The neon-soaked, abstract, haunting visuals overwhelm, amaze, make every little action feel important and significant, and keep the energy and verve of the music flowing. It’s the best video game soundtrack I can think of.
The driving synth-pop is legitimately incredible - I don’t enjoy most soundtracks in contexts outside their original medium, but I will be putting this soundtrack in my music rotation. So much of what makes Sayonara Wild Hearts successful, though, lies in its music and visuals.
A basic, underwhelming rhythm-ish game turns into an unforgettable sensory experience. Everything in Sayonara Wild Hearts evolves as you jump in different vehicles with unique handling and play styles: one moment, you’ll be drifting, then you’ve got a gun and you’re playing a shoot-’em-up, then you’re in a Undertale -esque 2D battle, then you’re playing something that resembles Rez or Osu!, or you’re doing them all at once… The changes that this game undergoes in its short runtime are nothing short of breathtaking. Now, go ahead and throw that last sentence away, because it only applies to the first handful of levels. Being a long-standing Audiosurf veteran, I’ll admit that I wasn’t particularly taken with the low-sensitivity free movement at first, but it started to make a whole lot more sense once I fixed the settings (seriously, crank the sensitivity up for your own good!).You’ll be swiping to move your character into different lanes to collect little hearts, and low sensitivity combined with the game’s floaty, dreamy kind of movement doesn’t help with that. John covered the game in the last round of his Speed Dating at the Apple Arcade series last month, calling it “a sleek fusion of the endless runner and rhythm genres – though it isn’t particularly good at either.” Kicking things off with one of those little indie games, I just finished playing Sayonara Wild Hearts, a game from last year that has been on my radar for a little while, and I was absolutely blown away. Little indie game from last year? Sure! Certified Classic Game™? Why not?! Nothing is off limits in this series, except for in-depth critique. Welcome to A Little Late, a new regular column where we have an informal discussion about something we’ve been playing or liking that… probably isn’t very timely or relevant.
0 kommentar(er)
