Review: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
Cal, The Calcium Cowboy
For Christmas of the year 2002 I received from my parents an Original Xbox. On that day I had access to three games: Halo Combat Evolved as well as a bundled copy of Sega GT 2002 and Jet Set Radio Future. Being 6 Years old I was strictly forbidden from playing the Halo Campaign and grinding through JSRF. My parents didn’t like the idea of me killing Aliens, Zombies or Marines. I guess they also had taken issue with Vandalism and “The Concept, The Concept of Love.” After a while of sneaking into the living room at night to play both and a hell of a lot of convincing they finally allowed it. JSRF was a large portion of my summer that following year and I probably beat the game a half dozen times.
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a spiritual successor to JSRF in many ways. It keep the charming mid 2000s art style and vibe as well as keeps to the Funky Fresh Beats musical structure we got from its forefather. While this game takes its fluidity of movement and art style up a notch, it 100% keeps the vibe of the old Sega games in mind. While I love the game from start to finish, and I plan to 100% the game in the coming weeks there are some decisions that were strange to me and some things I would change.
Story (Minor Spoilers):
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is the story of a group of street punks that are in a territorial war with other groups of street punks as well as the local police force of New Amsterdam. You play as Feux a mysterious “Writer” who breaks out of prison hold to return to his goals of becoming “All City”. “All City” is the goal of all the factions in New Amsterdam and requires controlling the 5 Boroughs in the city. While attempting to escape the head of a rival faction DJ Cyber cuts Faux’s head off and it has to be replaced by a piece of technology referred to as a Cyberhead. With Feux’s new cybernetic parts attached, he and the rest of the Bomb Rush Crew head out to grind, graffiti, and dance their way to beating other crews for their territory.
Gameplay:
From start to finish the movement and mechanics are awesome and really bring me back to the early 2000s in the best way possible. The skating, grinding, and aerial movement all feel extremely solid as you make your way through New Amsterdam. The only thing that confuses me in this department is the addition of skateboarding and biking to the skating formula. While interesting cosmetically, the addition of these forms of movement don’t really add much to the game. All three forms of movement behave virtually identically to one another, at least I couldn’t really notice any difference. The general formula of the game stays consistent throughout: tag enough marked locations to build up rep to reveal the rival crew members, challenge them to various battles of points, combos or other objectives and then duke it out in a full team points battle. After all that is done you will generally fight the police force. Then you will get access to the next area.
Setting:
New Amsterdam provides an interesting and diverse location for this game to take place. You are able to explore a city, an oil rig, a city with a train station, the inside of your mind, a city that has Egyptian statues all over it, the local mall. The locations are decently sized and they have enough variation to keep the player entertained, and that’s really all I could ask for. If I have one concern it would be that there is a lot of replication. Much of the charm that came from JSRF was from the weirdness of each of the maps. Most maps have straight rails and flat walls to tag. We needed a New Amsterdam version of Sky Dinosaurian Square.
Music:
When I think back to JSRF the first thing that hits me is the music. Funky Dealer, Sweet Soul Brother, Aisle 10, I Love Love You. and many more BOPS. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk keeps the funk alive and even enlists the musical talents of the Jet Set Radio OG Composer and the king of funky fresh beats Hideki Naganuma who composed a song for the game: JACK DA FUNK. One of my personal favorites is I Wanna Kno by 2 Mello which has become part of my everyday playlist. While I don’t think that the OST for Bomb Rush Cyberfunk overall is as impressive or memorable as Jet Set Radio Future’s, there is some amazing music available to skate to and the composers should be proud of what they were able to accomplish.
Gripes:
Developer Team Reptile had an opportunity to include some fun multiplayer games that its spiritual predecessor introduced long ago. Death Ball, Graffiti battles, and Racing all could have been wrapped up in a multiplayer matchmaking package and changed JUST ENOUGH to avoid SEGA and their giant hammer of doom. Doing so would have put a bow on top of this gift of a game. Unfortunately the game is single player only but, if they are able to add a multiplayer aspect later on with some options for competition, I think most people would be open to it.
Rating:
Overall Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a great game, providing the type of fantastic nostalgia that makes me want to go back for a second playthrough. Hopefully Team Reptile is able to either work on a more fleshed out sequel or add more features to this current game because, depending on what they add or what they improve on, I will be back to buy DLC.
I give the game 4 massive dragon grinding rails / 5
No review copy was given for this review
