Rez Infinite Review (future figs)
Rez is a cult classic and one of my favorite games. This is a good way to play it, but I have a couple misgivings.
First and foremost, the mouse (as opposed to analog stick) is an absolute cheat code. Beating the game this way is not a challenge, at all, period. A lot of the challenge of the original version came from the slow-moving cursor -- you had to put a lot of thought into crosshair placement between enemy waves, and plan out smooth paths between enemies from moment to moment. Maybe it sounds like artificial difficulty, but after playing the game over and over I really improved with the stick and it felt good; I was able to get over 95% shot down in all levels and eventually I could get the white butterfly ending consistently. With the mouse, I can just scribble all over the screen while barely paying attention and still beat my old scores.
(That said, it brings the elusive "100% shot-down" rating back to the realm of possibility for us mere mortals. I have always wanted to see the pink butterfly ending for myself, but doing that on a PS2 controller requires superhuman abilities. Now...maybe there's a chance.)
The mouse movement is a little screwy, too. Some kind of filtering, but not like typical mouse smoothing -- maybe because it's mapped into 3D space instead of moving around the screen in 2D? It takes a little adjustment but doesn't really matter, since there's no need to be precise anyway.
I also noticed a few things that are just slightly off. For instance, when you beat each stage of the first boss, there's supposed to be a sound effect (rising-pitch vocal sample), but it's either really, really quiet or it's just not there. A first-time player wouldn't know anything is missing, but for me, the moment that sound plays used to be the highlight of the whole stage, which makes it kind of disappointing each time. There are a few other things like this, such as the exact colors/shading of the 3D environment, how certain things line up to the music. It's so subtle but I can tell it's just off .
The difficulty seems to have been tweaked as well. One boss, which used to take me 2-3 cycles to finish, I can now one-cycle every time; in a different boss fight, enemies that used to never hit me seem to always hit me now; I have to play with a totally different strategy to avoid it. It hardly ruins the game or anything, but why change the balance at all? It took a while to memorize all these subtleties, and now I have to memorize them again.
The game's art style has aged very well, and it looks good on modern displays. However, I think it looks best at 640x480 on a CRT monitor. The dreamcast could do 480p30, and the PS2 could do 480i60, but this is the only way to play Rez at 480p60 and it looks quite nice. I think it looks better this way with the anti-aliasing turned off. Unfortunately, the horizontal FOV gets narrower with a 4:3 aspect ratio, which makes the game much harder to play since enemies and projectiles will show up offscreen.
The new area (Area X) looks quite nice, but there's no real substance there. Only a few enemies, no challenging patterns, 10 minutes all-in, no scoring, no serious bosses, etc. There are supposedly two endings, but there's really no difference between them as far as I can tell, even with a high shot-down rate. It's a cool little bonus distraction but not even on par with a single typical Rez stage in my opinion. The music is good at least; it reminds me of Child of Eden, might be the same artist.
This may sound like a negative review, but that's only because I'm comparing it to what I consider an all-time great, even perfect game. If you're so inclined, I'd suggest to dig out the PS2 from your attic, buy some cheap component video cables from ebay, and play the 2001 release on a period-correct CRT TV for the absolute best experience. But, for everyone else, just ignore my gripes and get this version. We're lucky that such a precious game is so accessible.