This game is just fantastic. There’s no funny comparison to another game, or a vague sentence to start, or great lead for this. Hi-Fi Rush is just a game that deserves to be played. It has gameplay, visuals, heart, and music (naturally) that I just didn’t expect from this game when I started playing it. This game will go on the short list of games I point to when I’m reminding someone that games are still good. For every exploitative, microtransaction-filled, live service grindy mess of a game, there are still things with soul in this industry.

Legitimately, my biggest beef with Hi-Fi Rush is where it came from. Without meaning to disrespect Tango Gameworks’ previous creations, they’ve created three mediocre horror games and a dice mobile game. It is baffling to me that a company whose greatest claim to fame is two games that make you wish you were playing Resident Evil 4 again could just hammer out a home run like this. Of course, making games is hard, so I don't blame them for not hitting the ground running from the start, but there hasn’t been a game I’ve played that looked and felt so effortlessly cool since Persona 5. Seriously, they knew they made something special, and it was casually dropped without any fanfare or promotion. The confidence you must have in a game to do that is through the roof, which is why it’s almost disappointing that their other games haven’t even come close to this level of quality.

When you start the game, the level of quality and love put into the visuals are thrown at you immediately, even on the main menu. Every aspect of how the game looks has been polished to perfection. Every frame is filled with top-notch detail and care. The significant characters are all visually distinct from each other, popping with color and life. Every time a game like The Last of Us tells us we want filthy, miserable psychopaths in a gray-brown environment soaked with blood, games like Hi-Fi Rush come in and show them what a good-looking game with fun characters actually is.

That visual quality never dips either. From the start of the game, where you’d expect most of the effort and passion to really show through, it stays top of the line all the way through the nicely crafted levels the game takes you through. All the levels have similar theming, which provides a good sense of continuity and discipline in the design, but there’s still variety in each of the levels you go through. With the different abilities you unlock being needed in new levels as you progress, none of the levels ever feel quite the same.

When it comes to the meaty gameplay of Hi-Fi Rush, I legitimately can’t think of a criticism for it. Being a rhythm action game, timing your attacks is key, but there are so many tools to help make sure you actually stay on beat. 808, your little cat companion, hovers right behind the character and shows you when to attack (and also shows you which partner attack you have ready). If that doesn’t quite do it for you, the environment around you reacts to the beat, so you can use that. If both of those aren’t for you, there’s a timing gauge that you can have at the bottom of your screen that’ll show you when you should press a button for upcoming hits. The developers have a fundamental understanding of what they needed to do to make sure the player had the tools to succeed with their core gameplay loop, and they tied it in wonderfully to the visual style of the game.

The game also gradually adds more elements to the gameplay. You get what is essentially a grappling hook, a parry, and various partner attacks you can utilize. As you progress, you get new and diverse enemies being added to the pool, most requiring you to utilize your new skills and abilities to defeat. None of the additions ever feel overwhelming. Right when you’ve come to grips with what you just learned and you should be in a spot to add it to the combat, that’s when the game introduces its new mechanics and enemies. Most games just don’t have the discipline to not hurl everything at you at once and just expect you to figure it out as you go, again reflecting Hi-Fi Rush’s tight design.

Of course, the music is great too. To my surprise, most of the original tracks for the game aren’t overpowering. In games like BPM and Metal: Hellsinger, the music could sometimes feel like it was taking center stage. Being rhythm games, I don’t think that’s really a bad thing, but it makes Hi-Fi Rush feel like a more balanced package. The music is great (especially“Whirring” by the Joy Formidable near the end of the game), but it never tries to take the spotlight away from the outstanding gameplay. By doing this, I feel like Hi-Fi Rush strikes the best balance between strong music and letting the gameplay be the main draw, which is absolutely deserves.

I feel like I’m reaching when I try to think of something I didn’t like about the game, but the closest thing would probably be the characters and their development. With most of the game’s story content being completed in under fifteen hours, and multiple companions being introduced, it can feel like there isn’t quite enough time for everyone to breathe. While none of the development is bad or doesn’t make sense, it can just feel like it moves a tad faster than if the game had a few more hours of playtime. That said, the game doesn’t overstay its welcome, which is absolutely more important than making it longer for the sake of trying to pack in unneeded development.

But even with that, I still found myself liking the characters. They might not be the deepest in the world, but their goals and motivations are all there, and they all make sense. It was a lot of fun for me to see them interact and enjoy each other as the game went on, even if it did lean a little into feeling like a “power of friendship” scenario at times. Importantly, none of them were close to unlikeable. That’s a huge A+ considering the writing could sometimes veer into some quips and bantering (take notes on how to not make your main character hold others in outright contempt for no reason, Forspoken!).

The kicker for everything is the game’s story has an ending! That’s right, the overarching plot gets wrapped up, and all the characters get their own story threads tied up as well. They were all invested in the same goal, but had differing backgrounds and motivations, and they all get their pay offs. There’s no half-baked vague ending that’s required to contextualize reasons for why the player should grind for another sixty hours in a sandbox or something. You beat the game and the story is done, bam, just like that. The only thingresembling any kind of sequel hook ending is if you’re aiming to 100% the game, but it’s more of a silly gag to contextualize some things you can start doing as postgame content. It’s honestly sad that I feel the need to give props to a game for deciding to end properly, but in today’s AAA game industry, it's a genuine positive aspect.

Hi-Fi Rush is just a fantastic game that I can’t say enough good things about. It’s the whole package. The visuals look stunning now and they’ll look stunning when you play again in twenty years. The story sets up the good guys to be easy to cheer for and the bad guys to be easy to boo, but it has a wonderful amount of heart and levity to match the game’s colorful visuals. The gameplay now is top of the line, and it’ll age like a fine wine. It’s rare that a game just makes me feel happy from the moment I start it until after I finish it.

If you’re someone who likes rhythm games, Hi-Fi Rush is a must-buy. Even if you’re on the fence about it, at least watch someone play through it or something. It’s the kind of game that should be looked at as a beacon for fun game design and people shouldn’t let themselves miss out on it.

And yes, do it ALL for Korsica.