Hi-Fi Rush: the whole world in four-four

Hi-Fi Rush was announced and released on the same day, 25 January 2023, for Windows and Xbox Series, with no advance trailer at all. It reached PlayStation 5 in March 2024. It was directed by John Johanas, previously responsible for the expansions to The Evil Within. It took The Game Awards 2023 prize for audio and the Game Developers Choice award in the same category.

The arrangement is this: everything moves on the beat. Not only the hero and the enemies — factory conveyors, ceiling lights, arrows on signage, the menu cursor, the cat in the corner of the screen. You are dropped into a world whose physics has a metronome built in.

A rhythm you are not required to keep

The key decision, and the reason the game is worth taking apart: hitting the beat is optional. You can hammer the button however you like and the hero will fight — there is simply less damage, a shorter combo, a lower grade. The game does not stop you and does not send you back.

But it prompts continuously: the cat bobs on every beat, there is an on-screen indicator, and further markers can be switched on. And after an hour the thing it was all built for happens — you stop watching the indicator and start landing on the beat. Not because you learned to count, but because the entire screen has been keeping time for you.

This is the only rhythm design I know that does not filter out the tone-deaf but cultivates them instead. There is no penalty for imprecision here, only a reward for precision.

Parrying is stricter: enemy attacks arrive exactly on the beat and can only be turned aside in time. One combat mechanic demands rhythm literally, the rest merely offer it. The division is precise.

A small thing that tells you about the team

The game carries licensed tracks — Nine Inch Nails, The Black Keys, The Prodigy, Number Girl. It also carries a setting that swaps them for original compositions written specifically so that streamers do not get taken down. The studio produced a second version of its own soundtrack for the convenience of someone else's business. That kind of detail is worth more than any press release about community.

What does not work

The levels. Between fights come platforming and puzzle stretches, noticeably simpler than everything around them: walk the beam, push the crate, wait for the moving platform. By the midpoint they read as an interval between good scenes.

Legibility. With six enemies, three allies and all that glowing animation on one arena, events dissolve into pulp — while the game asks you to distinguish attack types by colour.

The humour is broad and adolescent, with jokes delivered straight on. It does no harm, but it does not survive a second run.

Why 8.6

For a synchronisation built as the foundation of the world rather than as an effect, and for how carefully the game opens rhythm to people who cannot keep it. Points off for the filler between fights and for an overloaded screen. And separately, outside the score: Microsoft closed Tango Gameworks in May 2024, a year after the studio's best game; Krafton bought the studio that August, and publishing rights transferred in November 2025. None of that bears on the grade. All of it bears on the question of how the industry handles its successes.