Rhythm game? Hell yeah! Wait, spectacle fighter hybrid? I never would have guessed this combination would exist. So you’re a rockstar with a busted up arm, and go get it replaced with a robot arm so that you can shred guitar. Except shit gets wild and suddenly you’re wanted by every damn security robot on the island.
So wait, I thought spectacle fighters were things like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, how is this a rhythm game? Well, everything, and I mean everything, is tied to the beat of the game’s stunning soundtrack. Your attacks fall on the beat, enemy attacks fall on the beat, your dodges, parries, jumps, even your footsteps, they all fall to the beat of the music. Even the world bops to the beat. Everything, including your score, is tied to the beat too.
Your light attacks take 1 beat to perform, and if you press the button to perform the attack on the beat, you do bonus damage. Your heavy attack takes 2 beats, and you can string attacks together to get different combos, and the more on beat you are, the stronger your combo is and the more points you get. This isn’t the kind of game where you can just mash.
Eventually you’ll meet the most adorable sidekick character, a cute robot cat called 808, who is even on the loading screen graphic, and it will follow you around to support you in battle. 808 lets you perform Beat hits, which are combo finishers that require a perfectly timed input to execute. There is so much depth to this game and lots of quick thinking too in how to pull off each fight since you’re still tied to the beat. I’d say its not too dissimilar to Crypt of the Necrodancer, but there isn’t a penalty here for missing a beat other than lost DPS. In fact there are some combos that specifically require missing a beat, such as the Rise Up (X • X X) which sends enemies up into the air to continue with an air combo.
The music is stunning, the story is super compelling and it’s so fun watching Chai and his friends grow closer and improve as people over the events of the story, and the gameplay is near flawless, I cannot recommend this game more, and I’m so glad for YouTuber Design Doc for piquing my curiosity enough to check out this game because like, it just fuckin shadow dropped to no fanfare from a fairly big studio and publisher for a moderate price point, I missed when games do that and I really hope this game does well!
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1817230 £26.99
Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/hifi-rush £26.99
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