warning. This game could be significantly worse in many regards and still probably be my favorite game, but I'm going to attempt to be as honest and objective as possible.



|THE AMAZING|

Oh my god does this game feel good to play.
You know when you manage to pull off a really cool/difficult move in a game you love?
That mini dopamine rush you get when the entire combo connects for the first time, or when you watch an arrow arc perfectly into a 300m headshot, or when you finally nail the pattern of the final boss and victory starts to seem within reach?
This game is just that, constantly. Every hit, jump, dodge and parry comes with a level of satisfaction you'd normally have to spend hours earning; the music and the gameplay are so beautifully intertwined that I feel like I'm not playing a game or listening to a song, its something new entirely.
It may not be a 100% seamless fusion, but its VERY close.

Here are just a few of the things that either reward you for performing the action on beat, or are just naturally always moving/acting perfectly in sync with the music:

- Attacking
- Dashing
- Jumping
- Grapple-hooking
- Parrying
- Enemies
- Enemy/boss attacks
- Your own animations
- The cutscenes
- The boss-phase transitions
- The entire environment (seriously even the shrubs are bopping up and down to the rhythm)
- The UI

and more (pretty much anything that could be on-beat is)

This level of musical integration is revolutionary even when Rhythm games already exist; to the point that it sometimes feels like you're just acting out an insane music video vs playing a game.
Your Jumps, Dashes, Attacks and Parrys all having different musical motifs and, secondary to their main applications, are basically instruments for you to play along to the adaptive soundtrack.
Once you master the game there's a good chance you'll be in control of every fight and spend a lot of your time trying to add to the background OST while making your own choruses and melodies, to me this is where the game shines most because it is just pure joy to lose yourself in the musical action.

The Platforming, of course, is tied to the beat and reminds me a lot of games like Ratchet and Clank, just with more style and intensity.
Its solid and the fun/comedic dialogue helps break up the combat segments as you have petty arguments with your teammates over pants while trying to dodge fireballs being shot out of volcanoes.
Or maybe you find readable pickups that get you invested in a background plot involving a broken coffee machine, and you forget that you just came down this secret hidden-tunnel to find health-upgrades/currency.
Either way when you're not participating in combat that's better than sex, you're at least enjoying an incredibly solid and entertaining rhythm-platformer with possibly the best usage of a cel-shaded 3d art-style I've ever seen in a game.

Which leads me into my next praise; the visuals. These animators found some kind of strange PC in the forest one day with a gigantic mouth and teeth, and when they fed it enough toonami and saturday morning cartoons and stylized 3d dreamworks films it spat out all of the cutscenes/animations for this game. The only other alternative is that actual human beings somehow animated every cinematic TO THE BEAT, along with all of the super-expressive and high-quality character animations from the main-cast, but its done at such a supernaturally good quality I really can't tell.

Don't need to go into to much detail with this one, pretty self-explanatory; good licensed music in a video game. When has good usage of licensed music in a video game ever not been a standout memory? Well this game has 10, 2 of them are Nine Inch Nails and one of them is Fiona Apple, don't really need to say more.

Don't tell [INSERT LICENSED MUSICIAN] but I often think the streamer-mode original tracks are better (oh yeah this game has two optional soundtracks btw)




|THE OKAY|

I hope you'll forgive the dialogue in this game; it is genuinely funny or well-written most of the time but yes it does veer into "childish" territory especially towards the end when you expect the plot to start getting more emotional. I think in an effort to make it a nice all-ages experience they forgot to take a page from the Disney school of subtelty. It could be mildly annoying or distracting to some people who can't take that kind of stuff seriously, but its worst crime is something most other games I play are guilty of at one point or another.

The variety is my personal main (and only actual) issue; I wish there were more combos, I wish some bosses had just a few more attacks, I wish a lot of the post-game cosmetic options weren't so similar; this is all really petty stuff, because Hi-Fi Rush does it all in a perfectly acceptable way, its just such an addictive game that I wish there were a tad more options to promote the replay value further.




|THE "BAD"|

This game is already phenomenal and I firmly believe its one of the better games ever made, but a bummer thing I've realized recently is that this game could be even better with not a lot of minor QOL and content additions. People compare it a lot to the PS2 era of games just being games; simple, fun and enthralling experiences. And while I feel the same way, its partially in a negative sense; it feels sometimes as limited as those games were at the time but those were due to constraints that I'm not sure Hi Fi Rush had to deal with.

It wouldn't be hard for them to make an option for instrumental versions of the music, essentially turning 2 entire optional OST's into 4, it wouldn't be super hard for them re-adjust the timing-based score of certain encounters and turn assists into less of a spam-fest, it wouldn't be hard to make the last suggestion optional with certain upgrades that are available early and toss up damage for recharge time.
It probably wouldn't even be that hard to add more optional challenge rooms, but without (roughly) that entire free-dlc's worth of stuff the game just feels like an incredibly good gourmet ice-cream just without the cherry on top and I'll never be able to shake that tiny feeling.



[THE LOWDOWN]

This is not a perfect video game, but if I can use Steam review score percentages as a general starting point then I could estimate that is is around 98% perfect, if you like Music, or Action games, and especially if you love both, you need to do yourself a favor and play this ASAP, it is an incredibly high-quality, one-of-a-kind game that is just fun to play, and its so good because of that fun that comes along with it, not because of any dramatic mo-capped ending, because the game is just a really good and really fun game.

I have been (by my own volition) swinging at the air for half an hour in the tutorial and I'm already content with saying this is one of the greatest games ever made. time to make an actual review now that I've finished the game cus something like Hi-Fi Rush deserves it Lets get bias out of the way; this is my favorite game ever made, I was lucky enough to have something close to my actual dream game be developed randomly and shadow-dropped without warning. This game could be significantly worse in many regards and still probably be my favorite game, but I'm going to attempt to be as honest and objective as possible. |THE AMAZING| Oh my god does this game feel good to play. You know when you manage to pull off a really cool/difficult move in a game you love? That mini dopamine rush you get when the entire combo connects for the first time, or when you watch an arrow arc perfectly into a 300m headshot, or when you finally nail the pattern of the final boss and victory starts to seem within reach? This game is just that, constantly. Every hit, jump, dodge and parry comes with a level of satisfaction you'd normally have to spend hours earning; the music and the gameplay are so beautifully intertwined that I feel like I'm not playing a game or listening to a song, its something new entirely. It may not be a 100% seamless fusion, but its VERY close. Here are just a few of the things that either reward you for performing the action on beat, or are just naturally always moving/acting perfectly in sync with the music: - Attacking - Dashing - Jumping - Grapple-hooking - Parrying - Enemies - Enemy/boss attacks - Your own animations - The cutscenes - The boss-phase transitions - The entire environment (seriously even the shrubs are bopping up and down to the rhythm) - The UI and more (pretty much anything that could be on-beat is) This level of musical integration is revolutionary even when Rhythm games already exist; to the point that it sometimes feels like you're just acting out an insane music video vs playing a game. Your Jumps, Dashes, Attacks and Parrys all having different musical motifs and, secondary to their main applications, are basically instruments for you to play along to the adaptive soundtrack. Once you master the game there's a good chance you'll be in control of every fight and spend a lot of your time trying to add to the background OST while making your own choruses and melodies, to me this is where the game shines most because it is just pure joy to lose yourself in the musical action. The Platforming, of course, is tied to the beat and reminds me a lot of games like Ratchet and Clank, just with more style and intensity. Its solid and the fun/comedic dialogue helps break up the combat segments as you have petty arguments with your teammates over pants while trying to dodge fireballs being shot out of volcanoes. Or maybe you find readable pickups that get you invested in a background plot involving a broken coffee machine, and you forget that you just came down this secret hidden-tunnel to find health-upgrades/currency. Either way when you're not participating in combat that's better than sex, you're at least enjoying an incredibly solid and entertaining rhythm-platformer with possibly the best usage of a cel-shaded 3d art-style I've ever seen in a game. Which leads me into my next praise; the visuals. These animators found some kind of strange PC in the forest one day with a gigantic mouth and teeth, and when they fed it enough toonami and saturday morning cartoons and stylized 3d dreamworks films it spat out all of the cutscenes/animations for this game. The only other alternative is that actual human beings somehow animated every cinematic TO THE BEAT, along with all of the super-expressive and high-quality character animations from the main-cast, but its done at such a supernaturally good quality I really can't tell. Don't need to go into to much detail with this one, pretty self-explanatory; good licensed music in a video game. When has good usage of licensed music in a video game ever not been a standout memory? Well this game has 10, 2 of them are Nine Inch Nails and one of them is Fiona Apple, don't really need to say more. Don't tell [INSERT LICENSED MUSICIAN] but I often think the streamer-mode original tracks are better (oh yeah this game has two optional soundtracks btw) |THE OKAY| I hope you'll forgive the dialogue in this game; it is genuinely funny or well-written most of the time but yes it does veer into "childish" territory especially towards the end when you expect the plot to start getting more emotional. I think in an effort to make it a nice all-ages experience they forgot to take a page from the Disney school of subtelty. It could be mildly annoying or distracting to some people who can't take that kind of stuff seriously, but its worst crime is something most other games I play are guilty of at one point or another. The variety is my personal main (and only actual) issue; I wish there were more combos, I wish some bosses had just a few more attacks, I wish a lot of the post-game cosmetic options weren't so similar; this is all really petty stuff, because Hi-Fi Rush does it all in a perfectly acceptable way, its just such an addictive game that I wish there were a tad more options to promote the replay value further. |THE "BAD"| This game is already phenomenal and I firmly believe its one of the better games ever made, but a bummer thing I've realized recently is that this game could be even better with not a lot of minor QOL and content additions. People compare it a lot to the PS2 era of games just being games; simple, fun and enthralling experiences. And while I feel the same way, its partially in a negative sense; it feels sometimes as limited as those games were at the time but those were due to constraints that I'm not sure Hi Fi Rush had to deal with. It wouldn't be hard for them to make an option for instrumental versions of the music, essentially turning 2 entire optional OST's into 4, it wouldn't be super hard for them re-adjust the timing-based score of certain encounters and turn assists into less of a spam-fest, it wouldn't be hard to make the last suggestion optional with certain upgrades that are available early and toss up damage for recharge time. It probably wouldn't even be that hard to add more optional challenge rooms, but without (roughly) that entire free-dlc's worth of stuff the game just feels like an incredibly good gourmet ice-cream just without the cherry on top and I'll never be able to shake that tiny feeling. [THE LOWDOWN] This is not a perfect video game, but if I can use Steam review score percentages as a general starting point then I could estimate that is is around 98% perfect, if you like Music, or Action games, and especially if you love both, you need to do yourself a favor and play this ASAP, it is an incredibly high-quality, one-of-a-kind game that is just fun to play, and its so good because of that fun that comes along with it, not because of any dramatic mo-capped ending, because the game is just a really good and really fun game.