Out of the shadow
(Played on PC through Steam with a controller in Japanese, both text and voice over. 10 hours and 42 minutes to see the credits roll according to save file.)
Before survival horror of the 1990s and monster hunting of the 2000s, Capcom is known for fighting games, in a broad sense of course. There is the one-on-one affair we recognize nowadays represented by Street Fighters numbered sequels. Then there is this little thing we know as brawler, something a team of Capcom developers under the direction of Hideki Kamiya evolved into what we know as character action with 2001’s Devil May Cry. Yours truly is inclined to think that Tango Game Works, co-founded by former Capcom employee Shinji Mikami, just dripped their toe into the character action pool with Hi-fi Rush just because the studio wanted to try out this other thing Capcom is known for.
“Shadow dropped” is the phrase people used to describe the game’s surprise release at late January 2023. “Out of the shadow” would be my choice of words since after 3 broadly horror and gray titles, Hi-fi Rush is reactively colorful. The horror roots of developer is still present though since horror tropes were used on two separate occasions as set-up for jokes.
In Hi-fi Rush, you play as Chai, a young rock star wannabe with a broken arm. Volunteer for Project Armstrong to get a cyber replacement but things went south. He got the working arm, on top of a music player close to his heart. Hunted for decommission, Chai made counter with dissatisfied employees of the corporate maker of his arm and had to launch a revolution just to stay alive.
Things you do in this game would be immediately familiar if you had played any functional character action game, A for jump, X for light attack and Y for heavy attack should fit like a glove. Though B button and the 4 shoulder buttons are not too familiar.
Outside combat, B is the universal interaction button, make yours truly think that Tango’s button mappers were still thinking in Playstation controller term where Circle is yes and Cross is no. Ghost Wire Tokyo was still not “old” enough to be released on Xboxes when this game came out after all. During combat, B button is for parry, sort of functions like the block mapped to a shoulder button in the PS2 days.
In or out of combat, Left Bumper is for a magnet leash and Right Bumper is for dodge. The leash is heavily featured in the platforming segments between battle arenas, and would reduce one’s distance from a enemy. It’s crucial, since this is a game mainly about melee strikes.
The Triggers about calling in allies. Without spoiling the dumb and fun story of this game, I would describe the allies as first a gun totter who can deal some damage from afar, the second a heavy hitter who can break something Chai simply cannot and a third all about stunting. The Right Trigger is for calling them in and the Left Trigger is for switching above the 3.
This game has your usual move list not uncommon among both fighting and character action games. What is unique about this game is the rhythm game style timed push to do more damage. Other than higher damage numbers, push the buttons timely allow the gauge for special attack to fit up. The clicking both sticks type my fellow fans of aughts God of War know all too well.
The rhythm game style timed button press is basically Quick Time Event we all know and love. Well minus the wiggling stick bit that’s. There are both the God of War (2005) style mandatory ones and Bayonetta style optional ones. The former can be seen as puzzles to be solved while the latter is mainly in boss fights cut scenes. Fail or success, they still aim to entertain. The one example I would put is something this game gets the closest to saving a damsel in distress. Yours truly failed the final button press to hold the girl. Then the following cut scenes about no matter how care Chai is, the girl resecured would hit her head somehow is a punch line about the player character being a clown instead of hero.
The sense of humor in the game lays heavily towards presenting the so-called figure of speech more literally. The penultimate boss of the game is called a real Wolf of Wall Street type and the joke is that no one thought that it would be that literally. Not to spoil this joke, I would keep you guessing which part is presented literally.
If Tango followed Capcom’s old way of only having English voice-over, the vivid cross of comic book and anime vibe of this game would inspire yours truly to write up another fantasy booking blog. But Tango did add Japanese voice over and the usual suspect filled rogue galley had yours truly grinning all the way through the game. “Old friend of this site” Kakehito Koyasu voiced the final boss while old friend of Hideo Kojima, Kikuko Inoue voiced his marketing manager. The aforementioned Wolf of Wall Street type shares voice with EVA’s Geido Ikari. An obvious Jojo parody is voiced long time Jojo cast member Wataru Takagi, who Jeff Jeff podcast crew is yet to hear. This is a fully voiced game and bosses taunts player through out the stage way before time to throw down, so one can enjoy the performance thoroughly if this is their thing.
Hi-fi Rush along with Pentiment hopefully kicks off a trend from Microsoft. A trend where cheap games can be so worth the money and time consumer put in that those bought the games can feel the same as Game Pass scribers. Also more truly great on the go experience like those 2 would be great as well.