Hi-Fi Rush

In 2023, a game like Hi-Fi Rush is a miracle. No marketing, no microtransactions, and nothing to judge the game on but the quality of the game itself. It was games like this in the early 2000s that made me fall in love with video games, and my feelings towards this one are no different. I dove in skeptical of the hype, and came out a true believer.

It's worth noting that I played entirely on the Steam Deck, mostly docked, and experienced no technical issues whatsoever.

Story and Length

Hi-Fi Rush's story is pretty straight forward and you get into the action from the second you pick up the controller. There's never really a lull—the story doesn't stop for the entire 15-18 hours you're playing the game. If nothing else, the writing is efficient. It takes you where you need to go and shows you what it needs to show you in order to tell the story that wants to be told.

Personally, I enjoyed it a lot! It's cheesy and hammy and a little cliché but it's fun, and that's what matters. The voice acting isn't over-the-top and I found myself invested in all of the characters by the end. There's a lot of sequel potential with this one too.

Combat

This game is definitely Devil May Cry meets your favorite rhythm game and it's a match made in heaven. Even if you don't have rhythm, the game has accessibility options and various difficulties to make sure that everyone can enjoy it equally.

I consider myself to have rhythm, but I don't have very good mechanical control to make combo-heavy action games easy for me. I played on the Hard difficulty and still had a blast. I used a lot of continues so my stage ratings were usually poor, but that's okay. I found that the increased challenge let me appreciate the combat more and ultimately made me better—even if I had to redo some encounters and bosses so much that my thumb cramped up.

The only thing that I hesitantly wish for is a more precise—or at least visually apparent—targeting system. There's no real way to manually control which enemy you're locked onto, which makes some encounters difficult to safely navigate and can ultimately lead to fatal errors.

Sound and Visuals

There's not much to say about the music. It was perfect. The mixup of classic songs with songs recorded by the game was a great choice (although scary for licensing in the future). The game takes a similar approach to Nier: Automata where the songs change based on your environment and gameplay, an obvious choice for a game so heavily focused on music from both a gameplay and thematic point-of-view.

UI and Menuing

The UI in this game is cute and completely serviceable. It's not without its shortcomings though. The game tries to educate you on how to equip certain items fairly early in the game, but you don't actually have enough money to really experiment at that point, so I found myself unable to figure it out later on when I actually had more money to experiment. It's easy, so it didn't take long to find, but I distinctly remember being confused for about 5 minutes. (Hint: You can only equip items in the shop, and you want the Left Trigger button on shop screens where you can buy equippable items).

Summary

It's incredible that Tango Gameworks decided to shadowdrop Hi-Fi Rush without any sort of marketing, but that confidence was well-placed: this is an incredible game. It takes modern game design and marries it with the best of the more experimental gaming eras. At $30, this game is a steal and everyone with access should play it.