Finished Hi-Fi Rush. Only took me a year. Well, I actually started playing, then got distracted by something else, and only got back to it recently. Since it had been a while, I just restarted the whole thing.
You know, you'd think being a rhythm section musician irl would give me an advantage in this game, but it doesn't. In fact, it often works against me. Because while my brain has no problem counting the beat, my fingers kept trying to play the rhythm. So I usually only got A ranks because while I consistently snagged S rank on score and time, my just timing only hovered around 70%, because again, I kept pressing buttons to the rhythm, not the beat. Improved a little towards then end of the game. I did S rank level 10, because that was mostly to The Prodigy's Invaders Must Die, which, being Big Beat, obviously emphasizes the beat a lot. Also my favorite level, cuz that song is very fun to play very aggressively to.
Speaking of licensed songs tho, I was kinda surprised there's not that many in this game. About 10 out of the 80 something tracks, and some of them are actually covers rather than the originals. Granted, licensing 80 songs would be kinda insane.
Also played 9 Years of Shadow. Was free, so why not.
Metroidvania*. Nice pixel art. Nice soundtrack. Meh story and gameplay. Like, they show of a bunch of elements in the intro, like bringing color back to the world, some kind of rival, and elemental armors. But none of these really matter. Color is basically restored by the end of the tutorial. The rival shows up twice and dies. There's a theme of music throughout the game in the form a sidequest where you have to find musicians throughout the world, then do their particular subquest, but this doesn't seem to have any relevance to the main plot.
And the elemental armors are kinda like "what if Samus varia & gravity suit, but the benefits don't stack, and you have to switch between 4 of them to access their particular ability, but they really all kinda do the same thing". Which is to activate buttons of their respective color, do a little more damage to enemies outlined in that respective color, and use their respective movement ability. But often only in areas keyed to that particular armor, which automatically forces you into it, and that also locks you out of the other 3.
It's really linear. You do return to previous areas, but only to go through the single path you couldn't before because you didn't have right armor yet. There's no upgrades you couldn't get before, you can get them all on your first pass, and it's hard not to, because you usually find the full map for an area (including secret rooms) early on. Lots of bosses, most actually optional as part of that sidequest system, but most can be stomped in under a minute, while a few are frustrating difficulty spikes.
It's pretty tho. Other than that, skip it, even for free.
