The 2002 release of Rez on the Playstation 2 made a splash among many gamers and game critics. Originally planned as a Dreamcast exclusive, it was shifted to a multiplatform release prior to its late-2001 Japanese debut - which was a good thing, because otherwise American gamers might never have had the chance to immerse themselves in the trippy, hypnotic world of the "K-Project". Rez was Sega's "Firefly" - a critical darling and a favorite of many gamers who played it obsessively, but ultimately doomed to relatively insignificant commercial success. After UGA was dissolved in Sega's 2003 restructuring, hopes for a sequel to Rez were seemingly dashed, as Tetsuya Mizuguchi - the game's driving creative force - splintered off to form Q? Entertainment. However, E3 2007 saw the revelation of Rez HD, resurrected as an Xbox Live Arcade title.
Rez HD's core game is completely unchanged from the original. The player controls a nameless avatar navigating through four subsystems of the global computer Eden, gathering data and destroying viruses and firewalls on his way to the fifth system - Eden herself. The game presents itself as a rail shooter, where the player's control is limited solely to the aiming reticle and firing control; holding down the fire button allows the player to lock on to up to eight points before relasing it and firing on the targetted objects. By destroying enemies, the player is rewarded with life upgrades, eight of which must be collected to earn an extra "hit point" (represented as the player's 'evolution level', with the player's avatar becoming more defined as his durability increases), or with "Overdrives", which are brief auto-fire periods, limited to about six to eight seconds and with a stock of up to four. After a six to eight minute run through a level, the player reaches the "firewall" - a massive boss battle often spanning multiple forms. Players can either actively destroy the firewall, or defend themselves against the boss's assault until the firewall self-destructs. The fifth stage switches things up a bit, being a little bit on the longer side overall and culminating in a positively brutal boss festival. Overall, the gameplay is simple yet deep.
The major draw to Rez has always been the tight integration between the player's gameplay and the aesthetic aspects of the game. Players' progress through the levels are measured in terms of "Analyzation" - by destroying ten to fifteen distinct targets in the levels, called "Network Openings", the environment and music increases in complexity and texture. Where the first stage starts off with just a bare, minimalist black background with a slightly nondescript 'floor' and near silence, after just a handful of Analyzation increases the player is rushing through a wireframe representation of a ruin with a strong trance beat building up; by the time the boss is reached, the player is likely to be completely immersed in sight, sound, and vibration. The controller vibrates in time with not only the music, but also the actions the player takes. A feature that's easier to utilize than it previously was, Trance Vibration, allows you to put your spare Xbox 360 controllers to use as additional vibration points on your body. (Canonically, these are the base of your spine, the back of your neck, and the soles of your feet, but wherever you want to put them is up to you - just wash the controller when you're done, will you?) Trance Vibration is a nice feature to add to the game, but for folks who don't much care for force-feedback, it can get a little annoying. Fortunately, all vibration is optional and can be turned off at will.
One might wonder why Rez's graphics could possibly need to be placed into "HD". After all, it's mostly comprised of simple polygonal structures and wireframes; it was hardly taxing on the Dreamcast, barely scratched what the PS2 could do, and I daresay could have even done well on the PSP or DS. But once you've played in the HD mode, it's hard to go back to the original. HexaDrive has enhanced the visuals to run in the increased resolution that HD provides, which means that certain elements which were blurred or obscured on previous versions - such as pictograms appearing when enemies are defeated - are more clearly visible. Furthermore, new effects like light bloom and a widescreen mode add even more visual detail and sensory overload to the mix. For a game where the entire point is to blend the sight, the sound, and the touch together with the thought, the advancements could be likened to sitting in a concert hall, listening to Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, and Beethoven play simultaneously, and not having to worry about the jerk with the tuba blatting out dissonance every once in a while. They smooth over the experience.
I'm a huge Rez fanboy, by my own admission, so I snapped this up the second it was available. But at the same time, there's a lot that could have been added. The game is still excruciatingly short - five main levels, plus a boss-less sixth area and the option to run through all of the stages (or just their bosses) in one go, just isn't enough. If there ever was a game that screamed out for downloadable content, Rez HD is it. While some of the Live-centric additions are nice and appreciated - like, say, leaderboards and the ability to share replay data - there's just not much here. Still, given the $10 price point - and the fact that I, like many other people, happily paid $50 for precisely the same amount of content - it's not overpriced by any stretch of the imagination.
For a long time, Rez was like the Underworld track that gave it the name - difficult to come by but very, very worth it. In a sense, it still is: Rez, the song, was a non-album track until Underworld released it on their 2000 live album Everything, Everything. The advent of digital distribution has brought both song and game into a more mainstream prominence; iTunes lists the album in the top 100 for Dance/Electronic, and the Xbox Live Arcade now presents this masterpiece of gaming to one and all. There's no two ways around it. If you have an Xbox 360, you simply must try this game. Download the demo, see for yourself. Once you get a taste of synaesthesia, you're hooked.
