Hi-Fi Rush Review

The genius of the implementation is that it never punishes you for missing the beat, it only rewards you for hitting it. Attacks land whenever you press, but land harder on rhythm, so a player with no sense of timing can finish the game while a player who locks in gets a completely different experience out of the same encounter. Because the whole world pulses, from strip lights to the enemies' idle animations, the beat is learnable by watching rather than by counting, which is how a rhythm game reaches people who bounce off rhythm games.

The cel shaded art with hand drawn outlines is one of the best looking games of its year at a fraction of the cost of its neighbours, and the licensed tracks arrive exactly when they should. It is slighter than it looks. The combo system has fewer options than a dedicated character action game, the platforming between fights is filler, and the corporate satire plot is broad enough to be predictable from the first cutscene. Delightful anyway.