It has been a long time since a game shadow dropped and I don’t mean just a release out of nowhere, but rather a reveal and release. That is what a true shadow drop is, just like Apex Legends and Tetris 99, but without the hype that comes from months of trailers and previews, can a game get the attention it deserves? Reviewing a game that does shadow drop is a unique challenge, as there are almost no titbits of information around to colour your notions going in. So does Hi-Fi Rush deliver the goods, enough that it can break away from its shadow drop state?

The short answer is yes, the longer answer is more complicated. Let me set up the story for you, you play as Chai, a younger person who has signed up for Project Armstrong at Vandelay Industries. Having signed in and found himself at the back of the crowd, he sneaks, pushes and outright lies to be the first in line and after a comical error is made, finds himself with his MP3 player in his chest. This setup gives Chai the ability to see the rhythm of the world and he finds out that his new ability, along with a few others, means he has been classed as a defect and as he didn’t read the agreement when he signed up, means he can be terminated. Refusing to ignore that Chai begins to fight back and that is how he ends up working alongside Peppermint and together they begin to take the fight to Kale Vandelay and the mysterious project they are working on.

The main focus of the gameplay is beating things up with your melee weapon, the catch of course is that it has to be done in time with the beat. Before I dive into that, let me just say that combat works fine if you don’t land every hit in time with the musical accompaniment, it just does more damage if you do. The games reliance on beat is its strongest aspect and ones of its more frustrating ones, it is far to easy to get used to combat where missing some beats is not an issue. The flipside of that is when the game requires you to hit 100% to the beat and a failure means you have to start over, it quickly becomes an issue in frustration. Staying with combat, Chai has access to a light and heavy attack and each attack takes different amounts of time to pull off, which is something to consider. The rhythm of combat (and just about everything else) can be seen with 808 who floats beside you, pulsing in time with the music. Stand still long enough and Chai will begin to do the same, letting you see him snapping along and if all that isn’t enough, you can bring up a timing bar along the bottom of the screen at any time. Outside of that, Chai can use his arm to pull himself towards enemies, dodge attacks and also parry them, the latter needs to be in time with the beat once again. If you have ever played any of the Devil May Cry games, or Bayonetta, things will feel familiar, but that need to play to the beat means its less DMC and more Run-D.M.C.

When you are not in battles against hordes of increasingly difficult enemies, you will spend your time running around, collecting scrap and upgrades and just getting to the next fight location. While the game is fairly linear, as in there is no massive open areas to explore, you do not spend all your time running around narrow corridors. Whenever you enter a new room, it pays to spin the camera around and scope out all the nooks and crannies that exist, because there is more than likely going to be a host of things to find. The scrap is important as it allows you to buy new moves, upgrade special attacks and more, though after a few buys, I really didn’t look into it beyond that. The other aspect of the upgrades are the chips, which are shaped like guitar picks, they have passive buffs that help you out, reducing cooldown timers, increasing your pick up radius and more. Those I found to be more useful than getting a new attack, but your millage will vary. By the end of the game you will notice that you can’t obtain everything in the game, but that is because once you finish, you can revisit locations and you can then find all that you missed, while undertaking new challenges, if you desire.

I mentioned before the games reliance on the beat is a frustrating part of the game and the reason is simple, it never allows for any acceptance that people may not have rhythm. Now I have spent years playing games from Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Rhythm Heaven and more musical related games than I should probably admit, so I find my sense of rhythm to be quite good. Here though it needs to be near perfect in order to progress and the game just doesn't work like that. There are puzzles that you solve with your associates and calling them in is pretty easy, pulling the Right Trigger is all it takes, but one of them requires you to press the trigger in time with a set of randomly placed markers within a ring. If you miss the final one in the series, you have to redo the entire sequence and that is not the only time that sort of thing happens. During the final boss fight, there is a need to have an exact press of a button and the game does not make it easy. One can argue that by that point you should be able to hit the beat with ease, but the issue is the game never requires you to be perfect, outside of those sorts of moments. It would be the same as you having to hit a bullseye in darts, having just spent the rest of the game throwing loosely at the board.

The other big issue I had with the game is Chai, he is an idiot and not the loveable bumbling fool kind, but a selfish one. The game tries to make him funny, but each time he did something, it was usually because he thought he knew better and the result was just frustration. Chai knows nothing of the world he has stumbled into and when Peppermint, who does know things, tells him to do something, more often than not, he does something else - purely because he thinks its rockstar. The characters he interacts with, those supporting him and against him, all have the same reaction to this ineptitude, proving the point. While by the end, he does manage to have a moment or two of putting the needs of others first, it was not enough for me, to over look the rest of the idiocy. The rest of the characters are good though, sure the main baddies are slotted into some pretty conventional stereotypes, but they are still interesting enough. A nice touch that I admit, took me far longer to notice than it should have, is that most everyone has food associated name, which gives them a unique flavour, pun intended.

Of course, you would be hard pressed to play the game and not notice its incredible visuals, as the game looks amazing. The character designs are great, Peppermint has plenty of sass in her look, before she proves it by speaking and 808, looks wonderful in both forms. Chai is perhaps the weakest of the designs, not because he is bad, but he just feels less compared to the rest. There is a shot towards the end of the game that has Chai and the crew bursting through a window in slow motion and everyone else looks unique and Chai just looks like Chai. You can change up his wardrobe, but the element you can do more with, the shirts, is hidden by the jacket so it really doesn’t matter. The world itself is vibrant and alive, not just because everything is moving, but thanks to the stunning use of comic effects. There are thick black lines around most everything in the game, from characters to set pieces, but then there are the Ben-day screens, the dots that provide shadows without hiding the colours behind it and much more. In combat, should you pull off big moves, you will see comic style POW effects appear on screen as well, combining with the rest to really bring home that style, it’s a great look.

There are times when the visuals do have weird moments, but they are quite rare, so it isn’t something to worry about. I did however encounter some performance issues with the game. At first I was playing on the Series S and after a while, the game started to lag, which was not fun when timing was a critical element. Moving to the Series X however resolved it, but in the later stages, it brought new issues, namely audio cutting out or losing sync.

Speaking of audio, as the game is based around music and the rhythm it creates, we of course need to address it. The game features a number of licenced songs, unless you play the game with streamer mode enabled. These songs are only used in key moments, such as boss fights, but for the rest of the game we get an incredible original score from Tango Gameworks. A lot of the songs make use of heavy bass lines, which makes sense to help with the beat, but they all sound wonderful. My only issue with the songs chosen is that sometimes the focus on the action taking place, distracts from the music, but that might be something just for me. The cast that brings the characters to life all do a wonderful job, with many of them coming from the anime dub world, there are some big names voicing the baddies, one in particular stood out very early on for me. I do wish I had played the game with the Japanese audio at some point, just to see what it sounded like, the English cast is so well done, I don’t regret not doing that.

Hi-Fi Rush is a unique game, it is one that offers up incredible combat that is set within a world bursting with style and colour. The games main issue is that they don’t care about your lack of rhythm until they need it and there is no assistance if you struggle with those moments. Combat itself is fast and fun, with later enemies really requiring you to connect all the elements you have learned, if you want to win. Outside of combat, there is a nice mix of things to do, even more back in the hideout and while Chai runs very slow, the game still keeps a good pace of combat and exploration going. If you have the chance to give the game a go, I highly recommend it, but if you are not rhythmically inclined, then you might need to have another thought on it. Hi-Fi Rush is vibrant and exquisite game and the result is a kick off to the year that raises the bar to all the other games.