Topic: Pure Xbox Game Club Double Bill - Banjo-Kazooie / Solar Ash (Apr)

I played a little bit more of yesterday.

I am being slow with this one, but God of War Ragnarok has pretty much 95% of my gaming attention at the moment. Still, Hi Fi Rush is such a great game! Every time I play the game, it is pure joy. I am bummed my time wasn't as strong this go around - mostly achieving D in timing.

Well, I finished the game tonight. I can honestly say it's one of my very favorite games... Ever... had such a phenomenal time with it, even with the little quirks on the QTE. Absolutely amazing from start to finish, and I hope everyone gives this game a shot past the first hour. Once you get over that hump it's smooth sailing.

@NintendoByNature you love to see it!! I've been so surprised by the story, it feels like they have pulled some personality traits for the bosses from either bad folks they have encountered in the games industry or from their own negative tendencies (that they have successfully avoided in making this game).

I finished the game tonight, great that it's got post-credits content but I think that last boss battle wraps things up nicely for me and I'm good. The hardcore mode that unlocks that kills you if you get D in rhythm mode is not for me!! I've had so much fun playing this game. Best surprise in ages.

I finally started Hi-Fi Rush and played for a couple of hours through the first 2 bosses/levels. Overall impressions are I really like the game: the style, the humour, the gameplay all feel mostly great.

I have a few issues with all hits being forced on the beat, rather than when you press the button, it makes the gameplay feel a bit laggy to me if you aren't in sync with that, and as a result I didn't always feel in full control. Yet somehow despite that, and having little natural rhythm, I seemed to be doing something right and manged to get mostly A and S Ranks. I got an S Rank on the first boss and A Rank overall across both the first 2 levels. On the odd occasion when it all clicked, and I was in that sort of flow state, it worked really well, hopefully I find that more often.

There's a lot to like here. The fact the whole world moves to the beat is great and really ties both the gameplay, story and world together cohesively in a way few games manage. Exploration for extra gears and power ups is fun. Lastly the characters, animation and voice acting are strong. I'm trying to place the VO's (without looking it up) they seem very familiar. I'm probably going to kick myself when I find out!

One other thing I didn't like so much. It felt like there were a lot of back to back tutorials and stoppages at the start - tutorial, 30 seconds of play, tutorial, 30 seconds etc. - and I was almost screaming at the game to JUST LET ME PLAY and figure it out as I go along. Still with an unconventional fighting system like this I can understand why they did that.

But all those criticisms are relativity minor, so far i'm having a blast and can't wait to play more

YES! See my post above. My current best guess, without looking it up, is Chai is the guy who played Sokka in the REAL Avatar (the last airbender), but i'm probably way off, i'm really bad at the voice guessing game!

Peppermint too seems awfully familiar.

@themightyant if you're getting a lot of S ranks your natural rhythm is not as bad as you think . I finished the game without a single one and only after replaying the first levels I managed to have a fight slighty over 50% on time

Small correction: In fact there were 1423 developers credited* for Hi-Fi Rush, that's currently the most ever by Tango Gameworks. For scale something like Forza Horizon 5 had 2523, Halo Infinite had 2606, High on Life 346 and Pentiment had 247.

While number of devs doesn't tell the whole story - for example, for how long did how many work on it and most of those credited will be outsourced, only working on a fraction of the game - but it is a useful rough guide.

My point is it's a full AAA game, likely with a AAA budget, albeit a bit smaller than some.

(* Note: credited developers can mean outsourced artists, voice actors or the finance guy, they may not be who we naturally consider 'developers' but that's industry standard. Anyone that had a hand in making it, in any way, is considered a dev)

Regardless, even though I'm only 2 bosses down, I completely already agree that it will likely get a sequel. So much style, charisma and charm. And after reading others reviews here and in the media, It's a dead cert. Great game so far, can't wait to get back to it later.

Haha, tell that to my girlfriend

But honestly I think i'm doing 3 things right.

1) I turned on the visual beat assist bar and I spend FAR too much time concentrating on it. (View button)
2) Keeping my combos simple. XXXX•X and Y•Y•Y mostly but also the uppercut air combo works a charm X•XXXX (I think). There's too much going on to focus on much else. Perhaps later.
3) (on level 2) Using the magnet to zip to enemies quickly to stop downtime and the meter reducing

I seem to get hit sometimes, as i'm not concentrating on the action, and am not dodging much, but am just a little relentless about getting back in their face to rhythmically ***** them up.

UPDATE: I'll have to go back and take a look at my percentages. (If you can) I didn't really look at the breakdowns other than the rank. I did screencap the end of level ones though, maybe it's on there.

UPDATE 2: 71% Just timing on Stage/Track 1 apparently. 'A' Rank overall, BSAAABAS for individual stages. Xbox auto screenshot upload coming in handy!

@themightyant you can get A ranks fairly easy not doing well on just timing (I deal with battles really quick and with a high combo meter) but for A ranks I believe it is way more focused on the timing part (my average for that is in the low 40s)

P.s: I have the timing assist turn on as well but it could easily be turned off as in battle I cannot focus on it. Same thing if a game has have voice over combat as I cannot listen to it and fight at the same time...

@themightyant yea could be. I might look it up myself. But more than anything, he as a character seems particularly familiar, and not just his voice.

Words of encouragement: all of those tutorials end pretty early in the game, so thankfully you should be done with that soon. I understand your gripe with the attacks lagging or at least feeling like they are. I felt like that at first and then it just clicked with me after a bit.

I think you'll end up absolutely loving this game by the end of it 🙂

I just finished this game tonight. Wow! This game is perfect. I loved everything about it and genuinely think it might be in my top 5 favourite games of all time.

There's going to be a Hi Fi Rush shaped hole in my evenings for the next while. Not sure what to play after that.

@blockfight my feelings exactly lol.

I finally finished Hi-Fi Rush last night. On the whole what a brilliant game, but there were a few annoyances too. Let's get into it.

My review of Hi-Fi Rush On time for once! But it's a long one, sorry, not sorry.

From the opening cinematics and through the opening levels it's clear this is a very good game. It oozes style and charm and has a wonderfully assured quality. It felt like playing a Saturday morning cartoon... and I absolutely loved that.

The key element in this game is RHYTHM. The whole world moves to the beat, backgrounds pulse and trees bop, all in sync with the beat. It's great. Even the combat FORCES the hit to always be on the beat. (That took a little getting used to but makes sense ultimately) Thankfully, for those of us without rhythm, the combat happens anyway, unlike some other rhythm action games like Crypt of the Necrodancer or Metal Hellsinger that punish you harshly, and the only punishment here is less power. Smart move.

The cutscenes, writing and voice acting are all great, but always short and to the point then back to the gameplay. Love that. My main complaint early on was there were so many tutorials back to back to back that it felt like one minute of gameplay then a tutorial, another minute of gameplay then another tutorial repeatedly for the first few levels. It's understandable as there are a lot of mechanics, but I just wanted the game to let me PLAY, and learn by doing, as the game was so much FUN.

That's a really important thing about this game, the sense of FUN is pervasive, from the humour, to the combat and animation, all of it feels designed to be fun. In an era of games like Red Dead Redemption 2 that seem like they are designed to be realistic in several ways and are worse for it, this was a breath of fresh air and sets Hi-Fi Rush apart from so many other modern games. A video game happy to embrace being a video game, crazy I know! More of this zaniness please developers! There is a also real confidence in this games delivery, it just feels polished and complete Day 1. Kudos!

The game continues on like this for a while, constantly introducing new mechanics and it's mostly really great. In the middle of the game I was thinking about what I would score it, I was floating around a 9/10 and thought if it ended really well and pulled everything together then it might be a 9.5. At it's best it really is that good!

Unfortunately, at least for a while, I encountered a lot of small annoyances the dragged the game down a bit, for me anyway. A few of these were:

• Rhythmic QTEs - I though the QTE was dead but this game decided to bring them back, in great number, and in the worst way possible, fail and repeat from the top.
• Team mate QTEs - Frustrating controls, thankfully they weren't included in battle!
• Instant Fail sections - like on rails and missing the jump
• Requiring team mates powers more than once to remove a shield, then a cooldown
• Samurai enemies, or those with the orange ball of madness on them that you can't attack
• Flame enemies setting you on fire.
• Parrying
• Bosses makes you replay cut scenes when you die. Why?
• The Final Boss (i'll come back to this)

I think the reason all these are such a big problem, especially in THIS game is they all upset the RHYTHM of the game that is it's lifeblood. The QTE's are easy to fail and make you go back to repeat, as do the Instant fail sections and cutscene repeats. The samurai and flame enemies basically say forget the general rhythm of the game and concentrate on these things instead.

The worst offender of this BY FAR is parrying. Honestly I rarely even think about hurling my controller across the room but some of these sections made me want to, and I was cursing the developer who made this mechanic. Everytime I entered a room with those little parry drones I groaned.

This culminated with the boss fight that doesn't allow you to play normally, a pet peeve of mine, but is instead an interminably slow sequence of these parrying minigames. It was awful. Thankfully, by some minor miracle, despite having a sliver of health left I managed to get 4 in a row at the end and beat it. I think had I failed I might have put the controller down... at least for the night.

What makes some of these things even worse is you are graded down for dying. For missing a parrying QTE, or instant failing. When you get all A's and S's on a mission but are given a B or C due to a couple of annoying mechanics it blows! In what is a brilliant game in most ways some of these things feel like a misstep.

I also felt there were just too many different fighting mechanics and so much happening on screen to focus on it all. At times I felt along for the ride rather than in full control. For example, I only just realised at the very end that you can buy additional team mate moves, including a sort of super-combo finisher whereby pressing the team mate button as your final timed attack gives a glorious co-ordinated attack. These are great, but kinda hidden, and many other mechanics seem underused or undersold. I'm sure for a very small minority of dedicated players the skill ceiling on this game will be an absolute joy to delve deeply into over many playthroughs. But for 95% of gamers they would have been better off trimming a few things, focussing on others, and leaving these cut elements for a sequel while they polish them.

So that is where I was. Enjoying the game, that's important to remember after wailing on it, but also a little frustrated by some of these mechanics. Then we got to the last 2-3 levels and boy do they SLAP HARD! From the moment we start Track 10, after the cannonball entry, with The Prodigy's 'Invaders must die' I knew we were in for a treat.

Brief aside: I realised I haven't discussed the music at all, which seems like a bizarre oversight in a game based around it. I'm already running long so i'll be uncharacteristically brief. It's really good and fits the game, but I didn't find many tracks that I would listen to outside it, this was one of a few exceptions! It worked well in the game, but didn't blow me away either.

Aaand we're back to Tracks 10 and 11, starting with the Prodigy and through the giant robot boss level / boss this just felt like a victory lap, combining most of the mechanics of the game in a really joyous uplifting way. I honestly haven't felt such a combination of gameplay, visuals and sound all come together in such a joyous crescendo since the finale of Tetris Effect. It was brilliant, a real highlight.

That was part of what made the final boss fight so disappointing for me. We'd just been on Cloud Nine, one of the best moments I've had in gaming recently, and then we get a final boss that is just frustrating. The issue isn't really that he's hard, though he is, it's that you have to ignore so much of what you have learned up to that point and just focus on what works. It's disjointed, and there is no RHYTHM, that feels like a failure in a rhythm action game. Perhaps there is if you are a parrying god, but not for mere mortals. For a game that was on such a brilliant roll up to this point this was a major disappointment, I died many times, and by the end it was more relief than joy. It was a real shame to end on such a bitter note.

Conclusion
So another game and another roller coaster journey. I really, really liked this game, and at times I thought I might love it, I loved bits of it, but ultimately there was just enough to put me off along the way.

My Score: 8.5/10 (Been flip-flopping between 8.5 & 9)

If you are still reading this, thanks, it was a long one

What do you all think. Am I being too harsh? What worked and didn't work for you?

Hi everyone, slightly shorter month in Feb, only 5 full days to go somehow...

Does anyone else have votes for March's game? Currently it's Atomic Heart by a distance, but that can all change quickly, like it did this month. Current votes

Atomic Heart (3) - themightyant, Lavalera, Pepa27
The Gunk (2) - MaxC, GamingFan4Lyf
Return to Monkey Island - themightyant
Scorn - MaxC
Brutal Legend - MaxC
Legend of Tian Ding - Balta666
Gears of war - Balta666

Secondly does anyone else have thoughts on Hi-Fi Rush?

@Tothington91 @MAC26 @XBontendo @Justifier @Tjuz @nessisonett @crippyd @Krzzystuff @sib @Ryu_Niiyama @LeanerFasterStronger @cracked_seal @Mr-Fuggles777 @Mundaney @KilloWertz @antifyre @Magabro @themightyant @ZeD @K1LLEGAL @Balta666 @Bmartin001 @Banjo- @R1spam @lookupmore @Dusk_Actual @Lavalera @frabbit @FraserG @WCB @TooBarFoo @SeriousSatan @xMightyMatt14x @Clankylad @BaldBelper78 @TuckNorris85 @Grail_Quest @Jsb5150 @Mamabear @liljazzy2 @Dydreamr @XFinest_KnightX @Elufachi @Amical @Supermutant @revluke @Akropolon @olskoolSEGA @HarmanSmith @Dr_Devious04 @EliteSlayer @GamingFan4Lyf @Pepa27 @MaxC

@themightyant I am going to vote for:
The Legend of Tianding and Gears of War

@themightyant I second The Gunk.

@themightyant great review as allways. I have very similar feelings to yours but I would be harsher on the ending score

Great game regardless but at times I struggled to have fun (mainly up to the parrying boss fight)

@Balta666 What a wide range we've had for this game. One who gave up on the first level, 2 or 3 who said it was in their top games of all time, and us somewhere in the middle.

Go on, how harsh would you have been?

Also added your and @GamingFan4Lyf votes to the lists. Thanks gents.

@themightyant I would end up on the 7.5-8.0 mark because of the failure states