Hi-Fi Rush (2023) [PC]

“Pump up the Jam, pump it up.”
-Technotronic

Sometimes it’s a bad idea to mix things together. Macaroni and cheese, for instance. Sorry, literally everyone else on the planet, it’s kind of nasty and I guess I just don’t get it. On the other hand, sometimes two great tastes really do taste together! Or three. Try mixing peanut butter, banana, and granola on a sandwich sometime. You can thank me later. Hi-Fi Rush, a surprise drop from Evil Within developers Tango Gameworks, is a fantastic example of the latter, mixing brawling and rhythm into a single lovely combination that’s unlike pretty much anything else out there.

Meet Chai. Chai wants to be a rockstar! Maybe that’s in his future, but he’s got another job first – he’s been selected for Project Armstrong, an initiative from the high-tech Vandelay Corporation to enhance regular humans like him and turn them into incredibly productive cyborg workers. Things go a tiny bit amiss, though, when the initial plan to replace Chai’s arm with a garbage-collecting magnet ends up doing both that and, well, replacing his heart with an MP3 player. I guess people still have those, right? Vandelay doesn’t particularly like when Armstrong subjects end up “defective,” though, and they send an army of robots out to catch Chai and decommission him. They might find they’re biting off more than they can chew there, though. That musical heart of his grants Chai rhythmic superpowers, and along with new allies including hacker Peppermint and engineer Macaron, Chai’s ready to smash through everything Vandelay’s got.

Feet are stompin’, Jam is Pumpin’

Hi-Fi Rush is a bizarre-yet-effective cross between a Devil May Cry-style character action game and, well, Guitar Hero. Chai’s got a guitar to smack enemies with and plenty of targets ripe for that kind of treatment, so you’ll just start button-mashing and repeat until victory, right? Sure, that sort of works! Chai’s attacks, as with pretty much everything in the game, come out to the beat of the background music – and when I say “pretty much everything” I mean it, by the way. Even Chai’s walk is synced up to the beat. It’s really something else to see it in action, but it’s not like the game won’t let you attack if you aren’t doing it on-beat, it’ll just hold off until the right moment for the attack to actually occur.

With that in mind, you might think that playing with a little bit of a groove will get you further. You’re absolutely right – by paying attention to the beat and timing your attacks so they sync up, you’ll deal more damage, cover more of an area, move faster, add special effects to your moves, and more. Basically, everything Chai can do is better if you do it to the beat, so Hi-Fi Rush’s combat turns into a delicate balance of timed attacks, precision dodges and even blocking enemy attacks by paying attention to the soundtrack. There are even super attacks that allow you to unleash rhythmic carnage by playing a little tune before bringing the pain.

The Crowd is Jumpin’

This isn’t intuitive when you first start playing since managing both concepts at once is a tad rough. With a little practice, though, you’ll master the basic hack-and-slash gameplay…and then Hi-Fi Rush will toss in a little bit more to spice things up. Chai can summon allies to assist with breaking shields and armor, for instance, and later upgrades add team-up combo attacks to your arsenal as well. There’s a surprising number of fancy combo attacks you can throw in, incorporating DMC-style concepts like pausing between attacks to get new moves.

The enemies have fancy tricks of their own, though, including cinematic finishing attacks where you’ll have to correctly parry an extended series of blows in order to avoid massive damage. These go so far as to call up an anime-style cut-in and pause the action so you can make absolutely sure you’re paying attention. Likewise, Hi-Fi Rush‘s boss battles are absolutely fantastic, with the final boss, in particular, standing out as one of the more memorable in recent memory.

So our gameplay is unique and stylish, combining a pair of genres in a way that few other titles have. What else have we got? Well, Hi-Fi Rush’s presentation is amazing, combining a Guilty Gear-style cel-shaded 3D art style with an absolutely banging soundtrack. Most of the latter is original, but there’s a sprinkling of licensed tunes that kick in at just the right moments. As a Nine Inch Nails fan from back in the day, let’s just say this is a game that really speaks to my soul.

Get Your Booty on the Floor Tonight

You’ve got about seven hours’ worth of game here, not including some post-game goodies to extend the run time a bit. If any game proved that you don’t need sixty hours of content to leave an impression, though, it’s this one. Mixing genres has rarely turned out quite so well, and given you can play this one on Game Pass for a song, you probably should. Emphasis on the song part, of course.

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Cory G. believes the pen is mightier than the sword…well, depending on how sharp the pen and sword are. A child of the ’90s and a prolific writer, he strews his work about like Legos made of words, just waiting for your brain to step on them. He enjoys a devilish challenge, so when it comes to talking about some of the more difficult games out there, you might just run into the Infernal Accountant Mage. Some advice: hold on to your soul around this guy, and don’t sign anything. Read more at popzara.com.