Funky yes, fresh no

We here at Pixel Die have been anticipating Bomb Rush Cyberfunk or something like it for the last 20 years. We’ve each had it on the last couple years’ anticipated lists, braced and ready for Team Reptile to deliver the game Sega refused to make. We’ve now both beaten it and have…thoughts.

Demetri: We waited to talk too much about this game until we both finished it, so I’ll start at the end: I don’t know if I’ve ever been sadder to call a game mid.

Kyle: I think I might have a slightly sunnier, rosier-tinted outlook on the end product but we had GOTY prospects for this title in January and we might be lucky if this hits Top 5 this year.

D: I don’t see it getting more than a mention for its soundtrack from me by EOY, not when the 2023 competition is this stiff. We all expected a JSRF spiritual sequel but it feels like what we got was a fangame where all the notable changes just served to weaken it.

K: Sadly this should’ve been a slam dunk but does ultimately come up short. But I will give the roses where they belong, starting with the setting. In a game fully wearing its inspirations on its sleeve, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk certainly nailed the vibe and feeling of a graffiti-tagged neo-tech future city.  Venues are bright and flavorful and the tried-and-true mechanics of a JSR-style game flow well with the places they’ve made.

D: It’s definitely fair to say that we got what we were promised as far as the world goes. New Amsterdam looks Jet Set as hell, with clearly separated districts providing visual variety as you take on each established rival crew. The character designs aren’t quite as varied as I’d have hoped though, with most of the cast dressed in ill-conceived streetwear and not nearly enough cool cyber-headed weirdos or costumed freaks.

K: We are definitely both in agreement that Tryce is the absolute man and the one true BMX King, but I’m pretty disappointed that none of the characters have individual stats? I hate to harken back to JSRF days where playing a specific character provided boosts in Power (HP), Technique (Speed & Cornering), and Graffiti (Points earned from a Tag), but having each character essentially just being a skin with a few grunts and phrases between them makes picking a character, as well as hunting down the optional characters, much less rewarding.

D: Tryce is the one character with a personality, which makes me even sadder that picking him doesn’t do anything. I don’t think I fully realized how much I cared about the character variety in JSRF until it was gone. Team Reptile understands the value of character choices in literally all of their other titles, so why was it missing here? You also gain nothing for swapping between skates, boards, and bikes beyond occasionally finding an interactable or collectable that requires you to be on a particular set of wheels. We both ended up just throwing everyone on a bike as soon as the game allowed because it’s the best form of transportation, but I would have liked to actually make an impactful decision at any of the select screens.

K: So because of this BRC has to work even harder to make what it has work well, and there’s two things that really stood out to me as big positives: the trick gameplay and the soundtrack. I know we’re both absolutely on for the OST, let’s start there.

D: Bangers across the board. Not as many on-repeat earworms or memorable samples as JSRF, but that’s had the benefit of two decades to crawl into my subconscious to the point where I hear Funky Dealer every time anyone talks about betting. The 2 Mello and Hideki Naganuma tracks are standouts because both of them are juggernauts. You Can Say Hi and Operator are still in my head. To possibly its greatest credit, the soundtrack has the decency to never jumpscare you with anything as awful as Birthday Cake (:D).

K: Man, Trinitron and Funk Express will get regular rotation in my work playlist. The soundtrack shines brightly across Bomb Rush’s polished movement. You know it, you’ve played it, it feels exactly the same, which for me was exactly what I was looking for. The controls were snappy and responsive and I had very little issues with holding combos and gathering boost to avoid one of Bomb Rush’s big, glaring issues (in my eyes): the Police. My God they are ruthless. And I understand yes we are criminals and are doing things that I guess are gonna get us shot, but the constant presence of a police force that seemingly has nothing better to do than throw the force at you constantly slows the game down.

D: I’m pretty sure you’re intended to avoid fights as much as possible because the combat is straight up awful. Mash the trick buttons to do one of three functionally identical kicks and repeat until the cop falls over. If it’s a big robo-thing simply jump up to its windshield and spray it, causing it to instantly be sent to the scrap yard. Repeat until all cops are gone or there’s finally so many that you duck into a portapotty and change clothes to empty your GTA heat meter. That’s the entirety of the system in depth and in breadth.

K: And the clothes-changing-to-remove-heat system is barely effective. The moment you tag one thing, the cops are back. The changing stations have a cooldown so you can’t re-use the same one without leaving the area. Speaking more so in Post Game but still as a whole entirely, it’s very obnoxious to try and grab every Tag and collectible knowing something is going try and stop you no matter what. Just let me enjoy the game!

D: It’s weightless, shallow, and a waste of time every time. I have no idea why this system is here when the other games mostly had you just dodge cops like a level hazard, and given the amount of time spent on them in the game’s many cutscenes I’m left even more confused. Did they think we cared about the opposition as anything other than an obstacle in the cool graffiti game?

K: Which slides directly into Bomb Rush’s main offender: the campaign. This hurts me so bad but I almost didn’t make it through all 5 boroughs out of sheer boredom with the saminess and laziness of what was being provided. We’ll go over points in a second but I personally believe this game would’ve been better with an Arcade Mode, Time Attack Mode, Challenge Mode, anything but the campaign they provided.

D: It’s kind of wild how crap the story is. You spend more time in cutscenes here than the prior Jet Set Radios, only without DJ Professor K hyping up everyone on screen to help you care. They’re weirdly quiet, unvoiced aside from grunts or single words and backed with minimal music if any. The dialog is awkward at best, typo-riddled and confusing at worst. We mentioned earlier that Tryce is the one good character, and that’s because he has A) an actual motivation in wanting to go All-City and B) opinions on the people around him that hint at a personality. Everyone else is a black hole of charisma.

K: I know they had to do something to provide context across the 5 boroughs, but almost everything feels half-baked. Tag a bunch of spots, get chased by the Ketamine Cops, find someone from the rival gang to do one of maybe 3 tasks (Beat Score in 60sec, Copy the Rival’s Line, Beat the Rival in a Race), and then face them all in the same…exact…battle of Best Total Score within 2 minutes. Rinse and repeat. There’s no way no one thought of different challenges; it just reeks of time management issues and having to settle with what worked at the time. But with no current plans to add or edit anything post-game besides bug fixes, it also reeks of a lack of confidence within their game structure.

D: I found myself overjoyed every time the Oldheads showed up to judge a borough showdown, not just because they’re some of the cooler character designs, but because it meant an area was finally wrapping up.  

K: Makes me wonder if the Oldheads had thought of any other territory battle or maybe it was time for them to retire? 

D: Who can say, man. The whole thing is frustrating because it feels like every element of this game (except the music obv) was about ¾ baked and then called done. You alluded to potential resource problems for the devs and yeah, maybe? But this was self published, and we’re not privy to any internal or external reasons to bomb-rush to release. I’d be far more forgiving if Team Reptile tried a lot of new ideas that didn’t quite work, but this cribs so much from JSR that its heap of near misses are all the more frustrating.

K: This morsel really proves one thing to us: here’s to hoping that rumor of an official JSR sequel happening in 2024 is real, because Bomb Rush Cyberfunk only further proved that I want more of this genre, but not from this game.

D: You know this game had me doubting my memory so much that I went back and played a bit of JSRF? It still holds up, with a wonderful sense of style and a simple but effective set of tagging mechanics. There is a strong core to iterate on there to be sure, but BRC is more clumsily scrawled love letter shoved into a locker than spiritual sequel.

K: Not cool, yo.