Sayonara Wild Hearts

Pure euphoria in gaming form where almost every aspect of the game serves to elevate everything else. The sense of energy is powerful and maintains an incredibly strong sense of momentum while almost being formless in nature in many places, most strongly represented through the way the game is able to change control and gameplay styles at the drop of a hat without completely throwing off the sense of flow that the game has. The synthwave aesthetic also works super well at being able to tap into more moody landscapes that the player gets thrown at the player in rapid succession while also providing ample opportunities at crafting some moments of pure beauty that work as climactic explosions after long stretches of buildup. It doesn't all work, since I do find the achievements to be a bit tacky with how they're handled, and also find that the couple of more awkward sections you'll encounter really stand out considering how fantastically the rest of it strings together, but in the end the issues pile up to something so minor that they're barely something to even care about, at least to me. And on the flipside, I just think this is an incredible experience with some of the most glorious highs in a game I've played recently to the point where a couple of moments really hit hard emotionally.

The worse of the two musical on-rails games I played this month (the other being Rez), largely because it's just too simple. The concept is simple, the gameplay is simple, the music is simple. Whereas Rez tried to create an abstract sensory experience based around complex music that pulled from a variety of aesthetic origins, connecting it thematically to the aural and the visual, Sayonara builds its levels around synthwave - a generally limited genre - with an aesthetic that's functionally no different from Hotline Miami crossed with Persona 5. The thing with Rez is that the late-'90s techno and trance music it's drawing from is prickly - you can dance to it, but it can also feel cold, isolating, antagonistic. That lends itself to gameplay that makes you a little panicked, where you get into the rhythm of danger. The pop music of Sayonara is friendly and welcoming, so there's no room for any stakes - deaths are met by looping you right back into the action, as they should. But the flip side Sayonara should be - and maybe is - aiming for are the euphoric, romantic highs, which the music isn't exciting or profound enough to capture. And while the 'plot' of Rez is mostly gibberish, it at least aims at lofty thoughts, whereas Sayonara's is some indie mishmash of tarot cards and broken hearts. Maybe it's more endearing if you're already interested in the tarot, but there's definitely nothing connecting this to anything relating to 'heart.'

It's fine, don't get me wrong. You can blast through the levels pretty quickly, so it never overstays its welcome. And if you want to trying to get high scores in each level - basically by collecting hearts and timing QTEs - does require some skill and knowledge of the levels, which are short enough that replaying them a bunch of times isn't a problem. There's variety in what your character actually does, with mechanics that change from level to level: driving a motorcycle or a skateboard, flying through hyperspace, driving a sportscar, doing some funky fake-VR stuff, some legitimate rail shooter sections. (The latter two seem to be a direct reference to Rez.) But this is a game that feels like it's meant to be carried by its aesthetics, for the big pop chorus moments to play out as some kind of ecstatic wonder both visually and aurally, and they just... Don't. The music's not good enough, the visuals aren't unique enough. Take it for what it is and nothing more.

For a music game, it doesn't really empower you to build multipliers or look for different ways of achieving high scores for its levels. It simply expects you to bend to its will and play each level exactly as it wants in order for you to achieve a high rank. The controls are slippery and imprecise in a way that feels neither challenging nor satisfying. The music is cute, but a very bland take on Chvrches-like synthpop that feels sort of off brand, not unlike royalty-free versions of popular songs. And its general "exploration" of heartbreak, if you want to call it that, is really surface-level feel-good pablum that doesn't really connect itself to the ludonarrative in the way, say, something like Braid does. I love rhythm games, so I was super looking forward to this, but it felt painfully shallow if mildly enjoyable on an aesthetic level.