Hi-Fi Rush shadow-dropped yesterday as something completely different for Tango Gameworks, makers of horror game The Evil Within and Ghostwire Tokyo. As studio head Shinji Mikami warned us last March, Hi-Fi Rush is "the complete opposite of horror," which in this case means a rhythm-based action-adventure game.
It's not a big game, mind you. Hi-Fi Rush is just $30.00 USD, which is appropriate given the fact it'll only take most players between eight and nine hours to beat on their first playthrough, according to HowLongToBeat.com. Completionist times will likely be much longer, but the game hasn't been around long enough for anyone to 100 percent Hi-Fi Rush just yet.
It has been around long enough for someone to speedrun, though. YouTuber DemonicRobots has given us the world's first Hi-Fi Rush Any% speedrun time of three hours, 37 minutes, and 58 seconds. That's less than half a normal run's playtime, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. Because Hi-Fi Rush has only been out for a day, DemonicRobots' run is mostly a straight-laced and efficient playthrough using the game's core mechanics efficiently to go from start to finish.
"I love this game. I beat it last night--I stayed up to like 4 AM playing it. It's so good," DemonicRobots said during his run. "I'm mostly doing this run just to have something up, and then I'm gonna really deep-dive into it."
There's definitely room for improvement. DemonicRobots didn't have a perfect run, with several encounters only getting A-ratings and some bosses getting a swing in here and there. But I'm confident DemonicRobots will quickly get Hi-Fi Rush down to under three hours, and from there, who knows? Nobody’s discovered any glitches or bugs that can be exploited in Hi-Fi Rush yet, which are the essential ingredients for ludicrously short Any% runs.
Hi-Fi Rush has an interesting development history. Director John Johanas pitched the game right after finishing up The Evil Within, which was before Game Pass even existed. More than five years later, his game is now topping the Game Pass charts and has quickly become one of the highest-rated games on Steam.