Xbox's Hi-Fi Rush has that Dreamcast era vibe, and it could be one of the best games of the year

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Time is ever-flowing, but it’s also undoubtedly a flat circle. Trends come and go, and loop back around, and here we are – it’s the year of our lord 2023, and a time portal has just opened above our heads and dropped a Dreamcast classic into our laps. Or a GameCube classic, to be fair – it feels like it’d be most at home on either of those. The point is, the latest first-party addition to Xbox Game Pass feels like it’s time traveled from circa 1998-2003. And I mean that in the best possible way.

A new off-beat action game from Tango Gameworks, the Bethesda studio that up until this point has been all about survival horror. The studio was founded by Shinji Mikami, the man most often credited as the most influential person in the creation of the Resident Evil series – and thus far, the studio’s works have matched up to that. But this game, on which Mikami is the producer behind director John Johanas of The Evil Within 2 fame, demonstrates that he – and Tango – can do so much more.

Colorful, slick, and with a gorgeous aesthetic and bright-eyed attitude, Hi-Fi Rush recalls a lot of my favorite games of that era, where the spirit of approachable and accessible arcade games merged with the first console hardware that was truly on par or more powerful than what was available in arcades. When I talk about this era, I’m talking about stuff like Crazy Taxi, and Jet Set Radio, and Viewtiful Joe – the latter of which was actually produced by Mikami. That’s the energy on display here.

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