Glen-i

If you're still on the fence, I just finished it recently. Here's my Diary write-up.

Hi-Fi Rush is a character action rhythm game that released last year on the XBox Series consoles and PC. It also recently got released on the PS5. It's developed by Tango Gameworks, who are better known for "The Evil Within". A bit of a tone shift here, that's for sure. I played the PC version. Specifically, I played it in stereoscopic 3D, so I'm afraid you're not seeing any of my screenshots here. You'll just have to imagine how jaw-droppingly amazing it looks. The game follows Chai, an absolute loser, who has aspirations to be a "rockstar". Can he play guitar? That's not important, but he signs up for "Project Armstrong", a test program run by Vandelay Technologies that offers people cybernetic limb replacement for his disabled arm. The epitome of cool, people! However, instead of the rockstar he wants to be, he's designated to be a rubbish collector, so his cybernetic arm is designed to pick rubbish up with a built in magnetic rod. Also however, something goes wrong, and Chai's MP3 player gets implanted into his heart. For some reason, this now musical heart somehow makes everything around Chai move to the beat of whatever song is playing. It also gets him branded a defect by Vandelay Industries, so they go about covering up the bad PR this would result in by "recalling" him. That's code for killing him. Luckily, Chai's magnetic rubbish collecting rod uses said rubbish to give Chai a makeshift guitar to club all the robots that are out for his blood. Which will likely help him escape... hopefully. The plot is hilarious! All the characters are great, and the cutscenes are an utter joy of tongue-in-cheek humour. Even the dialogue you hear as you play through the game is great! The game knows it's a ridiculous concept, and plays it up for all it's worth. Chai is an utter doofus who never thinks about the consequences of his actions, which naturally gets him into all sorts of problems. The villains are great too. They're completely over-the top and serve as a constant source of entertainment. The game has the same basic structure of games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. Chai has a diverse moveset that is mostly unlocked through in-game currency, and encourages the player to experiment and find effective ways to fight enemies in a stylish way. Each encounter with enemies is graded based on how many points you get through attacking, how quickly you defeat the enemies, and how precise your timing is. That last bit is weird for a game like this, but that's because Hi-Fi Rush's key defining feature is that everything happens to the beat of what song is playing. The timing the game is referring to is how well you can execute attacks to the beat of a song. Even the results screen managed to make me laugh! 30%? My timing wasn't anywhere close to that, I can assure you! When I said that Chai's musical heart makes everything move to the beat, I meant everything. Chai attacks to the beat, and so do enemies, so if you have a good sense of rhythm, you will be able to dodge or block anything an enemy throws at you. You don't need to actually time your presses, but Chai does more damage if you do, and he always attacks on the beat anyway, so it's in your best interest to perform to the beat. This resulted in me doing way better here then in any other game in this genre. I'm pretty mediocre at these kind of games, mostly because I can't block well. Ask me to do something like Counter in Smash Bros, and you'll see a guy who will disappoint you at every turn. Hi-Fi Rush has a parry, but because everything happens to the beat, I didn't have to purely react to enemy behaviour, because I knew that I just had to block on the beat. So instead of the constant lame ranks on the easiest difficulty I got in Bayonetta games, I was getting consistent "A" and "S" ranks on Normal difficulty. Amazing what adding rhythm game features can do for me! The boss battles are a real highlight, they always manage to introduce an unexpected wrinkle that keeps you on your toes, and they only get more ridiculous as you progress. I was looking forward to every single one after the first boss. The game looks gorgeous. A striking cel-shaded style combined with impeccable animation (Even the environment and HUD move to the beat), and comic book style effects really stand out. And it looks even better in stereoscopic 3D! You'll have to take my word on that, because I can't show that aspect of it here. The music is obviously very important in a rhythm game, and Hi-Fi Rush delivers on that front too. A cool aspect is that the game offers a "Streamer Mode" which replaces licensed songs with songs that are less likely to get streamers in trouble. The game is actually full of loads of little accessibility features like that, but that tends to be a thing Microsoft are quite good at anyway. Back in December, I said Hi-Fi Rush was the fifth best new game of 2023. I was wrong. Now that I've finished it, I'd say it's actually the third best game. It's a really special game, and I urge everyone to try it. Anyway, I'll end this post with the weirdest reference I saw.

Player's Choice tonight at 8pm.

Unfortunately, EA own the rights to that, so I'll be absolutely floored if that gets on NSO. Shame too, I've always wanted to try it.

Tempted to take it back now...

I was not expecting Extreme-G! Wow! My second ever N64 game I owned. Maybe 34 year old me can actually finish it? Never played Iggy, either. Worth a go, I reckon!

I remember that. That's "Garoo's Lunch Box" I imagine he's the chill kind of guy who would want his name plastered all over product without permission, you know?

@bob is right. Note the use of the word "now".

A bit dark? Anyway, I can't actually remember. And I played through the whole thing with the NSO Game Trial, so I can't boot it up to check.

Welcome to the club! That makes five of us here now. Explorers of Sky is my favourite Pokémon title, but I don't need to explain to you why that is.

He did. Purely because of the scope of his comeback. It was truly excellent fighting on your part. That said, I still clinched it in the end, so neener, neener, neener!

I can assure you that Second Story R has both. Hell, you can fast travel to any specific shop, let alone, town.

Fixed that for you. (Also, the way you phrased that, you wouldn't happen to be aware of the traditional song that's sung at AGDQ when this game shows up there?) But anyway, Banjo-Kazooie is easily one of the N64 greats, even if I do prefer Tooie in almost every regard. And it's great that a new generation of Nintendo players have discovered the game thanks to the one-two combo of Smash Ultimate and NSO. It's a very special game.

In hindsight, @RedShell's stage shouldn't have surprised me. Parappa is one of the vanishingly few inspired characters in that game, and I can totally imagine he likes that game.

Yeah, sure looks like it, I recognised a lot of those things you did in your prep. Most games these days would try their best to patch up stuff like this, but this series seems to relish in it. It really rewards players who put in the work to make the SP system work in their favour, and it's my favourite thing about it.