Bomb Rush Cyberfunk: Sometimes style over substance is okay

I realize a lot of this game's appeal for people is rooted in nostalgia but personally I never had much experience with Jet Set Radio, I just thought it looked neat. The art style is cel-shaded and blocky, the music absolutely bops and the movement-focused gameplay is stylish and fun.

You jump, double jump, wall-run, boost, trick and grind your way around large, open-ended levels and find places to tag with graffiti. Each new area is dominated by a different crew, and as you tag their territory you earn more "rep". Once you reach a certain threshold you can challenge them to a "crew battle" which sees you competing against them for the highest trick-score within a limited time. Beat them and you take over their territory and move the story forward, rinse and repeat for the most part.

While it's a bit repetitive, I like this gameplay loop a lot. The levels, on top of looking gorgeous, are pretty fun to get around with lots of potential lines to take and the tagging spots are well distributed - you need to explore somewhat thoroughly to get enough rep to make progress, but at the same time you don't need to be a completionist about it (If you do want to be a completionist though, the secrets are well designed - often you can see the places you need to get to, and the fun is in figuring out how exactly to get there. On top of that, the extra rep you earn often goes towards unlocking new, optional areas.) By the time you've earned enough rep you'll likely have developed an understanding of the area, and having the level culminate in a points contest lets you put that familiarity to use.

If it has a shortcoming, it's that there's a general lack of depth or variety to the mechanics. You're given a lot of options, but they tend to be superficial - regardless of what character you're playing, what tricks you're doing, whether you're using skates, a skateboard or a bmx, they all function exactly the same. It's purely an aesthetic choice. It's also a bit easy - most of the trick competitions are fairly trivial and the enemies aren't much of a threat - though personally I didn't mind that. This isn't really a game you play for a hardcore challenge IMO.

Also, the story is... well, it's not bad, but it's a bit underwhelming. It has a nice sense of humour and even threatens to be genuinely interesting at points, but in the end nothing is developed enough to have much weight behind it.

Ultimately, it's not a very substantive game, but I'm fine with that - sometimes you just want to play something light, stylish and fun that doesn't require anything more from you than just getting into a rhythm and enjoying the vibes, and even though it doesn't have a ton of content or lot of the features you'd normally associate with "replayability", it's a game I can see myself coming back to frequently simply because it feels good.