Rez Infinite (PS4 game)

Remember how much you loved those games back on the classic consoles where your ability to excel at the games depended on how quickly you could press the buttons and you would get a cramp in your hand from doing so? You know how you really wish they would bring games of that magnitude into the modern era and also have a really good soundtrack with futuristic beats that depended on how many of the enemies you were able to hit?

You remember how much you enjoyed eventually destroying your controller from repeated bashing of the buttons and how much of a rewarding experience that was? Well the designers of Rez Infinite read your mind because they have brought exactly that sort of game into modern existence!

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I'm not really certain how I ended up having this in my library but I suspect it was either one of the Play at Home initiatives or something they gave away for free with a PS Plus account but there it was, so I figured I would give it a go since I have gotten bored with Days Gone and although I literally just wrote an article about Diablo 3 I needed a break from those two.

I didn't have a lot of expectations for this game because for the most part the stuff you get for free in the PS store aren't really anything to write home about. I felt compelled to write about this game because I literally played it for the first time around a half an hour ago and my right forearm is absolutely killing me right now.

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Basically this game is 50% shooter, 50% music-that-adapts-to-your-gameplay game, and 100% irritating. Perhaps the experience is enhanced by having a VR set (which is optional) but the fact that it basically consists of hitting the "X" button as quickly as you possibly can is what makes this game dead in the water to me. After completing the first couple of levels just as an experiment to see if the gameplay actually changes I have deleted it from my console already.

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I made it to the first "boss" with very little difficulty and it is just this swirly thing that will throw projectiles at you every now and then and you have to intercept those or take damage. It starts out with this rotating shield that you have to press "X" about 127 times to eliminate the bits of it and I gotta tell ya... What's not fun about that? Then, you have to hit "X" around 3,228 additional times before your wear down its exceptionally long life-bar. Once that is complete you get some statistics about how many of the things that you shot down and honestly, I would like a statistic about how many times you actually hit the "X" button because seriously, it is A LOT.

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_{Did I mention the shields regenerate several times? Oh the FUN!}

I don't like to bag on indie games because I do enjoy supporting the little guys and maybe this game is pretty wild if you own the extremely expensive VR headset, which I do not. However, if you still are required to hit the "X" button wildly and constantly, I can't really imagine this game being at all fun even with VR because games aren't supposed to hurt, are they?

This game sucks and while I can appreciate what they were trying to do, mad-button-mashing, as we called games of this sort back in the day always have and always will be terrible. This terrible concept resulted in controllers being manufactured that would automatically press the buttons as fast as they possibly can be being put out to market.

If you have a PS4 you probably have access to this game for free. I recommend that you install it (it is quite small), wait until you can't feel your right arm anymore and then immediately delete is forever.