We have a 20 minute preview of Hi-Fi Rush available for you to watch below.

Tango Gameworks’ action rhythm game surprised everyone, most of all because Microsoft released it at the same moment they had revealed it, in yesterday’s Xbox Developer_Direct.

While we had covered rumors of leaked early material, as we had noted, they did not really reflect the final product. To be fair, that was probably the reason why the artists working with Bethesda and Tango Softworks were allowed to make it public.

But the Hi-Fi Rush we did receive is a stylish action game, that very much looks and plays the part of a Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network action adventure cartoon from the 2000s.

We also get a better idea of what the story is like with this preview. The lead character Chai may be described as an aspiring rockstar, but at the start of the game it’s made clear he’s the stereotypical down on his luck nobody, who is one of the many volunteers joining Vandelay Industries’ Project Armstrong.

Project Armstrong, advertised as a somewhat charitable project for normal people to enjoy the use of robotic limbs, seems to be an ongoing experimental program, that the company isn’t entirely honest to the public about .

Chai, who starts the game wearing an arm sling, later comes out with his robotic appendage, but is labeled a defect and starts getting chased around by Vandelay security bots.

And this is where we all see the conceit of the story premise. It turns out when Chai was getting his robot arm added to his body, his pseudo iPod music player got connected to his chest. And so, Chai’s glitch robot arm, originally intended for waste management, can assemble a guitar axe-shaped weapon for him from scrap around him, anytime he needs it.

As for gameplay, it actually still seems to be conventional 3D melee gameplay. In contrast to the new Karateka, where the game design has been built around the rhythm gameplay, Hi-Fi Rush seems to have added a rhythm game layer to a 3D action game.

Also noteworthy to mention in this preview is the art director, Keita Sakai. Sakai was also the art director for Tango Gameworks’ The Evil Within and The Evil Within 2. If you were going to ask, who knew that Tango Gameworks had it in them to make this cartoony action game? Well, it would seem Tango knew, and they set out to let everyone know as well.

Hi-Fi Rush is now available to play on PC via Steam, Xbox OSeries X|S, and Game Pass. You can check out the first 20 minutes below.

Source: IGN via YouTube