Bomb Rush Cyberfunk review — snappy skater video game pays homage to cult classic

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The city of New Amsterdam is at once strikingly beautiful and strangely familiar. With its colourful, cel-shaded architecture emblazoned with punk graffiti, and a pristine blue sky above, the world of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk self-consciously evokes that of the 2000 cult classic Jet Set Radio. Still, overfamiliarity with the aesthetic does little to diminish its appeal — a blazingly bright, vivacious riff on the cyberpunk genre. 

New Amsterdam is pretty to gaze upon from a quiet vantage spot, but comes to life at high speed. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, like Jet Set Radio, is a game that casts you as a member of a skating graffiti gang duking it out with rival gangs for the city’s turf. As you run, bike, skate and dance your way through the game’s vivid surroundings, new configurations of buildings and municipal spaces reveal themselves — hitherto unseen lines for tricks and movement, soundtracked by an expertly curated selection of cutting-edge club music.

The skating doesn’t possess the depth of the skateboarding simulator franchise Skate, or even the comparatively casual Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games. Rather, it has a straightforward, somewhat throwback “pick up and play” quality that seems designed to make the player feel cool. They can move through the virtual space as an anarchic blur of light and sound. 

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk delights in challenging authority, often violently. Tagging New Amsterdam’s prime graffiti real estate, you accrue “heat”: the game’s militarised police force ratchet up the ferocity of its response. A big part of the game involves engaging the law in combat, using your board and fists to take them down or, if you’re feeling particularly audacious, coating them in a plume of yellow spray paint. But such action is curiously under-explained, and it’s hard not to wonder if this amounts to an oversight from Dutch developer Team Reptile or it pulling its punches. In a game of otherwise impressive clarity — visually, thematically, mechanically — it’s a rare instance of opacity. Perhaps the studio didn’t wish to show the flagrant beating-up of police.

Elsewhere, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk follows the structure laid down by Jet Set Radio 23 years earlier. Each new area brings a new gang to take down, like the Dot Exe crew — said to be “cyberhead B-boys” who “upgrade their bodies to win breakdance battles”. Yet while the characters and camera in Jet Set Radio exuded a certain floatiness, Team Reptile’s effort feels snappy and thoroughly modern. It’s a subtle but not insignificant update that makes it even easier to slip into the “zone” — to find yourself transfixed by the game’s breathless forward motion.

Oscar Wilde wrote that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness”. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is not mediocre — it is too spirited and exuberant — but the extent of its mimicry Jet Set Radio does somewhat dilute its impact. A love letter, then, to a true original, and about as great as one could expect such homage to be.

★★★★☆

‘Bomb Rush Cyberfunk’ is out now on PC and Nintendo Switch, and on PlayStation and Xbox consoles from September 1