I blasted through this in two 6 hour sittings - I just could not put it down. They nailed the movement, and made some really smart changes to address some of the wonkiness in the Jet Set Radio games while also raising the skill ceiling. The boost pack lets you do an air dash as well as allow you to go faster the better you trick, and being able to switch to freerunning at any point lets you handle more precise platforming when necessary (collectible hunting, usually). The levels are also really dense and well designed, and switch between really freeform sandboxey areas and more prescribed paths within the same map. This game is so mechanically sharp you can absolutely tell the dev team made fighting games before this.
And of course it must be said they also pulled off the JSRF vibe in the world design and music - the dancing (which is used to trigger a few types of events in the game, but you can do at any time with the press of a button), the flip phone, the outfits, and the music is just right. That Get Enuf track from the trailers is used as sort of a main theme throughout the game, and that was the right call, it’s just so awesome, but almost every track is nearly as good. Luckily you can usually find the collectible to play a given track in the area its introduced, which I did for my favorites ASAP. This is a 10/10 for me, at $40 it’s a steal. And if you own an Xbox to play JSRF, you need this game yesterday.
As in “exhausted all the content and am now done with it”? Does that seem short for an open-world trick/combo game, or are you just that good, or is it a matter of the game not wearing out its welcome?
That’s the time it took me to complete the main campaign. Then you unlock a few post-game challenges to unlock more crew members, but really at that point the game becomes about filling out your map and graffiti completion, as well as doing the high score challenges for each area.
For today, I’m going to do the challenges that unlock the inter and intra-map shortcuts before I start score chasing.
Anyone picking this up today? It comes out on Playstation and Xbox today.
I’m probably going to be too obsessed with Starfield for the forseeable future, judging by last night and this morning, otherwise I’d jump on it.
I will probably get it later today. I’m also playing Starfield, but as some who poured a crapload of time into Jet Grind Radio on the Dreamcast back in the day, I will likely enjoy this. Hope the soundtrack is as good as the previous games.
I’m definitely interested in this but yeah, it’s just going to have to wait its turn. Love to hear some impressions though.
This is a pretty dang good sign!
If you liked Jet Grind Radio/ Jet Set Radio, you will probably like this. I am only like 25 minutes in, and it feels like those games. The music is pretty slamming. It has a very similar aesthetic to those games.
I bailed on this after the first area because it felt a bit too much like a similar game I enjoyed called Hover:
I’m not sure how deep the similarities run – it’s been a while since I played Hover – so that might be unfair, but it was enough to get me to uninstall Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. Also, I enjoyed most of the Bomb Rush Cyberfunk music, with the extremely notable exception of this track, which seemed to be running on a loop in the last area I played and might have had something to do with my decision to bail:
Sweet baby jeebus, I hope never to have to hear that janky outpouring of syncopated chittering ever again. I even hope never to hear the word “operator” ever again.
Operate. Operate. Op-op operate. Operate.
MAKE IT STOP!!!1! I’ll tell you the secret plans, the folder where I keep all my porn, and my PIN number! Just get that horrific earworm atrocity out of my head already!
