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aurrymaycry · 1 year

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Hi-Fi Rush: a rebellious, punk, major piss at the current Game Industry.

It's a simple promise, really. One we've all wanted at some point during our childhood or teenagehood: We'd imagine a scene in our head. A fight, a conversation, going from point A to point B, anything, to the beat of the music we'd be listening to. Don't lie, I know you've done this, and all of us wished for that to happen in real-life in some way, shape or form. Hi-Fi Rush tell you from the get go it will deliver on that front and realize your dream, as almost every single aspect of the game is tied to the rhythm of the OST.

We'd imagine a scene in our head [...] to the beat of the music we'd be listening to.

You have an rhythm indicator at all points, but it's not just the music that guides you: The ennemies talk and move to the beat, the environment moves to the beat, your character's idle stance is dancing to the beat, all of that to condition you to what the game wants from you. And that suffices to immediately bring satisfaction to the player. Press button to the beat, game rewards you for it. You have a weak and fast attack, a slow and powerful attack, a parry, a dodge and that is all that you need to play the game. No need for gear with stats that you don't understand that will give a false sense of progression like in more recent productions. You will feel yourself getting better by just playing along.

No need for gear with stats that you don't understand

And even so, you don't have to play along. Even if you choose to disregard the main gimmick, the game will still be beatable like a regular beat 'em all as the game comes with a wide array of accessibility features and easier difficulties that let everyone enjoy the show. Now, this is formula unapologetically taken from the Devil May Cry series (understandably so when the game's lead designer is the same as the original DMC & Bayonetta, games that defined this specific genre of beat 'em all gameplay): It will encourage you to play along however, and the further you'll advance, the more the game with ask of you, without ever being out of your reach as a player and the more it will reward you for succeeding, not through materials or loot, but with the feeling of having done something really fucking cool. Inspiration from it's big brothers doesn't stop there, however. Tango Gameworks' secret baby pays hommage ludically, but also aesthetically to the games that came way, way before.

Tango Gameworks' secret baby pays hommage ludically, but also aesthetically to the games that came way, way before.

From the moment you turn it on, you can see the bright colors, the bubbly character design and vibrant personality the game exhudes, the one you'd get from entering the room of a 16 year old teenager during the 2000's. The pop-punk aesthetic, mixed with a refined cel-shaded artstyle won't fait to remind you of Dreamcast games of old, like Jet Set Radio or Space Channel 5, games where the music also were focal points of interest. We've gone through the Devil May Cry influence already, but we can feel it in the gameplay loop of linear levels that are still large enough for exploration, (with all the little secrets and challenges and enemy rooms along the way) and the control scheme itself as well, hell the even has game has a Style Gauge, the signature mechanic of the DMC series. The cast of characters feel like they've come out of an Edgar Wright movie, and that Chai, the main protagonist would fit right along the likes of Shaun from Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim. And lastly, the whole rhythm schtick can definitely string that Guitar Hero chord somewhere. All the game's I've cited were games of the 2000's and 2010's generation of games. All of these games were experimental products of their time that carry all the youth, innocence and simplicity of bygone times, for both the player and the industry. Hi-Fi Rush does its best to recapture that feeling and pay its respects to it.

The main protagonist would fit right along the likes of Shaun and Scott Pilgrim

A trend that carries over to the music as well. Though mostly original works by Reo Uratani (Monster Hunter Series, Ultra Street Fighter II) and Shuichi Kobori (Metal Gear Solid Series, The Evil Within), Hi-Fi Rush continues to borrow from millenials' teenagehood by featuring groups like Nine-Inch-Nails, the Black Keys, Number Girl, or even The Prodigy. Number Girl in particular must be the most niche, underground group to be selected here. It's one of the pillars of Japanese Indie Rock, and the main inspiration of groups like Asian Kung-Fu Generation (you know, the ones that pulled that off.), whereas The Prodigy was featured in a late segment of the game that is a nice strong the the best video game level ever made with how on point and cathartic it feels to go through, and how well it delivers on the whole game's promise. Aside from the licensed tracks, the rest of the OST nails the spot it aims to with its constant 120 BPM that goes from Alt Rock to Jazz Fusion to even Classical Music. With the music being the centerpiece of basically every aspect of the game, it was paramount for it to deliver an enjoyable, non-repetitive experience, and it does so by the use of dynamic music, where it'll adapt depending on the current state of the game (exploration, combat, cutscene, etc.). And despite the referencial tone of its presentation, and the impressive audio design necessary for a beat 'em all/rhythm hybrid game, Hi-Fi Rush's actual production team was rather small. It has all the components of a big triple-A release yet managed to deliever all of that with a rather small team in comparison. Crazier yet, the game had basically no marketing campaign at all, with the developers showing the game for the first time ever in a relatively random livestream, and releasing it right after, betting a cheaper price-tag, gamepass inclusion and word-of-mouth to boost its sales.

Hi-Fi Rush continues to borrow from millenials' teenagehood

A crazy plan that only made me think that I was being sold a CD by an indie group on the streets, but it turned out to be pretty well-produced in the end. All of this sounds crazy, all of this is crazy, unexpected from both Bethesda & Microsoft, and would be deemed a guaranteed failure should you pitch that to any kind of executive in a suit and tie. But that crazy plan actually worked, with the game reaching 2 million players by it's first month of release, with some citing it as "Perfect until proven otherwise". And you can't help but feel that part of all of this was intentional. As if the game itself was screaming to the current status quo of the game industry to invest millions in marketing, trying to equate hollywood in prestige and production value, and its disregard for the conditions of ethics and focused vision, to go fuck itself.

The main antagonistic force in Hi-Fi Rush is, quite literally, a corporation. The levels include a factory, a laboratory, an expo, and the bosses are the heads of the departments you'd expect from any tech corportaion. It's a business, through and though, just like what the game industry is. So then you start to look at it through that lens. And you can see how on the nose it happens to be: The head of production is a ruthless ball of anger obsessed with pumping product at maximum capacity, at all times, without any consideration for it's employees (which are, well, literally robots, but you get the gist). The head of R&D is an evil scientist with ambitions ambitions that go way beyond of the scope of what is actually asked of him, spending money loosely to quell his ego-fueled "vision". Marketing, in illusions of grandeur, puts on a literal show where they put themselves in the center spotlight in-lieu of what they are supposed to sell, the head accountant will do anything for profit, even if it means using underhanded tactics and cutting essential costs, and of course, the CEO's main motivation, is find the most convoluted and impractical way to sell more product. All aspects are common issues found in way too many recent studios. Some of you may have thought of names of industry veterans tied to similar problems in the past (or present).

The main antagonistic force in Hi-Fi Rush is, quite literally, a corporation. The game doesn't hide its criticism of the industry, or its self-awareness as a game. It's humour go from subtle metatext to breaking the fourth wall with the finesse of a wrecking ball.

Given all of these elements, and the game's development history of a timid production squeezed in parallel to an expected release, that has gone against all expectations established by the studio and the publisher, one can only wonder if John Johanas, the director behind all of it, didn't have a bit of resentment with how the current video game industry turned out to be. He's already stated in the game's first demonstration that it was a "dream game of his, that he thought about way, way back." and his admiration for past works, and a past time, can be observed both in surface, and more subtle ways.

Intentional or not, Hi-Fi Rush defies the status quo with a bold, confident, stylish neon explosion of stellar gameplay & nostalgic yet fresh presentation that brought me back to easier, simpler, more fun times with video games as a whole. It's one that I'll remember fondly for years to come and that I hope will, just like it's predecessors, gain fame in the minds of people slowly but surely.

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