Rollerskates, graffiti and a god-tier soundtrack: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

... is what we'd recommend you do with this game. 

 Heya, Michael here.

 

So, a little while back, we found that the original Jet Set Radio was on Steam.

 

This was quite the thing for us to learn you see, because JSR is one of those games we've often heard about, but had never had a chance to actually play.

 

A shame, because it's got a much vaunted soundtrack, and unsurprisingly for a musician, we're are a bit of a connoisseur when it comes to games with good soundtracks!

 

But yeah, we learned it had been on Steam for years, and was actually gonna get taken off the store, soon (it has been, by now).

 

So needless to say, we bought it while we could, and jumped right into it, having an absolute.....

 

.....ly awful time with the gameplay.

 

Yeah, sorry if you're a big fan of JSR, but you've gotta face it, man, it's the nostalgia doing it for ya. Because hopping into it as a fresh player in modern times? Maaaan, it feels clunky as all heck to play.

 

The soundtrack's awesome, of course, and full of bangers by Hideki Naganuma ('Sneakman' and 'Humming The Bassline' are our favorites) but yeah, the music had to carry the game, and we didn't really wanna keep forcing ourselves through the controls.

Better to just listen to the soundtrack on SoundCloud. 🤷

 

However! In looking up JSR, and wether we're missing some kind of trick, we actually stumbled across another super-similar but more recent game, which is today's topic. So, without further preamble:

 

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk 

It's a 2023 game released by Team Reptile, and it looks like this:

 

Casually checking our Flip-Phone upside down. Awyep.

So yeah, BRC. It's not exactly shy about it's 'being inspired' by JSR.

 

In fact, we'd argue that in terms of look and vibes it tried really quite hard to emulate it. But not in gameplay, which is smooth and fun.

 

So in other words, they took the good stuff, and threw the bad stuff right into the bin.

 

 So what sort of a game are we looking at, then?

Well, much like JSR, you skate, trick and grind your way through levels, putting cool graffiti designs on the walls to tag the territory of your crew. That being the Bomb Rush Crew.

 As you throw up tags, you earn rep, which then opens obstacles and opens new parts of the levels. If you haven't played JSR, then Tony Hawk's Pro Skater isn't -too- far off the mark, either, though of course, BRC's a lot more stylized and abstract.

There's also a collect-a-thon aspect to it, with alternate character outfits, graffiti designs, music and new playable characters hidden in all kinds of hard-to-reach places.

 

And since the basic moment-to-moment gameplay is such a vibe, it's pretty fun to just get around, finding your way into those places.

Speaking of getting around, there's a few options:

 

It's got roller skates. It's also got skateboards and BMX bikes, though if you're here for the JSR vibes, you're probably gonna stick with the 'skates. And you'd be correct. 😜

All hands on deck! Prepare for boarding action! .... i'll see myself out.

Though cleverly, the devs have put a couple of places into the game you can only reach with a skateboard or BMX, respectively. So it does make you mix it up a bit, from time to time.

 

Speaking of mixes, let's talk about the soundtrack.

 

We're listening to it right now, as we write this. And often while we're cooking. Or out for a walk. It's playing in our very minds when we're at work, because this soundtrack is mana from the heavens!

Hideki Naganuma is here for this one, too, but there's also a bunch of other, seriously cool artists included, all of which make music that's way cooler than ours and would make us jealous, if we weren't so busy vibin' with the funk~

So what kinda music is it, anyways?

Well, it's..... got a lot of funky, electronic-y hippity-hop stuff going on. A lot of samples, synths, some scratchin', the occasional bit of slap bass, those sorts of things. Really gets you doing a chair-dance when you're playing.

 

 

This game's got an awful lot of grinding in it. The stylish kind.

 

But enough about the music, what's it feel like to play?

 

Well, there's good news, largely. It feels properly nice and smooth. It's not very complicated, and for a game that's got so much energy and momentum, it's actually pretty chill to play.

 

 A bit too chill, perhaps. That's our one gripe with the game, really. There's never really much of a challenge. There's crew battles (score attacks) which you're pretty much guaranteed to crush with ease, and there's some boss fights that -might- keep you occupied for a bit, but only until you figure out what to do.

 

So the game's pretty easy. Kinda goes with the vibe, i suppose, but if there's ever a BRC 2, we'd love to see a bit more of a challenge.

Or alternatively, online leaderboards, score challenges, that sort of thing. Would round it all off nicely.

In the fast paced tagging minigame, the order you connect the dots in determines the design of the graffiti, with more options unlocking as you find them.

Oh, there's also the story. Not gonna spoil anything here, but suffice it to say that while the story's fairly simple, it's got some quirky characters to keep it entertaining.

So, with all that said, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is pretty darn cool.

We haven't quite finished it, yet, but we're well on our way there. We don't usually 100% games, and we're not necessarily gunning for it here, but it's pretty feasible that we'll keep coming back to this game even after we beat the story.

So while we're not exactly a game reviewer, we would heartily recommend you take a look at it. It's one of those games you really can't go wrong with. It'll run on any old potato hardware, too!

 

We'll leave you with our favorite characters in the game.