Some of you might think I take pleasure in this. HERE COMES THE MIGHTY DOOMSAYER, they cry, HERE TO SPIT IN THE FACE OF THE LATEST GAME TO GARNISH THE INTERNET’S FAVOR!!! Nay, my loyal followers, I take no pleasure in being the outlier. Yet I will not fake enthusiasm to avoid being exiled to the shadows. You can come at me with your torches and pitchforks. Burn me at the stake but know this, I stand atop my soapbox only to give you my honest opinion. What ghastly opinion am I being tarnished for today? Well, my followers, I am here to proclaim that Hi-Fi Rush is not as good as the internet thinks it is. I will not hold it against you if you adore Tango Gameworks’ rhythm hack and slash but don’t send me to the stockades for not sharing the same opinion. I, at one point, shared your opinion that Hi-Fi Rush rocked. However, the deeper I went in the more my patience began to wane. Please allow me the opportunity to explain how I went from bobbing my head to the roaring soundtrack to frowning in annoyance.
For those in the crowd unaware of what I am talking about please lend me your ears. Hi-Fi Rush is a story about a guy named Chai who has grand dreams about becoming a rockstar despite the fact he’s never played an instrument. He signs up for the Armstrong program that will replace his bum arm with a metal one. Chai hopes this will help him gain the fame he desires while the company behind the Armstrong program plans to use him as a janitor. However, something goes wrong with the procedure and Chai’s mp3 player is infused into his chest. When Chai awakes the world appears to be moving to the beat. He is labeled a defect and must go on the run to avoid being terminated. So underdog protagonist and heartless corporate antagonist are established. Rock solid so far.
He soon teams up with a hacker named Peppermint to form a rag-tag resistance group that gradually grows as the story continues. I must admit these characters never really grew on me. Chai doesn’t really seem to understand the danger he is in; Peppermint will be all serious and stern one minute and then flip to care about Chai despite him making her life harder. They are pretty cliche to the point where one of them actively calls it out. It is ripe with the tropes familiar in anime, and as someone who wasn’t babysat by Goku as a kid, my tolerance for these tropes is fairly low. However, I wouldn’t say this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I have certainly stomached worse stories in games.
What initially drew me to Hi-Fi Rush was it being a rhythm action game similar to Metal Hellsinger, but a third-person hack and slasher rather than a first-person shooter. You must attack enemies to the beat using combos of light and heavy attacks. Mix in a dash move and a grappling hook and I was having the time of my life. There was an almost exorbitant number of moves you could perform, but I found sticking with basic combos only really affected my score at the end of the level, and I generally ignore those score systems. Despite most of the enemies being robots, there is a healthy variety of enemies that allow combat to feel different each time. The music, both the licensed tracks and the tracks developed for the game, all had me bobbing my head to the beat.
I was gleefully blitzing through the first few levels just rocking out. I was able to reach the lairs of the first few bosses and thought they were a highlight of the game. Chai is tasked with taking down the comically over-the-top heads of each department. Each with its own scene of spectacle and flair. The head of research and development is a techno mad scientist, while the head of manufacturing is a wrestling heel. Even QA-1MIL, a robot in charge of the quality level, had his own visual style that made him more than a robotic grunt. Setting his fight to 1 Million by Nine Inch Nails tied the whole thing together.
So where did it all go wrong? Alas, my followers, I have to say Hi-Fi Rush’s death comes from a thousand cuts rather than one specific problem. For starters, there isn’t a target lock-on system. As I blazed through the early levels, I wasn’t bothered by this fact. However as more range enemies were added into the mix, I was gnashing my teeth in frustration when my grapple hook pulled me to the wrong enemy. The few times it happened, I thought nothing of it, but as my grapple hook pulled me towards big shielded enemies instead of the range minions, my sanity began to slip just a little bit more.
The second cut is the parry. Now I am a connoisseur of parrying in games. Nothing feels better than landing that well-timed parry as you watch the enemy stumble backward. I certainly won’t say landing that parry doesn’t feel bad, the game can be so visually noisy that I was never able to notice its stagger enemies if it even does. What really annoys me is when the game forces you to parry. Numerous drones will appear, force you to stand in place, and lock you into a game of Simon Says. You have to parry these drones in a specific pattern that they call out. You will be locked into this game until you successfully parry all of its shots. Fail to parry the last shot, and you have to start over again. The game is at its best when it is firing on all cylinders dashing around enemies and hitting enemies to the beat. These parry challenges murder the game’s pace, and the further into the game you go, the more enemies you will encounter who force you into this game. The samurai robot that continuously forces you to parry all his flurries is criminal.
If parrying doesn’t sound bad, let me introduce you to the rhythm games. Occasionally you have to destroy a piece of technology. Rather than use one of the many combos at your disposal, you have to play another game of Simon says where you have to hit specific QTEs to the beat. Just like parrying drones, I don’t understand why Hi-Fi Rush has to stop dead in its tracks, to play Simon says. Did not enough people experience the pain of the Kruger QTE fight from Resident Evil 4? It was not fun then and it is not fun now. If Tango Gameworks removed these sections and replaced them with more combat sections, Hi-Fi Rush would greatly improve.
Hi-Fi Rush isn’t just headbanging the beat while beating up on robots. The game has a lot of platforming challenges that honestly don’t do it for me either. Floaty is the word I use to describe Chai’s jump. I think he gets so much height so he can reach flying enemies if his grapple is on cooldown. Unfortunately, it all just feels awkward in the platforming sections. So often his jump would take me high above the intended platform and I would just be stuck floating back down. Usually, I try to overcorrect and end up falling off the platform. You would think having a double jump and dash would help u correct yourself, but Hi-Fi Rush more often than not will ask you to use those tools to reach further and higher ledges.
Adding to the unpleasant platforming are the companions. Similar to how the companions work in combat, you will be frequently asked to call a companion in to destroy an obstacle in your way. Unlike combat, you don’t simply fire and forget them. You have to laboriously call them in, aim at the obstacle they need to destroy, and sometimes perform a QTE. It makes the clunky platforming even more cumbersome. A game like Hi-Fi Rush is just begging to have buttery-smooth platforming to allow you to get back into the action.
I walked away from Hi-Fi Rush feeling as if both the game and myself had different expectations of the game’s level of challenge. I can’t take credit for this, but I have heard games could be broken down into story, challenge, and cathartic release. As I have gotten older, games that focus on challenging players and making them sweat bullets, just don’t appeal to me anymore. I rather have a deep or compelling story with satisfying combat or gameplay. I am not asking for games to roll over for me, but having astronomical skill checks just makes me want to walk away. Hi-Fi Rush, unfortunately, feels a bit like an angler fish. I was lured in by the colorful art style and pumping beats, only for the beast to swallow me whole with its ambition to challenge me. Some people might be up for this challenge, but not me.
I should have known Hi-Fi Rush would be a heartbreaker. I wanted so desperately to love Hi-Fi Rush. I have cried from the rooftop for more light breezy ten-hour games with no microtransactions or infinite grinds attached to them. Games that didn’t have their marketing budgets dwarfed their developing budgets. With the number of live services lining up for their execution, Hi-Fi Rush could easily position itself as the antidote to the game industry’s sickness. Alas, I was not having fun in the last few hours of this game, but I must beg of you. If nothing I have mentioned bothers you, please give Hi-Fi Rush a chance. I promise I will be the first in line when Tango Gameworks puts out Hi-Fi Rush 2 … but it better work this time.
