Back when the Xbox launched, the original model, one of the games that I spent a bit of time playing was Jet Set Radio Future and not just because it was on the Xbox demo station at work. Now 21 years later a spiritual successor has arrived in that of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, a game that clearly wears its inspirations for all to see. The question is has inspiration come to equal success, or is it nothing but a poser?

The game has a story, a barebones story, but it has one. You are Red, well you were Faux first but then your head was cut off from body and a robotic head was attached in its place, which was coloured Red. The crew that saved your body believes that your head may still be around somewhere, likely taken by the person who caused the separation to begin with. The only problem is that the city is full of crews who are going to be roadblocks on your way to them, so you need to beat them in battles in order to gain the title of All City and speak with the attacker. There are a few gangs that you need to deal with, each of them having a theme and while the members are mostly generic there are some intriguing leaders in there. Red is joined by Tryce and Bel, with the trio aiming to do what they need to, in order to claim top spot.

The stories problem is that it gets super complicated towards the end and while it does have a satisfying conclusion, there is just so much going on, its hard to gather exactly who is doing what. The other issue that I had with the story is that, as all the cutscenes are delivered via text and only have the barest of animations to the characters that are speaking, it all comes across as dry. I honestly found myself skipping over some story cutscenes as they were just putting me to sleep and I wanted to get back to tricking and tagging. It isn’t to say the story is not enjoyable, it has its moments, it just is one of the weaker aspects of the game sadly.

While the story isn’t great the gameplay also not great, it has moments of fun, but then the restrictions pop their head up. Most of the time you can grind, trick and spray to your hearts content across New Amsterdam and its various regions you can visit. The first location is Versum Hill and is part city center and part transit hub, there are a few wide open spaces, but also plenty of roads and train tracks. There is also a place called the Millenium Mall, which as you might imagine is a giant shopping center, these two and the remaining ones all split off from a central hub that your crew calls home and while some are more expansive than others, no single location is bad. Within each locations you will find plenty of tagging spots to hit up, letting you lay down your art and there are heaps of trick spots to discover, including high-fiving a bunch of stands around the place. Getting around can be done on wheels or on your feet, the latter of which will automatically trigger when you land on stairs. You can also boost around in either mode, as long as you have the juice for your pack, which is thankfully quite plentiful in the world and obtainable via doing tricks.

Where things shine is in the runs, going from grinds to wall rides to grinds, in order to access special areas or places out of reach normally. Sometimes these runs are easy to spot and just as easy to do, other times their complexity in accessing them is more frustrating than fun and this is where the gameplay suffers the most. The games trick system is very, very basic, you can do basic grabs and spins or grind a rail or wall ride a billboard and that is it. That would normally be a decent amount of options, but the game suffers with the simple fact that you can’t grind everything, only actual rails and the billboard must be special for it to work. There were times when I would be grinding a rail and go to wallride a billboard, only to learn that I couldn’t and then I would basically stop in midair and fall to the ground. The lack of griding spots is quite annoying at times as there are countless places where there are sharp edges, but as there is no rail, you can’t grind it. Even when you are doing a run in the right place, sometimes moving the stick in slightly the wrong direction will have your character just spring off in a totally different direction and there is nothing you can do except try again from the start. All combined, a basic trick system, limited grinding and wallride opportunities, means that you will get bored of the action fairly quickly, at least I did.

On the games presentation side, there are good and bad as well, starting with the visuals its mostly good work. Playing on Switch I did have concerns about the games draw distance, but the design of the world seems to work well with the limited hardware on offer. The characters as I said before, don’t really do much in cutscenes, mostly some light bobbing of their bodies, but in the world, they are fluid and quick, which is great to see. There are plenty of hidden areas in the world, some are easy to spot and others are not, one example was I saw stairs that faded to black at the top and in Spider-Man 2 when you try to go down stairs like that, it blasts you out. So expecting that and wanting to see what kind of animation they attached to the effect, I went for the stairs, only to find myself in a new area. While there are not a lot of tricks to do, the animations on the ones that are present are quite good, which combined with a decent frame rate, has everything feeling smooth.

The soundtrack is the star though, there are songs written by artists, but then Hideki Naganuma comes in with a host of tracks. Naganuma-san is the composer of the Jet Set series form Sega, so having new music from him is a treat. The tracks that are not his are going to be hit or miss, some of them just felt flat to me, but the overall soundtrack is great with its electric beats. Where things fail though is in the lack of audio across the rest of the game, the characters you interact with make small grunt noises and not much else and the citizens only have a few phrases, it is not uncommon to hear the same line multiple times in a row from different NPCs. The rest of the city feels dead in the soundscape, there is never any sense that the city is alive and couple with the lack of folks doing things in the world, means it just feels empty at times, even if you are standing near folks.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is an interesting game in that it nails the vibe of the series that clearly inspired it, but beyond that it is very basic. The story is fine and loaded with characters, but feels to dry at times to keep your interest, couple that with gameplay that feels plain from its trick system to its lack of ridable surfaces and you get a game that is just there. There is a great soundtrack lurking here, which does help keep you engaged, but its not really enough to suggest you buy the game. That being said, if you are a fan of the Jet Set series or do enjoy a more simplistic skating trick system, this could be the game for you.