Hi-Fi Rush doesn’t feel like an Xbox exclusive. It’s got a personality for starters, but I guess having more charisma than Master Chief, Marcus Fenix, and the car from Forza isn’t much of a tall order. Tango Gameworks’ rhythm-action game was announced and released on the same day before being showered in rave reviews and enthusiastic conversation by players. It isn’t a big franchise sequel or a cynical new live service effort - but it still kicks ass.
The studio responsible for stylish horror games and folklore shooters had been working on this project in secret for years, pumping out what is essentially a marriage between Jet Set Radio and Devil May Cry. It’s incredible, and as I storm my way through the campaign I can’t ignore just how much it stands out from its contemporaries. It is arguably the first game birthed from Microsoft’s swathe of acquisitions that justifies such an expense, showcasing creativity on a platform in dire need of a win. I hope it ends up being the start of something.
While the PS5 is also struggling with exclusives right now, it has a back catalogue of established series and beloved classics to lean on that Xbox simply doesn’t. Halo Infinite was in the headlines more for its controversial development history and misfires at launch rather than for the game itself, while we are still several years away from another Gears of War (and the fifth instalment didn’t exactly set the world on fire). Forza Motorsport is being rebooted and will likely be an incredible live-service iteration of the driving sim, but it’s taking damn long to arrive and appeals to a very specific type of person. None of these stand a chance against the likes of The Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, or even Knack. You heard it here first - Xbox needs its own Knack. It’s the secret ingredient the platform has been missing.
Hi-Fi Rush is more than Knack, though. It’s a bright, energetic, and endlessly creative spin on the character action and rhythm genres we haven’t seen before. It’s saccharinely sweet and endlessly self-referential in its many ideas, but knowingly so. Upon release, I saw people comparing its dialogue to Forspoken, claiming they were just as bad as one another despite drastically different tones and delivery. I hate to tell those people they’re wrong - but you are.
It’s meant to feel like a laid back Saturday morning cartoon with a ragtag ensemble cast who embark on unpredictable escapades. The narrative moves a million miles a minute while still imbuing each character with a memorable personality and relationship dynamics that pay off in predictable yet emotional ways. Right now there is nothing else like this in the Xbox camp, at least not something that is so unafraid to have this much fun. Turns out it’s what I needed.
We’ve seen games shadow dropped before, and most of the time it’s smaller indie projects or remasters of things we’re already familiar with. When Hi-Fi Rush was first dropped, I’ll admit that I cynically assumed it was some sort of cel-shaded free-to-play multiplayer thing set to fizzle out in a matter of days, so I didn’t pay attention until the praise started getting louder and louder to the point where I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Suddenly I was hearing friends comparing it to Okami and Jet Set Radio as they shared clips online of a game that had no right going so hard. It understood what it wanted to be and pulled it off so effortlessly.
It’s possible this overly enthusiastic reception is a symptom to coming out of nowhere while simultaneously being a breath of fresh air. Hi-Fi Rush reminded us how creative and freeing games can be under the right circumstances in a climate where we’ve become so numb to triple-A disappointments and cynical corporate inteference. ‘Fun’ is a lazy descriptor among game critics, since there are far more interesting and nuanced ways to describe your own experience with a game and how it reflects the wider medium, but I’m struggling to call a game like this as anything else. It’s pure, old-fashioned fun with a multitude of new twists.
Reminders of PS2 classics and forgotten genre conventions keep rushing through my mind, almost as if Hi-Fi Rush is a deserved comeback for a type of game we don’t see anymore. It is much too early to tell if this will be an exception to Microsoft’s rule of exclusives, or nothing more than a quirky side project for Tango to tackle before it moves onto a sequel to Ghostwire or The Evil Within. No matter what the future holds, Hi-Fi Rush’s clear success needs to be analysed and considered, or at least have some lessons learned from how it proves that modern games are allowed to shock and surprise in ways that put smiles on our faces.