Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (NSW) Review

Paint the town red.

 

 A game I've had my eye for well over a year now, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is an indie skateboarding game from Team Reptile. Inspired heavily by 2000's Sega Dreamcast classic Jet Set Radio and its sequel, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a love-letter to those games with it promising an almost identical experience. I've been excited to finally play the game since it's been ages since there aren't many games like Jet Set Radio. So how does Team Reptile's adventure fares?

 Taking place in the style-infused town of New Amsterdam, you play as a graffiti artist Faux, who gets his head chopped off during a prison break by the enigmatic DJ Cyber. Now, armed with a robotic head and dubbed as "Red", he must reclaim his old head with the help of his new "Bomb Rush" crew that consists of Bel and Tryce. To do that, they'll need to beat all rival crews of New Amsterdam-- including DJ Cyber's-- by challenging them to graffiti battles, while also avoiding the city's trigger-happy police force. Unlike JSR's light-sided story, the game aims for a darker tone with a focus on dark police conspiracy, tragic character backstories, and a slew of plot-twists. I grew to like the main crew of Bomb Rush more than I should and I hope to see more of their adventures in the future.

The Bomb Rush Crew are going All-City.

 Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a platformer where you explore New Amsterdam by grinding on rails, skating on walls, and spraying your graffiti to increase your "REP", that's essentially street cred for other rivals to acknowledge you. The levels are large with plenty of rooms to perform tricks and hunt for graffiti pieces, new outfits, bikes, and skateboards to unlock. You can choose from multiple characters and each have their oen methods of traversal like bikes, incline skates, and skateboards, though they all control the same. Characters are also equipped with a boostpack that speeds up your movements, allowing you to jump to higher platforms.

Dash, skate, and grind on rails to boost your rep and evade the cops.

 Combat is rather shallow with you only doing simple kicks and punches to knock enemies away. It's a wasted opportunity to not improve upon JSR's equally shallow combat as the enemy swarms here are pretty aggressive. As such, it feels clunky to control and an afterthought. Since keeping long string of combos is crucial to beating enemies, the game introduces "Manualing", a technique that saves your combo streak and keeps it going when you jump off rails and skate on ground by holding the right trigger. Bomb Rush is fairly easy to grasp its basics, but it'll take lots of practice to pull-off more advanced techniques and longer-combo strings.

 Occasionally, you'll be transported to dream-like zones, which are weird, trippy stages that have you grinding on rails to uncover the secrets behind Red's mind and find a way out. Other levels include large-scale mall, neon-soaked downtown streets, an island that's shaped like a pyramid, the central area that acts as a hub connecting you to all of the areas. Also, there's a fast-travel system in the form of a taxi, though you'll have to locate its sign in each level before you can use it. Bomb Rush took around 5-6 hours to beat with me exploring around for secrets. There isn't much in the way in the form of post-game content aside from challenges, which makes the $40 price a tad steep.

Bomb Rush is easy to pick up, but tough to master.

 The most striking aspect of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk are its Jet Set Radio-inspired visuals. From the colorful graffiti designs, low-ploygon cel-shaded graphics, slick animations, down to the flat-looking character faces-- it can easily pass for a third game in the series. The frame-rate was good on Switch, with the option of choosing between 30 and 60fps, though the latter can be choppy at times. Long load times aside, the game had a tendency to crash at the end of every chapter (and during the final boss), which was disappointing. The soundtrack was stellar, blending hip-hop, pop, and electronic tracks for an infectious experience. I liked many of the tracks, especially the ones from Hideki Naganuma, the original composer of JSR!

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is one of the most stylish games I've played.

 Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was an awesome, fun time and a worthy successor to Jet Set Radio. The gameplay was fun to play, the story was pretty engaging, and the presentation-- despite technical shortcomings on Switch-- was spectacular. While it does little to improve upon JSR's foundations (including the janky camera system), it remains a must-play for fans of the series and those looking for a stylish-yet-fun platformer.