From the moment launched on Xbox last year, I’ve been singing its praises🌱 to anyone who will listen, begging them to give one of my all-🉐time favourites the chance it deserves.

That’s something I’m going to keep doing now it’s come to , not that it really needs the extra help considering how well it reviewed and so𒆙ld for such a nic🃏he game. But I’ll be damned if I let another musical-focused masterpiece 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:suffer the same fate as Brutal Legend.

Hi-Fi Rush is brilliant in so many different ways that convincing people to give it a chance and then being told how right I am is an easy gig, but there’s always one caveat to my recommendation: stick with it until you at least get the parry ability in the third level.

The opening hours of Hi-Fi Rush are great at welcoming you into its vibrant, fast-paced world and making you start to fall in love with its wholesome cast of characters, but it’s not such a great introduction to the combat mechanics and how satisfying they later become. Things purposefully start slowly so you can get used to the unique r🌃hythm-based combat mechanics, but the small movepool and basic encounters can make it feel pretty bare-bones in its f🌱irst few levels.

Don't even get me started on how slowly Chai meanders around until you get used to triple-dodging to the beat.

This starts to change as you buy new moves and abilities𝔍 after the first level and master performing actions to the beat, but Hi-Fi Rush continues to slowly drip-feeds important mechanics, like calling in partners and using powerful special attacks. For some reason, though, the parry takes longer to unlock than any other ability, and it makes the biggest diffe༒rence of all.

Towards the end of the third level (roughly three hours in), Chai finds himself up against Zanzo, the anime-loving head of Vandelay’s R&D department. After making your way across lava and tons of robots, you’ll eventually come up against laser-firing turrets, forci🌄ng Chai into coming up with a new way of defeating them.

This is when Hi-Fi Rush finally teaches you about parrying, giving you another way to respond to attacks other than just dodging out of the way or tanking the damage. It’♔s a simple move that is in pretty much every game like this, but it can’t be understated how much this ties Hi-Fi’s combat together.

Thanks to the parry, battles are no longer a game of cat and mouse where combo interruptions are far too common, where it’s easier to just jump around and wait fo💜r a chance to hit things, than letting you take complete control of the arena. It’s what takes Hi-Fi Rush’s rhythm gameplay to the next leve꧒l, since it makes you more in tune with the beat, and stops you from being so passive while fighting.

It also introduces one of the most satisfying parts of Hi-Fi Rush’s gam෴eplay loop in the form of minibosses with special moves that force you into one-on-one duels. From this moment on, almost every non-grunt enemy in the game has some of these attacks and, while they can be brutal at times, they’re also a perfect example of why the game’s rhythm-combat feels so great.

Don't let the tough encounters against the samurai robots get you down - you'll figure out their attack patterns eventually. Or just tank through the pain and cry a little whenever they show up like I did.

After replaying Hi-Fi Rush for its PS5 encore, I’ve got an addendum to add to my PSA - don’t let the sudden difficulty spike that comes with the introduction of parrying put you off from experiencing the rest of the game. I’d completely forgotten until🌜 my second time through that that tutorial section with the 🌳laser turrets is shockingly brutal for a mechanic that you’ve only just been introduced to.

I’ve got more than 40 hours with Hi-Fi Rush and I still struggled to perfectly parry the lasers ♌after replaying this section for the first time since launch. The rest of the game requires some mastery and knowledge of the parry and its on-beat timing, which is more precise than the rest of the game’s combat, but it gets a lot easier as you progress, and doesn’t feel like such an insurmountable roadblock by the time you’re using it in real combat encounters.

From the moment you get the parry, Hi-Fi Rush goes from being a charming and energetic game that’s easy to fall in love with to an all-timer that is truly special. I know from ﷺmy first time going through and even from replaying it that the opening hours can feel like a slog, but there’s so much magic waiting for you in the later levels. Whether you’re returning to it now or 🌠playing for the first time, you just need to brave it through to the parry to see them.