From the great looking design to the airtight gameplay, Rez HD is a must buy and definitely worth checking out.
In case you never played the original Rez, the game is a very simple on rails shooter in which the player controls a hacker in a futuristic world setting out to shut down a supercomputer gone wrong. Rez HD looks absolutely insane, the amazing visuals make you feel like you are in some laser crazy futuristic hacking simulation fighting for your life in a mix between Tron and a Trance party. The game contains one simple control method in which you hold down the fire button, aim over your enemies with the left analogue stick and then let go firing lasers and destroying them from their existence. You can lock onto a total of eight enemy viruses or firewalls as you fly through insane looking, detailed levels and formidable boss fights. The great control scheme allows the game to become instantly accessible to anyone, whether you play games all day or once a week Rez is a great game to just pick up and play.
In between all this simplicity and accessibility Rez also has a surprising amount of depth. As you progress through each of the levels you will collect two types of powerups, the first a blue shape that increases your evolution bar. After gaining ten points of evolution your character evolves making them faster at firing. The second powerup is overdrive, this allows you to destroy everything you see on screen within seconds and basically wipes everything out for you. When playing the main play mode of Rez any powerups or evolutions you had in previous levels get carried over to the next or to any other levels you unlocked. This is a great idea because Rez gets challenging down as you progress. The strange thing is that its not so easy that I can complete the only 5 levels in half an hour but isn't so challenging I want to give up and never play again. Its set largely in between for the most part, if your feeling like one level is getting too tough you can always play another again, build your character, then try again.
Tetsuya Mizuguchi the creator of Rez came up with the idea for the game at a Trance party which is why music plays such an important part. Rez contains no sound effects of sections of dialogue only samples from the songs built into the game. An example for this is when you lock onto your enemies the cursor makes the noise of a Hi-Hat then as you let go and fire it becomes a Snare drum. Without thinking about it you are becoming completely involved with the music and hugely immersed in the game, it perfectly adds to the Synesthesia that builds up inside you as you play Rez for the first time.
Within all of the positive aspects of Rez there are however some downsides to the game. The first thing that started to bug me was the way the controls were layed out. This would potentially be a problem for me but you can go straight to the options and change the button configuration to whatever you want. Secondly the the difficulty can be a little frustrating at times, though I said before about it being just right it can be annoying when you die right at the end of a boss and have to start all over again. Again this would be a problem but in Rez practice makes perfect, it doesn't take long to know how to stay alive through a boss fight and the evolution system stops this from getting really annoying. Beyond that the game is consistently fun and keeps you coming back.
What really draws me to Rez being a great downloadable game is that it keeps you coming back, theres always something to do or some way to better yourself, unlock extras, find new levels, beat your score, everything aswell as all the Xbox features built in such as leaderboards and achievements. From the great looking design to the airtight gameplay, Rez HD is a must buy and definitely worth checking out even if your not fans of the genre.