Now that we’ve had a week to play Hi-Fi Rush and see the incredible viral reaction to it, we had a deep and extended conversation about Tango Gameworks’ surprise rhythm-action release. We discuss why it was exactly what Xbox was needed, whether we might get a sequel, and more. Plus: the second half of the podcast is dedicated to an equally deep and heartfelt conversation about the state of 343 Industries and the Halo IP.
Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out our interview with Todd Howard, who answered all of our Starfield questions after the big reveal at the Xbox Showcase:
For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
Hi-Fi Rush, a game built around the concept of pure joy, was notable last week for two things. One, it’s really, really good! And two, it achieved that rarest of video game feats: a successful surprise release.
By surprise I mean absolute surprise. One minute nobody knew the game even existed, the next it was available to download and play on Xbox and PC. In this, The Year Of Our Lord 2023, how often does that happen…to anything? Anywhere? Never, that’s how often!
As a result the game doesn’t feel like a breath of fresh air, it feels like gust blowing us off our feet, and while I don’t want to undersell any aspect of the game itself when talking about its success, let’s be honest here: this game feels so fresh not just because it’s an amazing game, but because it wasn’t wrung dry for 12 months by a drawn-out marketing campaign.
What I’m about to say here isn’t meant to directly disparage anyone working in video game marketing: you have jobs to do selling video games, and in the vast majority of cases that involves people doing very good work. Whether it’s putting together blockbuster trailers or just chatting with (potential) fans on social media, it’s a tough job and one that in the majority of cases I completely understand and empathise with, especially since the system within which they’re operating—selling games on shopfronts obsessed with preorders and wishlists—demands it.
But I’m not responsible for making a single advertising campaign. I, like you, am on the receiving end of thousands of them, all at once, everywhere we look. From previews on big sites to YouTube to Twitter to Discord anyone interested in video games on the internet is under siege from the second we log on to the second the log off. Here’s a thing, preorder it, learn more about this thing, preorder it.
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I’ve covered this in my Deathblood saga pieces previously, but video game marketing always has a certain predictability to it. Not in terms of specific aspects of their campaign—a AAA blockbuster obviously has a different marketing budget to a small indie release—but in the way that they can so often be guaranteed to leave us feeling exhausted.
It’s not enough that we are shown a game’s world, genre and premise. We have to be told each major character’s backstory. Shown a lore explainer for the world. We’re told how many lines of dialogue are in the script, how many thousands of hours it might take to finish, who every voice actor is. We’re conditioned, and in many cases expected, to by the time of release be fans of a game that we haven’t even played yet. Which, of course, is the whole point.
Screenshot: Hi-Fi Rush
Imagine if, instead of appearing out of nowhere, Hi-Fi Rush had been subjected to a traditional Bethesda marketing campaign. Picture seeing it revealed at The Game Awards back in December 2021, its bright light dimmed by the weight of the bigger, more expensive games it was revealed alongside. Imagine being subjected to Chai’s worst lines as part of a character reveal trailer on YouTube, instead of warming to his Fry-From-Futurama-esque charms over the course of the game’s opening hours. What if instead of the game being able to take so much delight in revealing its cast and world on its own terms we’d had that spoiled for us already by a Meet Project Armstrong documentary?
It would have sucked! The game itself would still have been great, of course, but so much of the joy of discovery that has accompanied its release, a modern day schoolyard buzz, would have been lost. To be clear, like I’ve said already, I don’t say any of this to shame any particular worker, studio or agency involved in marketing any other video game. The trees aren’t the problem here. It’s the forest.
Which is what makes Hi-Fi Rush so special. It’s one of the only games that could get away with this. Note I haven’t called for an end to video game marketing here, or said more games should try this, because the former would be pointless (it’s a big forest!) and the latter would be reckless advice. As much as Hi-Fi Rush feels like a remastered GameCube game, and unlike anything else out there, it was developed by a noted AAA studio and published by Bethesda, then released on Xbox Game Pass so people could try it for “free”. It was blessed to be perhaps the only possible combination of style, scope and pedigree that could afford to even try this, let alone hope to get away with it.
So I don’t want to say Hi-Fi Rush should be an example. I just want to say we should all treasure this game for what it is, and how it came to us, because in both cases the circumstances are as perfect as we could ever have hoped them to be, and we may never see them align like this again. Surprises are nice, but few are as nice as a good video game surprise.
Publisher Bethesda Softworks [742 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/companies/zenimax-media/bethesda-softworks”>Bethesda Softworks and developer Tango Gameworks [68 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/companies/zenimax-media/tango-gameworks”>Tango Gameworks have announced rhythm Action [867 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/genres/action”>action game Hi-Fi RUSH [1 article]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/games/hi-fi-rush”>Hi-Fi RUSH for Xbox Series [3,152 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/platforms/xbox/xbox-series”>Xbox Series and PC [16,706 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/platforms/pc”>PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store). It is available now for $29.99, as well as via Xbox [21,741 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/platforms/xbox”>Xbox Game Pass.
Get the details below.
About
Hi-Fi RUSH is a single-player rhythm action game from Tango Gameworks, the award-winning studio behind Ghostwire: Tokyo [16 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/games/ghostwire-tokyo”>Ghostwire: Tokyo and The Evil Within. In Hi-Fi RUSH, the entire world moves to the beat. Everything from the trees swaying in the environment to each hit landed during combat auto-syncs to the game’s music with stellar animations.
The player takes on the role of Chai, a free-spirited slacker with rockstar ambitions. During a technological procedure to receive a robotic arm, he finds an unexpected “bonus” when his music player is fused within his power unit. If that wasn’t enough, the company behind the experiment labels him a “defect,” making him a target for deactivation. With a squad of corporate overlords and an army of robots after him, Chai must defend himself through rhythmic combat and the help of a motley crew of allies to take down the company’s ruthless business leaders and escape.
Key Features
Gameplay That’s Always in Sync – Every element in the world of Hi-Fi RUSH is synced to the game’s soundtrack. Combat sequences perfectly align to the rhythm of the music, allowing for gameplay that is not only exhilarating but also extremely satisfying. Hi-Fi RUSH is a rhythm action game, with an emphasis on action. A player’s moves aren’t dictated by the music like in a traditional Rhythm [65 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/genres/rhythm”>rhythm game — players have the freedom of a full action game, but inputting actions with the beat amplifies a player’s attacks along with the music.
Packed With Persona [12 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/series/persona”>Personality – Hi-Fi RUSH features a cast of outrageous characters, each with their own unique personalities and skills to help Chai take down the bad guys and turn up the volume on the game’s playful tone. Hi-Fi RUSH is unlike anything Tango Gameworks has created before and offers a lighthearted and humorous gameplay experience for everyone to enjoy.
Addictive Music – Hi-Fi RUSH showcases an energetic and catchy soundtrack of licensed songs, ranging from well-known rockers to some inspired cuts that will keep players engaged and headbanging as they play. Both the licensed and original music in Hi-Fi RUSH offer more than just background music with each track matching the pace of that level’s characters, environment, platforming, and combat.
Dynamic Visuals – From lovingly animated gags to crisp comic book effects, the visuals in Hi-Fi RUSH are vibrant and fun. Hi-Fi RUSH‘s visual style not only appeals to a variety of audiences—it’s also easy on players’ hardware and doesn’t require an expensive graphics card to look alive and stunning on Xbox or PC.
Streamer Mode – For those looking to livestream Hi-Fi RUSH or post gameplay online, Hi-Fi RUSH offers a Streamer Mode which replaces the game’s licensed tracks with original songs. This mode should enable streamers and content creators to stream and post their gameplay with a low risk of claims, takedowns and muting. This option is toggled in Gameplay Settings. Please note—even if players take these actions, because of forces outside of our control, there is no guarantee that external parties or software won’t interfere with posted content. However, using Streamer Mode is intended to reduce the chances of that happening.
Licensed Tracks (not featured in Streamer Mode)
Nine Inch Nails – “1,000,000”
Nine Inch Nails – “Perfect Drug”
The Black Keys – “Lonely Boy”
Prodigy – “Invaders Must Die”
The Joy Formidable – “Whirring”
Number Girl – “Inazawa Chainsaw”/li>
Wolfgang Gartner – “Wolfgang’s 5th Symphony”
Zwan – “Honestly”
Deluxe Edition
Included in the Hi-Fi RUSH Deluxe Edition:
Hi-Fi RUSH (base game)
Two Chai outfits*
Seven bonus Chai t-shirts
808-Themed Guitar Skin
808 Alternate Skin
Gears Starter Pack with 20,000 Gears for unlocking combat skills and other upgrades. (Note: Gears are obtained through combat and exploration in-game and not available as a purchasable currency.)
*Each of the Chai Outfits includes a hairstyle, scarf, jacket, trousers and shoes which can be mixed and matched with the T-shirts and guitar skins.
Note: Gears are immediately available after purchase. Players get access to the other items after beating the opening stage and can change their outfits in the Hideout.
Watch a set of trailers below. View a set of screenshots at the gallery.
MbZ becomes president at a time of tension with U.S.
He led a Middle East realignment, forging ties with Israel
UAE has also deepened ties with Russia and China
Economic development a priority driving foreign policy
DUBAI, May 14 (Reuters) – The United Arab Emirates’ de facto leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan was elected president of the Gulf Arab state by a federal supreme council on Saturday, solidifying his rule over the OPEC oil producer and key regional player. read more
He becomes president at a time when the UAE’s long-standing ties with the United States have been strained over perceived U.S. disengagement from its Gulf allies’ security concerns and as Western countries seek support from the region to help isolate Russia over the Ukraine conflict.
The council, which groups the rulers of the seven emirates of the UAE federation, elected Sheikh Mohammed, known as MbZ, a day after the death of his half-brother, President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, who was also ruler of Abu Dhabi.
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“We congratulate him and pledge allegiance to him as do our people,” said Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is also UAE vice-president and premier.
MbZ, 61, has wielded power behind the scenes for years and led a realignment of the Middle East that created a new anti-Iran axis with Israel.
The UAE, a trade and tourism hub, has also deepened ties with Russia and China at a time when Washington’s political capital with Abu Dhabi and Riyadh has been eroded by differences over the Yemen war, Iran and U.S. conditions on arms sales.
“Mohammed bin Zayed has set not only the future course for the UAE but for much of the Gulf in his approach to state building and power projection,” said Kristin Diwan, senior resident scholar at Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
“The future direction under him is set and is mirrored in other Gulf leaders adopting state-led and globally-oriented economic diversification.”
‘EXTRAORDINARY FOUNDATION’
The Biden administration has moved to mend ties with oil heavyweights Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Both have refused to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and rebuffed Western calls to pump more oil to help tame crude prices. read more
President Joe Biden said in a statement on Saturday that he looked forward to working with Sheikh Mohammed “to build from this extraordinary foundation to further strengthen the bonds between our countries and peoples.”
Vice President Kamala Harris will head a U.S. delegation to the UAE on Monday to offer condolences following Khalifa’s death and will meet with MbZ, press secretary Kirsten Allen said.
French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Israeli President Isaac Herzog are due to arrive on Sunday. read more S8N2S7032
MbZ as president would not lead the UAE to break with the United States or other Western partners though he will diversify the country’s international partners, Emirati political scientist Abulkhaleq Abdulla told Reuters.
MbZ has shifted away from a hawkish foreign policy and military adventurism, that saw the UAE wade into conflicts from Yemen to Libya, to focus on economic priorities. This has seen the UAE engage with foes Iran and Turkey after years of animosity, as well as Syria’s president.
“MbZ will need to take further steps to cement the UAE’s position as the region’s leading financial, logistics, and trading hub,” James Swanston of Capital Economics said in a note, referring to a push by Gulf states to diversify economies amid a global energy transition away from hydrocarbons.
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Reporting by Enas Alashray, Lisa Barrington, Saeed Azhar, Alexander Cornwell, Steve Holland and Ari Rabinovitch; Writing by Ghaida Ghantous; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Christina Fincher
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Spotify yesterday announced a ‘HiFi’ upgrade tier for its streaming service that provides lossless audio, promising music free of compression artefacts. Although it won’t be available until later this year, Spotify HiFi promises “CD-quality” audio and aims to steer audiophiles away from other lossless streaming competition like Tidal and Deezer.
But even if you consider yourself an audiophile, you probably don’t need to pay extra for lossless music.
It’s true that most music streaming services compress audio in one way or another in order to minimize data usage, almost always leading to some lost information. There are ways of compressing music losslessly, but they generally can’t reduce file size as much as a decent lossy compression.
It’s unsurprising, then, that most services turn to lossy compression. After all, the vast majority of listeners do not have the hearing ability to tell the difference between lossless audio and music that is compressed at a high enough quality.
Spotify Premium (the existing, $9.99 ad-free tier) already streams at a maximum of 320 kbps (256 kbps on the web) if you’ve enabled this in the app’s settings. Although at low bitrates the differences between lossy and lossless audio can be quite obvious, I’m willing to bet most people can’t tell apart a lossless file from a 256 kbps MP3 one — let alone a file compressed with the more modern Ogg codec that Spotify uses.
Our hearing is subject to a whole lot of placebo. Simply believing that a certain upgrade or key specification will make your speakers or headphones sound better is often more likely to cause to an ‘improvement’ than any actual change. Still, many golden-eared audiophiles will swear they can hear a difference without evidence.
So before you get your wallet out for the promise of higher quality audio, why don’t you actually put your hearing to the test?
Test your hearing
There are plenty of blind tests out there to help you compare lossless audio with ‘lossy’ audio formats, but I like the Digital Feed ABX test, initially created to test whether listeners could tell the difference between Tidal’s lossless audio and lossy compressed music.
The link above compares Spotify’s 320 kbps streaming against a lossless file, so it should be equivalent to comparing Spotify’s Premium and HiFi tiers. In this test, the goal is to match one of two clips (A or B) to a reference clip (X). They’re randomized, and you don’t know which clips are lossless or not; you just have to pick whether A or B is identical to X.
There are five tracks, for each of which you’ll have to complete 5, 10, or 20 trials, depending on how much time you have to kill. The more trials you do, the more statistically significant your results are. I’d recommend starting with 5 repetitions, as the test can get quite time consuming as you switch between tracks obsessing over tiny differences.
If you are like most audio enthusiasts — let alone most regular people — you probably won’t be able to hear the difference. I just took the test with some $400 headphones and failed.
But I’ve also passed the test before. Problem is, doing so involves a kind of extreme scrutiny that virtually never applies to normal listening or even “critical” listening.
In my case, passing this comparison means making my home as quiet as possible, using the best gear I have, and repeating a two or three-second portion over and over again in hopes of hearing the tiniest bit of extra detail or a subtle change at a specific moment. Moreover, I’ve done this type in multiple iterations hundreds of times and know what to look for.
Perhaps even more importantly, being able to identify which tracks match doesn’t mean you can tell which track was more realistic — i.e., which track was actually the lossless one.
I’m reminded of a survey performed by audio blogger Archimago several years ago, in which 151 participants were asked choose between two sets of samples — one lossy set, and one lossless. 30% thought the lossless tracks sounded better. 18% said there was no audible difference. A whopping 52% actually preferred the lossy track over the lossless one (there are a few possible explanations for this beyond the scope of the article).
Mind you, it’s fair to assume these participants were mostly audio enthusiasnts too; 60% of them reported using audio systems costing $1,000 or more. And this is just one of numerous examples around the web.
So what’s the point of lossless?
The fact most people can’t tell the difference between lossless and high-bitrate lossy audio doesn’t mean lossless streaming is completely pointless. Some reasons you might want to try it include:
Peace of mind, so you don’t get the itch of knowing there’s something better out there.
If the placebo effect makes you think your music sounds better, then in a way it kind of does sound better?
You want the best possible rendition of the music for some sense of musical ‘purity.’
You’re a statistical anomaly with platinum hearing abilities.
There’s a very hypothetical argument that we need extended listening in order to truly hear small differences in sound quality.
Spotify could include other perks with the HiFi tier.
You’re holding out hope one day audio gear will be good enough to make the difference more obvious.
There’s also the matter of price: Spotify hasn’t announced pricing for the HiFi tier yet, but you can bet it’ll be more expensive than regular-old Premium. Just make sure the added monthly investment — and it definitely adds up over the years — is worth it before you shell out your hard earned-money.
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