It’s good to know that a more complicated and far more entertaining Space Channel 5 has entered the match. Hi-Fi Rush is an incredibly unique game that combines musical timing, action, witty humor, and compelling characters to put a beautiful feather in the cap of Microsoft’s Xbox Series X.
Let’s get right into it.
Story of a musician
Well, sorta a musician. The story of Hi-Fi Rush revolves around a budding musician named Chai, who is looking for an ‘arm’ up in the industry. Injured and ready to continue his rocking career, he turns to a company called Vandelay Industries to give him his arm back, new and improved, and prepare him for a rockstar career. Sadly, Chai’s ‘transformation’ hits a defective snag when his music player gets caught in the arm replacement process and gets embedded into his chest. Once embedded, he is one with the music, and on the run from Vandelay Industries, who labels him a defect. Of course, the story is more than just a defective robot arm guy, as there is more defectiveness about Vandelay Industries’ intentions than meets the eye.
While I do enjoy the gameplay, which will be touched upon in just a second, I have to commend the story and the acting of Hi-Fi Rush. This game has had me engaged and entertained thanks to the whack-a-doodle characters and the more than well-written dialogue that creates their persona. Typically, I’m not a huge fan of cutscenes, but the characters here are fun, witty, and meaningful, which had me pining for the cutscenes. This might be one game I wouldn’t mind seeing play out all the way through without gameplay. The dialogue and interactions between the unique characters are just entertaining as hell.
Great story, fun characters, and top-notch entertainment delivery on all counts.
We got the beat
On the surface, the action and adventure portion of Hi-Fi Rush is basic in its design and execution. Most of what you do is swing a guitar around, hitting some good combinations, destroying robots and bosses, and occasionally pulling off special moves. It’s a formula that isn’t too far off from most action platformers of its type.
Where it separates itself is how it incorporates music into the action, where swinging your guitar and hitting enemies at the right time with the music equals out to power-ups and bonuses. Going back to my Space Channel 5 reference at the beginning, Hi-Fi Rush has a lot of SC5 vibes to it, where you’re going to have to swing and go with the beat to progress easily. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with those vibes. The game is made more fun because you’re trying to match those hits with the musical background beats. I didn’t know how much it would enhance the cognitive pleasure of an action platformer by asking you to hit those beats right, but, wow, it so does. It makes the experience so much more gratifying and hitting those beats, building up a special moves meter as you go, and pulling off a chaotic but special move on enemies is something to behold. It’s almost addictive.
Now, returning to SC5, the comparison gets strangely similar when the quick time events (QTE) come into play. One of the joys of SC5 was trying to time the QTE moments up. While the stakes certainly aren’t as high with Hi-Fi Rush, missing a QTE in SC5 means you lost. That’s some pressure in SC5, but also a reason why it was challenging and fun.
For Hi-Fi Rush, the personal pressure you’ll put on yourself to get QTEs right will make the game more entertaining as well. The QTE moments come in a variety of flavors in Hi-Fi Rush. For example, there is a lava level where you have to destroy an AR eye. After beating piles of enemies, you get the chance to take down the catalyst of those enemies, a giant cycloptic eye. To do so, you must hit button combinations in rhythm. If you mess up, it simply starts everything over again. If you nail it, the eye explodes. This is an example of the more complicated part of the QTE process. The special moves you have during fights have a Tomb Raider-like QTE with them, as you are given a circle and outline to press a button at the right time when the outline meets the circle. If you miss, you don’t pull off a special move, but you do keep moving on. This type of QTE is far more gratifying when the stakes aren’t quite as high. Regardless, the mixture of good guitar-swinging action and a decent dose of QTE makes for fun gameplay.
By the way, I might be biased because I have always enjoyed QTE-based games. That’s what I get for being raised on Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace.
Anyway, outside of the controls and theme, another big plus of the gameplay is the stylish bosses. The bosses are straight out of a feverish manga dream. They’re over-the-top in their appearance, almost Borderlands-like, and they’re fiendishly evil to put a stamp of uniqueness on their purpose. I can’t remember a time, outside of my Metal Gear Solid obsessive days, when I wanted to get through a level just to see what the boss had in store for me. They’re truly outrageous, just like JEM. For example, the above-mentioned cyclops enemy was created by a boss in the game that could just be the new and improved Monarch from The Venture Bros. He’s spec’d out in metal, obnoxious and over-the-top with his plan of attack, and he sounds a bit like the Monarch. The bosses are all unique and fun to watch in action. They’re especially cool with their in-game animation and their attack abilities. Hi-Fi Rush truly delivers on the final fights of every level.
Speaking of levels, they’re long. We’re talking maybe 20-30 minutes in length. While that might seem like small potatoes to you, think about the last time you played an action/platformer that had long levels like that. It’s tough to remember any games in this genre that were that lengthy in level. While the creativity of each level is evident in every animation, especially levels like the underground lava level which is visually active and contains some high sensation value to it, sometimes it gets a little long in the tooth. The game does a good job of breaking the ‘jump-hit-find’ monotony with quick action sequences here and there, but sometimes the levels should be a bit shorter.
I can’t believe I’m complaining about the lengthy levels.
Nitpicking at its finest.
To further break the player away from noticing the level length, the game does a good job on the backend and exploration. Starting with the latter, the game does have more than a few secrets you can find along the platforming way. These exploratory moments can come in the form of just finding some pieces and parts for upgrades or they could be straight up a hidden room that requires you to have a certain ability to get into it. The fact that they included this in the game makes it more than just a ‘run-and-jump-and-hit’ gameplay experience. I mean, it ain’t Skyrim with massive exploratory content, but there is enough extra on the side to return again and try to explore some unseen areas.
On the backend side of the tracks, the game allows you to collect parts as you dispose of enemies and use those parts to upgrade Chai. You can add microchips, attack abilities, special moves, upgradeable health, and such with the XP. There are a lot of cool categories that you can mix and match to make the best Chai he can be. Now, the backend isn’t too complicated and it will get convoluted. It’s just enough to add another nice layer to the game’s depth. What you find during exploration usually equals what you use or what you get when spending XP. It makes sense.
The only other comment I have about the gameplay is that sometimes the game can seem like you’re collecting more than you’re fighting enemies. While the music and beat-hitting gameplay theme will keep your attention away from that most of the time, there are moments when the game just seems slow and empty. Again, the music helps to alleviate some of that sentiment, but it’s there during the non-peak action times.
Overall, the gameplay is unique, the enemies are fun and stylish, and the musical theme that drives the game just makes the entire experience so much fun.
Xbox Series X needs more of these games
This is the first time I have seen the power of the Xbox Series X in action. Sure, you can say the Halo and Forza’s of the world truly show the power of the system, but Hi-Fi Rush is so incredibly unique and pretty in-game animation, environment, and in cutscenes that it’s one of the more visually well-rounded games on the system. Plus, its style is so unique that it is a pleasant departure from the usual first-party leftovers that Xbox reheats for its fans every other year or so.
To put it bluntly, this is the type of game that Xbox needs to draw closer to a better library. They have a gem with Bethesda Softworks, who more than not finds good games that are worth a damn, and they have a developer in Tango Gameworks that has now proven they can deliver something so stylish and fun that they’re guaranteed to have other ideas of equal value.
Phil Spencer and Xbox take note. You need more games like this.
On that note, let’s wrap up.
Conclusion
Hi-Fi Rush lives up to the hype it has received. It’s a fun experience with a musical backbone that works perfectly with its action platformer roots. Definitely a huge plus for the Xbox family.
