4.5/5 ★ – AnchInfinite's review of Hi-Fi RUSH.

Back in January, about 17 minutes into the Xbox Developer Direct, Hi-Fi Rush was unexpectedly released as a shadow drop during the Xbox Developer Direct, catching almost everyone off guard. The Studio Head over at Tango Gameworks, Shinji Mikami, stood aside Hi-Fi Rush’s game director, John Johanas, to talk a little bit about their game, and acknowledge some awkwardness about the whole thing. It’s not weird that Bethesda is the publisher on this; Tango and Bethesda have a long history of collaboration. However, when you think about Tango, you think about a studio founded by Shinji Mikami, the creator of Resident Evil — and a studio that has worked on horror titles like The Evil Within, The Evil Within 2, and Ghostwire: Tokyo. The change in style of game made for a strange vibe in the presentation, to say the least. Sure enough, soon after, we would find out that Shinji Mikami decided to move on from Tango, after Bethesda confirmed it at the end of February 2023. Hi-Fi Rush features a cell-shaded art style combined with rhythm and action elements. You control a cyborg rocker, accompanied by a robotic cat, and fight enemies to the beat of music. The gameplay mechanics revolve around rhythm. All movements, attacks, and actions are synced to the beat of the music, which gives the world a rhythmic flow. Players who match their actions to the beat achieve better outcomes and unlock more powerful abilities. At the same time, the game doesn’t heavily penalize players for missing the beat, making it inclusive and appealing to a wider audience, including those who enjoy music and rhythm games. You can call in assist characters, who will use special moves in combat. In short, the game is what you would get if a more forgiving Devil May Cry were combined with a rhythm game. Following release, Hi-Fi Rush has received critical acclaim, earning overwhelmingly positive ratings on Steam, a 9/10 score from IGN, and an 87 Metacritic score. This is attributable to the high-quality design, the broad-based appeal to wide audiences, and the uniqueness of product. The price point is also favourable at $30 US, and the game is also available through Xbox Game Pass for US$9.99 a month (or US$10.99 from July 16 2023 onwards). The legitimate surprise, the immediate availability on PC and Xbox X|S, and the game’s uniqueness combined in a way to generate so much buzz that games media seemingly completely forgot about how sick they were of big tech laying off staff, irrespective of big profits and bonuses. In January 2023, Microsoft announced that they would slash jobs, and we found out that these cuts would impact several studios under Xbox, including 343. These waves of layoffs, and the storyline itself, actually lent an oddly relevant undertone to the game. Much of these industry wide cuts were motivated by a fear of poor economic tides in the back half of 2023, which have yet to materialize. As for the first half of 2023, US jobs payroll data has continued to slap expectations, and the Federal Reserve’s economists recently acknowledged the possibility of narrowly avoiding a recession being as likely as the “mild-recession” baseline. Still, some economists have nailed their flags to the recession mast, and think that it is on the horizon. Meanwhile, here was Tango, pushing out a product with an anti-corporate, pro-labour narrative. In this game, you play as Chai (not the tea), a happy-go-lucky and somewhat naïve character, who approaches Vandelay Technologies in the hopes of fixing their disabled arm. Although the company was previously benevolent, it’s now corrupted, and so you wind up fighting against a corporate system that overwhelmingly favours capital investments in technology over labour, which they see as expendable. There’s a chilling parallel with current themes in labour markets there. In the process of Vandelay fixing Chai’s arm, an accident occurs, and it ends up slamming an iPod-adjacent device into his chest! This causes the world around him to synchronize with music. Almost immediately, the company labels Chai as a defect — like a broken component on a manufacturing line — and attempts to eliminate him. This pushes Chai on their journey to fight against the machine, along with a supporting cast and a robotic cat, who all pull together against their common enemy. The game world literally lives to the beat, everything from pistons, vending machines, gauges, platforms — visual cues are everywhere. Though it’s possible to attack off the beat, you are encouraged to make actions on the beat, as doing so rewards you with more damage, pleasing claps, cheers, and additional layers to the background music. As players progress, they gain access to combos involving light and heavy attacks, jumps, dashes, and parries. Parries can occur on both downbeats and upbeats, and later on, some of the parry set pieces introduce even more syncopation that can put the button presses somewhere between downbeats and upbeats. All of this goes towards giving a bit more nuance to the gameplay and music, as most (if not all) of the music in the game is composed in 4/4 time; where there are four beats in a bar, and a quarter note represents one beat. These design choices enhance the experience by rewarding you for taking your time, using all your tools, and staying in time. There are puzzle platforming sequences, where the game shifts from 3D to 2.5D side-scrolling as players navigate through the stages, which are fun, but can be relatively simple when it comes to the side scrolling bits. Overall, level design is diverse and creative, and each level distinct from the last. Exploration and replays are encouraged, as it becomes evident that there are secrets for players to find, some of which they won’t be able to do until they beat the game one time. You’ll be constantly running around looking for nooks and crannies, so that you can find those golden statues to beat up for currency, or chests that contain health and other permanent power-ups for Chai. Levels are divided into segments called “choruses.” After each chorus, players are graded based on score, timing, and speed. The game frequently saves progress, allowing players to exit and resume without losing much ground. Between stages and during breaks, players can visit a hideout to chat up the assist characters and make purchases. Beyond revisiting stages for secrets, additional replay value comes from collectibles, searching for graffiti, and clearing achievements to unlock art on your hideout’s mural. The game does a good job of gradually introducing new concepts and mechanics, giving players ample opportunities to learn and practice. A detailed training mode is available as well, and is reminiscent of recent Street Fighters or Smash Bros. If players make mistakes, the game’s checkpoint system allows for retrying without severe penalties, though it may drop your score rank at the end of the stage. Also, it looks like you can’t get a score rank lower than B, and so really, they’re not out to make you feel bad for dropping combos or lives here and there. Unlocks include things like new combos that require specific button combinations of the light, heavy, parry, or support call-in buttons; upgrades that enhance attacks and support character abilities; and new special attacks, which are typically activated by pressing both analog sticks together. Special attacks are powerful, but deplete after each battle, which encourages players to use them early and often. Building S-rank high scores involves effective utilization of attacks, especially support character abilities which have relatively short cooldowns. Managing combos, enemy crowds, support abilities, parries, and counterattacks can be challenging, but focusing on certain types of combos, especially aerial ones, can be an effective strategy. The art style of Hi-Fi Rush can be likened to a cheerful version of Borderlands, with cell-shading that makes colors pop vibrantly, even on non-HDR setups. You’ve seen cell-shaded visuals before, but the implementation makes me think of a fusion of a cartoon and a comic book, and that drives the distinctiveness. Whereas Borderlands uses cell shading to tip the scale away from horror to gory action-adventure, here, cell shading is used to provide a cheery palette to the adventure of your wise-guy protagonist. Mission introductions are depicted as comic strips, and akin to classic manga character design, you can easily tell characters apart just by looking at their silhouettes. This applies to both friend and foe, with enemy appearing especially elaborate. The game performs exceptionally well, with no noticeable performance issues. I played it at 2K resolution with a smooth 60 frames per second. The animations are fluid and engaging, adding to the satisfaction of executing combos. During combo finishers, timing circles appear, requiring players to hit the green circle when it aligns with a static red one, resulting in special animations. Special attacks momentarily pause the game, similar to special attacks in fighting games. The combination of game mechanics and impressive particle effects and motion blur create a feedback loop that encourages players to aim for more combos, just-in-time button presses, and special moves, and this all adds up to an overall gameplay experience that is highly engaging and satisfying. As expected, both the music and sound effects in Hi-Fi Rush are of extremely high quality, playing a crucial role in the game’s success — it kind of goes without saying, but having good music is a critical success factor for rhythm games. The original tracks and externally licensed tracks in the game are headbangers, and players will probably find themselves humming along and tapping their feet to the beat, as I did. Look, Hi-Fi Rush is a solid game. There was some hubbub about whether or not this falls into the category of a “B game” due to its price point, and the amount of content it offers in terms of playtime — but I think that’s an unfair characterization. It’s a longstanding issue in this industry with how higher budgets are represented with higher bond ratings, and how those higher bond ratings seem to imply higher quality, and it’s simply not true. You can absolutely have higher budget games that are terribly low quality, and conversely, lower budget games that are incredibly high quality. This is a high-quality rhythm action game that strikes a balance between challenging gameplay and accessibility, which doesn’t take itself too seriously, and provides a feel-good experience. It sticks to its scope and nails it the delivery of an impactful, well-crafted, albeit relatively shorter, experience. Considering the price point and the overall experience, Hi-Fi Rush is a bargain, especially with the price of admission being a one-month subscription to Game Pass. I’m genuinely glad I played Hi-Fi Rush and had a lot of fun with it. I highly recommend you check it out.