Hi-Fi Rush is a beautifully constructed game that Xbox desperately needed. Released on Jan. 25 of this year, Hi-Fi Rush adds on to the genre of Hack & Slash by incorporating in another element: music. The game is built around the music, literally. Everything is synced up with the soundtrack, from the environment to the combat itself.

The story for this is because main character, Chai (yes like the tea), got accepted to volunteer on the Vandalay Island campus to be a part of “Project Armstrong.” Things don’t go as planned, however, and Chai ends up being merged with his MP3 player and now has plenty of what the major character calls, “Magical Music Robot Powers.” This element brings in refreshing gameplay that’s vastly different from others, having to time your attacks and parries to the beat of the music or the game punishes you for it.

The music itself comes from an amazing primarily rock soundtrack that includes both copyright and non-copyrighted music from artists like Nine Inch Tails, The Prodigy, and the game soundtrack composer Masatoshi Yanagi. Even those who aren’t into the rock genre will be able to vibe with the music of the game, because it’s just that good.

The combat mimics that of the gameplay of Devils May Cry with its D-S combat ranking system and the music adapting as you go up each of the ranks. There’s another mechanic that goes in with the music called “Just Timing” where when you time your attacks to the beat of the song in the background then you’ll deal more damage and you rank will increase faster than by using button mashing, which can produce some really unforgiving results if you try that out.

Before dropping this absolute banger of a game, Tango Gameworks produced Ghostwire: Tokyo and before that the Evil Within series and these games are absolute opposites so it really shows off how large of a range of genres Tango can adapt to quickly.

Hi-Fi Rush is an exceptional game and it deserves all the praise it has been getting online lately, this truly marks the start of the relationship between Xbox and Bethesda.