Can a homage be too faithful ?
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a simple, stylish skateboarding game that draws heavy inspiration from Jet Set Radio, a cult classic from the Dreamcast generation. You'll spend most of your time grinding rails, finding graffiti spots to spray over, and escaping from the cops
The story is fairly simple - but goes to some unexpected places - and the primary drive is to beat each area's rival gang. First, you'll need to find enough graffiti spots for Rep to challenge them, which pushes you to explore the area and map out some ideas for trick chains. Then it's a score battle against the other team, probably using those routes you planned earlier
The scoring system is a little odd to me, as while you get points for tricks as normal, you build your combo multiplier (which is essential) by leaning into the corners of grind rails. Landing on the ground resets it, so you have to hold a manual to keep it going. Each corner can only be used in a combo once, so the more ridiculous scores (see: achievements) often need you zig-zag your way through as much of the level as you can in a single combo
If the goal was to re-create Jet Set Radio in modern times, BRC easily "understood the assignment", as they say. It gave me all the vibes of a game from that era, where things could just be a focused skateboarding game with no extra fluff and frills. Perhaps i'm just spoiled by modern games, but i kept feeling like something was missing, that it could be rounded out with some extra mechanic or idea
Definitely a well-made game, and oozes style from every piece, but i think i was just not exactly in the mood for what it was bringing right now. Took me a while to write this up because i was struggling to find the words…
You’re not alone; I also felt the game didn’t expand/focus on its mechanics enough, so every gameplay element felt surface-level and underdeveloped (and I say this as someone who enjoyed Jet Set Radio when I played it several years ago).
How do you think it compares to Jet Set Radio, in terms of that ‘surface-level’-ness? Did JSR manage to develop or expand its mechanics enough?
I’m just trying to figure out if it’s a ‘style of the time’ difference, or something deeper
Honestly, looking back, I think it’s more that BRC only added new surface level mechanics instead of focusing on expanding what JSR did, because doing a direct comparison between the two games in a vacuum, BRC did improve on JSR in a few ways. For example, in JSR, fighting rival gangs was done by chasing them down as they skate away from you, and you have to spray specifically the back of their helmets 10 times per rival gang member. It’s really tedious and frustrating, especially when you’re pretty darn sure you were in range but the hit didn’t register. BRC replaced this with the two-minute tricks combo duel…but that combo mechanic is far removed from the core collectathon platforming gameplay. It doesn’t help you make jumps; it doesn’t help you find graffiti you’ve missed; it’s only used in those brief moments, and it never becomes anything more than “hold RT to reach new corners and tap the tricks buttons during straight-shots.”
Another example is that JSR won’t let you fight back against the cops; you just have to avoid them, which means if they catch up to you while you’re working on a large graffiti, you either just have to take the hits or waste lots of time luring them away (I learned to prioritize the large ones first, before the cops show up). BRC lets you attack–and even defeat–them…but it’s a very barebones and repetitive beat-‘em-up combat system, made all the worse during those moments where you’re FORCED to fight them to progress or get some optional graffiti pattern. Frankly, they already fixed this problem by streamlining the large graffiti minigame; they could’ve left out the combat system and made it so the enemies enhanced the core collectathon platforming like they did in JSR, but no; they instead chose to add more surface-level mechanics instead of focusing on the core gameplay.
Plus, it doesn’t help that the original JSR is also on Steam, for less than half the price of BRC.