How Hi-Fi Rush made fighting on beat fun for people who have no rhythm

My total life, I have skilled one essential block to totally having fun with rhythm video games: I have no rhythm. That hasn’t stopped me from giving it the previous school attempt, although. For years, I’ve suffered via subpar Guitar Hero performances and B-rank scores on Dance Dance Revolution video games. Enter Hi-Fi Rush, a sport that blends the hacking and slashing of a 3D motion sport with rhythmic fighting. Hi-Fi Rush is fun no matter how attuned your inside metronome is. I sat down with Hi-Fi Rush director John Johanas to ask him: Just precisely how do you make a rhythm sport for these who have no rhythm?

Johanas instructed me that the staff at Tango Gameworks at all times imagined Hi-Fi Rush as a rhythm sport. In the sport, you play as Chai, a plucky younger man who goals of turning into a rock star. After a lab accident, he will get an iPod implanted in his chest, and he turns into attuned to the beat of the world round him. It’s as much as Chai to struggle his means out of the encircling world of Vandelay Technologies. As he hacks and slashes, the fights pulse to the beat of rock tracks from artists like Nine Inch Nails, The Black Keys, and The Prodigy.

When I requested Johanas how the thought got here to be, he stated, “Surprisingly, it was relatively unchanged from the original pitch. And while a lot of the team members were like, Is this really going to work? they were supportive in at least giving it a try.”

Image: Tango Gameworks/Bethesda Softworks by way of Polygon

The problem grew to become learn how to mix the 2 genres — rhythm sport and action-adventure — and maintain it playable. “The first thing that we did was make a system where no matter what you did, everything would sync up so it would land on the beat,” Johanas stated. From there, the staff carried out a system the place failing to hit all the pieces completely wouldn’t punish you — even for those who don’t time your assaults accurately, Chai will nonetheless carry out the actions to the beat — however touchdown hits to the beat of the music offers you an additional bonus.

“You’re not restricted by the music, you know, you can do whatever you want. You can do whatever combos you want,” he stated. “The enemies will move just like a regular game. It’s just that everything is synced like a music video.”

The builders had been cautious in the way in which they carried out the rhythm mechanics. The sport accommodates slightly visualizer that very clearly reveals the beat in case you are having bother tuning into a particular music. The sport’s world can be filled with different visible cues, just like the puffing steam round Chai or the tempo he snaps his fingers.

As growth progressed, the staff ended up chopping sure options for the sake of retaining it easy and playable. In Hi-Fi Rush, you’ll be able to name in companions who will come into the sphere and assault enemies for you. While in growth, the staff examined out a function the place you could possibly fully change characters in the midst of battle and play the sport on a distinct rhythm.

Image: Tango Gameworks/Bethesda Softworks

“No one could get it because it was so complicated to switch from one character who had a certain rhythm style to another one, like on the fly with the chaos of battle. So we’re like, OK, we’re gonna make this as simple as possible. So now it’s literally one button that you don’t have to worry about the timing of calling in your partners, they’ll do it for you.”

Hi-Fi Rush isn’t simply an approachable rhythm sport. Tango Gameworks additionally made an important entry level for these trying to check out the 3D motion style. The second you soar right into a sport like say, Bayonetta, you get a comparatively giant repertoire of combos to follow. In Hi-Fi Rush, the sport walks you thru beat by beat, button by button.

“The game was made with accessibility in mind, with the idea that these are normally genres that people tend to turn away from, because it’s not their type of genre, and we wanted to make something that was accessible and fun, and that even people who have difficulty with [it] can probably play to the end.”