Yes. You probably will miss out on branching paths if any exist, but you will miss out on those in a regular playthrough anyway.
You also probably should've asked this question instead of the one in the title of the thread—they're two fundamentally different questions.
I know narrative-driven games are dominant nowadays, but not every game is narrative-driven.
Ima be honest: Colbert can do better than this show.
Strangers with Candy was peak absurd humor and The Colbert Report was one of the best political satire shows at the time.
I'd love to see him do something new.
Nice, now CEOs get to do mass lay offs on-the-go 😂
When will the capitalism cult die… has got to be more casualties than the two world wars combined at this point.
Based on my experience so far, I totally agree with you. I'm simultaneously impressed by the ideas and confused by the package they came in.
It's just that the fluff and errors are glaringly obvious… hard to fathom how the same mind who came up with these captivating ideas wrote, or at best OK'd, the fluff and errors.
I'd say I expected poor and somewhat pretentious writing and got that, but I'm impressed enough by the ideas that I haven't started skipping cutscenes yet, so I assume, overall, it's net positive… not by much, but it is.
Warning if you haven't played the game: there's a sidestory spoiler in this comment.
Unbelievable, but fucking Death Stranding 😂 The story has some cool concepts and moments—e.g. Mama's story—but it's too obtuse, has too much filler, and many senseless moments. Like, the Junk Dealer and his girl living literal meters away from each other and for some reason trying and failing to find each other or establish contact for years, or an entire MULE camp peacefully coexisting next to a Timefall farm… best way I can describe the world and story so far is it's an inconsistent mess.
Funniest moment though has got to be The Craftsman going "Fuck you, not joining your UCA!" only to go back on that in the literal next sentence with "But maybe if you do X, we can talk!" 😂
Apart from the odd climbing bugs and the silly, barebones combat, the game is nice though. Rebuilding the world and cooperating with other players feels really nice. And barely making it through BT encounters on very hard is exhilarating.
Fucking bikes are awesome to ride too… I love how goofy they're meant to be.
I don't see myself coming back after I 100% it though… I'm halfway through and I don't see any value in replaying the game so far. It's not exactly a skill-based game, and after roads and ziplines, I'm hardly motivated to go back to walking, but I don't think it's meant to be replayable, and I'll probably get like ~70 or more hours out of it in total and I bought it for $7, so I suppose that's OK.
Oh, I forgot to mention "I am Fragile… but not that fragile" Kojima sit down, please 😂
It is tricky, I agree.
Another point I think I need to try and comment on:
Ultimately yeah, I'm saying the game isn't for me. But I often hear the game in discussions of what the industry is missing in terms of game design, and I don't think I agree that it's worth that level of praise.
I think when people praise Hi-Fi Rush, they basically mean: "Hurray, a mid-budget, FINISHED action romp from a big publisher with a cool gimmick and no intention to drown me in microtransactions!" which is why you see the PS2/PS3/Xbox 360 catalog comparisons.
I don't think anyone actually means Hi-Fi Rush is the Jesus Christ of gaming—and if they do, I completely disagree.
We could use similar games though—specifically in the action game genre. We get very few of those nowadays.
He also directed two action GOATs: God Hand and Vanquish.
He did not direct Hi-Fi Rush though—that was John Johanas.
I think it's up to the game designers to motivate certain playstyles. If there was a reason beyond the personal self imposed challenge to attain S rank in every fight, that would be a motivation, but there isn't a style rank cutoff for completion.
I'm gonna go ahead and agree with you on this: Hi-Fi Rush was released in 2023—22 years after the first Devil May Cry game and we're still using some variation of the same goddamn style meter with little to no improvement. This needs to be addressed by action game designers at some point.
And tying ranks to points to unlock moves faster is not a strong motive, IMO, because you typically end up unlocking everything in your first playthrough anyway. What about "style to regain health" or something? Gungrave has a similar mechanic with demolition shots.
On the other hand, I still think part of it is on the player. I think ignoring the style meter while playing an action game is akin to having no desire to Catch'em All™ while playing a Pokémon game. Like, you don't have to complete the Pokédex, but this is kind of understood to be the ultimate goal and is in itself the reward, or at the very least, it's probably on your mind while playing through the game.
The game is not as broken as you're making it sound on higher difficulties—specifically S-Ranking Rhythm Master—and "adept gamers" will be aiming for high ranks on higher difficulties.
Apart from that combat could be broken by spamming companion abilities once you unlocked them all, it didn't feel like there was any reason to use different combos than 2 or 3 that worked fine.
That right here is sus, TBH. Let me ask you:
If you did not, then this is pretty much the good ol' DMCV dilemma: game is so uninspired if you are not internally motivated—no bun intended—to style on your enemies, but styling comes out a bit more naturally on higher difficulties… except the typical non-action game fan will play a game once on normal difficulty and move on, so the real depth of the combat system is superfluous to almost everyone who played it.
Not that Hi-Fi Rush's combat is as deep or wide as DMCV, but it's more or less the same underlying concept here in terms of player experience.
In general, this type of action game requires some kind of intrinsic motivation—we could argue this is a design flaw, and I'd be inclined to agree to an extent; however, you're approaching this with way too much cynicism for no apparent reason, I think.
It just sounds like this game isn't for you, TBH, which's fine, it just doesn't make it a bad game. Also complaining about how limited the game is only to announce one sentence later you've been mashing the same two or three combos throughout the entire game kind of undercuts your criticism.
And let me be clear: your experience with the game is valid; I just think the logic behind your criticisms doesn't totally hold up.
It's like Dumb and Dumber trying to delete a gender.
Politics is cyclical—their hayday will pass and future generations will laugh at how pitiful this is.
Unless the world ends first, that is. And if it does, no one won—especially not Dumb and Dumber.
I upvoted for the Jon Benjamin mention. Jon Benjamin Has a Van is so fucking funny.
And I love Bob's Burgers, but Home Movies was magic and I consider it his peak VA work.