Hi-Fi Rush review – a brawler set to the beat of a drum

The video game industry's hype cycles are typically measured in months and years, not minutes and seconds. So the simultaneous announcement and release in late January of Hi-Fi Rush – the kind of "go and buy it right now" revelation Apple is known for – feels breezily countercultural. So too does its bright, cartoonish styling: this game is as brazenly colourful as a Jet Set Radio fever dream, and even as plastic Guitar Hero instruments clog up the nation's cupboards, it's refreshing to play a game that is so unashamedly music-centred. This is a brawler set to the beat of a drum. You play as Chai, an ebullient teenage boy who enrols in a biological augmentation program with a shady pharmaceutical company.