Hi-Fi RUSH

I went in skeptical. A horror studio pivoting to a bright, rhythm-driven character-action game, announced and released in the same forty-five-minute window? That usually signals a project nobody had faith in. It signals the opposite here. Hi-Fi RUSH is one of the most confidently constructed action games in recent memory, built around a core idea that sounds like a gimmick until you actually feel it click. The central mechanic is deceptively simple: everything in the world, from enemy attack animations to background machinery to the UI itself, pulses on the beat of whatever track is playing. Chai swings his makeshift guitar regardless of your timing, but land hits on the beat and you get extra damage, higher combo multipliers, and score bonuses that push you toward S-rank territory. It is the difference between playing the game and playing with the game, and the gap between those two states is where Hi-Fi RUSH lives. The combat structure sits squarely in Devil May Cry territory, with light and heavy attacks on the ground and in the air, a magnetic grapple for closing distance, a parry that demands precise timing, and a reverb gauge that fuels flashy special moves. Allies like Peppermint and Macaron are not decoration: you actively call them in to break color-coded shields (blue for Peppermint, red for Macaron), which forces you to read enemy types and rotate your toolkit rather than mash one button. Chip upgrades, purchased with scrap currency, let you tune Chai toward offense, defense, or a hybrid build across the roughly ten-to-eleven-hour campaign. The presentation is genuinely striking. The cel-shaded art style draws obvious comparisons to Jet Set Radio, but the way cutscenes bleed into gameplay without loading breaks gives the whole thing a kinetic energy closer to a well-edited action film. The licensed soundtrack pulls from Nine Inch Nails, The Prodigy, Fiona Apple, and The Black Keys, among others, and a streamer mode swaps those tracks for original compositions to avoid DMCA headaches. Where the game stumbles is in its platforming sections. The jump arc is a little stiff, camera angles can betray you mid-sequence, and the lack of a lock-on system means combat occasionally devolves into swinging at empty air when the arena fills up. These are consistent criticisms across player and critic responses alike, and they are real, but they do not break the rhythm of the game in any meaningful way. Post-campaign, the free Arcade Challenge update adds two substantial modes. BPM Rush pits you against escalating enemy waves where the beats per minute climb with every cleared wave, topping out at 200 BPM, pushing your muscle memory to its absolute limit across Easy, Normal, and EX difficulties. Power Up Tower Up strips Chai back to bare minimums and sends you up a 25-floor tower, letting you select upgrades and risky "Bug" modifiers between floors: higher-risk choices inflate your score multiplier, safer ones keep you stable, and a no-upgrade run is technically possible for the masochistically inclined. Both modes feed into 40 challenges that unlock new special attacks, costumes for Chai and Korsica, accessories, and photo mode stickers. It is a meaningful extension for players who have finished the story, not a thin content drop. Hi-Fi RUSH is the kind of game that reminds you a tight, singular idea executed with genuine craft beats a sprawling open world with nothing to say. It is not for players who actively dislike rhythm mechanics, and the platforming will frustrate anyone expecting tightness on par with the combat. But for anyone who has ever wanted Devil May Cry to feel like playing inside a concert, this is exactly that.

Alex · Scout Team

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