Hi-Fi Rush, analysis. Review with game experience, gameplay, trailer and price

It is going to be difficult taking into account all the fat that is coming our way in 2023, but although the fight for the GOTH It’s going to be fierce, I highly doubt we’ll be seeing anything as fun, polished and original as Hi-Fi Rush in the next few months.

The big surprise of Tango Gameworks y Microsoft It served to give wings to those of us who believe that another video game industry is possible. That risks can turn into incredible surprises, and that you can save yourself a bundle in marketing with something as simple as a “this exists, play it now” can serve to shape a superb video game.

Entre Dreamcast y Platinum Games

Breaking with everything they had shown up to now, Hi-Fi Rush it is much more than an action and rhythm game with a visual aspect to frame. As if the stars of thedeath cases” lined up, Tango smells like both Dreamcast and Platinum Games, and that’s a mix that those of us who are fans of the best of that now-defunct platform, and the most celebrated of a declining studio, can’t help but applaud.

Led by Chai, a young man who finds himself involved in the conspiracy of a company dedicated to improving humans with robotic implants, our protagonist will end up involved in a battle against the bosses of that megacorporation with an arm with powers and a video player. music like heart

That last one is the excuse so that everything that happens in Hi-Fi Rush, from our attacks to the elements on the stage, move to the rhythm of the music. Even the interface or the blows that the enemies give will be marked by a metronome that regulates even the smallest detail of the game and its gameplay.

Hi-Fi Rush could remain just that, just another action game with the excuse of music as a discordant note, if it weren’t for the level of goldsmithing behind each of its decisions that makes it one of the most round ones that have fallen into our hands for a long time.

The rhythm of Hi-Fi Rush in the hands of an arrhythmic

Let me first talk about the elephant in the room. If you’ve gotten this far, you haven’t tried the game yet, and you’re at the Antipodes of being one of those people who has rhythm in your veins, I think you should know that whoever writes these lines is one of the meat chunks with eyes more arrhythmic than you can put to your face. And yet, most of my in-game highscores boil down to A’s or even S’s.

With the classic duality of light and hard attacks, Chai’s combos need to be performed to the beat of the music, yes, but the game doesn’t hold you back if that’s not your thing. It is no less true that to reach the highest scores you will have to learn to follow the beat that marks the game, but Hi-Fi Rush It makes it so easy for you to achieve it that it seems pure witchcraft of ones and zeros.

In addition to various difficulty levels that are more or less forgiving of button-press errors, the game has enough help so that keeping up is never a problem. Here I could talk about the cat that accompanies you visually setting the pace, or all the other elements that are included to support in that sense, but in reality there is something much simpler than that.

The time that the character takes between pressing the attack button and performing the animation is also spun to that same beat, so if when your particular sword touches the enemy’s body you press the same button again, you will already be attacking at the rhythm of music almost without realizing it. And yes, with the strong and slower, two-bar attacks, the strategy works just as well. The game tries its best for you to fight your best while enjoying its fights.

A formidable combat

It is there, between insane fights against putties waiting for you to unleash your most spectacular combo, or against final bosses that have you dodging, parrying and deflecting projectiles, where Hi-fi Rush it shines with a special light, but it is not the only point in which it does so.

The visual display that it enjoys, halfway between a westernized anime and a series of cartoons riddled with Cartoon Network jokes, is one of the most beautiful things that have passed through our eyes recently. An achievement polished to exhaustion that could well be compared without any qualms with other great animation achievements such as the latest Spider-Man movies.

Seeing Chai move to the beat of the music, or checking to what extent the movements of the stage and the enemies also move in unison is one of those experiences that are easy to classify as essential. The level of care is so stunning that, up to the noses of the graficotes refrain, I wish all games would take this path.

At times reminiscent of Sunset Overdrive in its aesthetic approach, the first bars of the adventure made us cry a little for not being in front of something as ambitious as the Insomniac Games game, but the truth is that the linearity of his adventure ends up making him feel good. fable and, by the time you want to know it, you’ve learned to appreciate that this in an open world wouldn’t have been half as round.

Its worst face: the platforms

Sent to the market war as a reduced-price game (it freaks me out that this only costs 30 dollars), even wanting to be more than it should sometimes plays a trick on it. Despite enjoying about 10 hours of adventure, a good handful of challenges waiting to be completed, a multitude of secrets to discover, attacks to unlock, and even a challenge mode in which to overcome waves of enemies, the only thing we could blame Hi-Fi Rush It is that at times it tries to lengthen more than necessary.

The repetition of certain sections, though with other platforming areas and enemies to add some variety, feels too repetitive at times not to raise an eyebrow a bit. An artificially lengthened experience without any need that, if it had lasted just seven or eight hours, would have left an even better taste in the mouth.

Where there is no cloth to cut, I’m afraid, is in the few hands that continue to have these types of games for jumps. The platforming areas often feel clunky and inaccurate, which coupled with a character jumping with high altitude but little air control makes for a handful of replayable sections.

Luckily the game is fully aware of this and, far from leading the challenge, almost everything you do is agile and accessible enough so that the important thing is to rest from the fights and recreate yourself with the thousand and one details hidden in its settings. and all the action that happens around you.

iGamesNews’s opinion

We don’t need huge, big-budget games, game-changing mechanics destined to change the course of the industry, let alone cloud-supported, AI-enhanced photorealistic graphics. What we need and want is something as simple as Hi-Fi Rush.

An original game and as well thought out as it is executed that, just by putting yourself at the controls during the first minutes of the adventure, you are already able to feel that you are facing one of your new favorite games. Maybe Microsoft y Xbox are not going through their best moment on a creative level, but games like Hi-Fi Rush They are the perfect excuse to regain faith not only in their role within this industry, but also in the future of the video game that we have on the horizon.