Music is all around us. As I type this out, the keys of my laptop chatter beneath me, my feet become drumsticks each time I descend the stairs, every door that opens with a creak and closes with a click adds to the mundane melody around me. Rhythm is part of everything, and games seem to be exploring this territory more and more. While the age of plastic instruments is over, rhythm games are making an unusual comeback by moving in with other genres, and I'm not sure this Green Card marriage will last.
The best received of this new trend is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hi-Fi Rush, which takes the character action gameplay we know from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bayonetta and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Devil May Cry and sets it to a sick 808 beat. We're still hacking 'n' slashing against wave after wave of enemies, but we do more damage if we can land the co🔯mbos ཧin time to the music. For some of the bosses, progress is impossible unless you're right on the beat, and it's not just you vibing to the music - the whole world moves in sync too. It's incredibly dedicated to the rhythm at its heart (literally, in the case of protagonist Chai), and as a result the union between the two genres feels earnest. The game would not be the same without one of its two pillars. For the other games in this category though, I'm not so sure that's true.
The major challenger to Hi-Fi Rush at the top of the tree is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Metal: Hellsinger, and the other rhythm shooters like it. Given that the heavy metal soundtrack has long been a crucial part of Doom, it makes sense for games directly inspired by Doom to take that a step further by having the shooting mechanics link in specifically to the blaring guitars. I had a decent enough time with Hellsinger, but mostly it reminded me that my taste in music i⛎s more Sad White Girl than the ga🅷me allows for, and the likes of 🐼Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift cannot save me from eternal damnation in hell.
The more you explore these sorts of games though, the less the union seems to hold up. I thoroughly enjoyed God of Rock a🐽t ꧙Gamescom last year, which mixes fighting and rhythm together, but struggled to see why rhythm was of such importance to the game, and barely watched the fight taking place before me - ostensibly the main reason I was playing. When we previewed the game a few months later, our writer was underwhelmed by their o🎶wn experie♈nce of the game, noting that theꦅ longer they played the less the two genres seemed to fit together - despite fighting games requiring a sense of rhythm to begin with.
But that's not all. Infinite Guitars, coming to Game Pass and Switch at the end of the month, is a rhythm RPG which appears to have a Hi-Fi Rush view of the world, making it come alive with music, with a more complex and classic button-pushing rhythm section for battling. These two aren't genres that go together, and while that's not a reason to try, it does feel as though every type of game has a rhythm version these days. Likewise, we've got Goodbye Volcano High coming later in the year, which is a visual novel where our protagonist is in a band, and so we get a rhythm section. That feels a little better, like we're being brought into the world, but of all the things I'm looking forward to at Volcano High, playing the guitar is not one of them.
I like rhythm games enough on their own. I had several Guitar Heroes, Rock Bands, and even Band Hero - that one had a playable Taylor Swift, which was the main reason I wanted it. I'd love for them to figure out a way to come back that doesn't rely on cumbersome plastic instruments. But I'm not sure that route is through wedging them into genres where they don't fit, and I hope rhythm games can rise again as a full-blown genre, not just a gimmicky mechanic.