Introducing the RPS Game Club’s first game of the month – it’s Hi-Fi Rush!

A new thing for RPS in 2023 is the RPS Game Club, a kind of monthly book club for games where we pick a game to play each month, write some cool things about it, and have a big all liveblog discussion with you lot, our readers, at the end of it. It’s a project I’ve been wanting to get off the ground for some time now, and finally, the Treehouse Game Club doors have been busted open… and there’s some toe-tapping guitar music coming from inside? That’s right, we’re playing Hi-Fi Rush as our first RPS Game Club game, and we hope you’ll join us on this month-long musical journey.

Stealth-announced during Microsoft’s Xbox Direct showcase at the tail end of January, Hi-Fi Rush has been an instant Game Pass hit. It’s an infectious rhythm-action brawler from the makers of Ghostwire Tokyo and The Evil Within, Tango GameWorks, and it’s all about biffing enemies to the beat in a colourful, futuristic world full of robots and corporate hoodlums. You also have a cute robot cat companion that acts as a makeshift metronome. What’s not to like?

You can have a read of our Hi-Fi Rush review to see exactly what we made of it, but needless to say, it’s a game I’ve certainly been meaning to make time to play since it came out, and making it our first RPS Game Club game is, selfishly, an excellent way to do that. Naturally, I hope it will also give you the perfect excuse to play it as well, if you haven’t already done so.

If you have Game Pass, I’d highly recommend grabbing it on there. You can also buy it on Steam or the Epic Games Store if you’d rather. But the main reason we’ve picked it is because it’s readily available on Game Pass. We don’t expect you to buy games upfront to join in with Game Club, and future games will generally be focused around free or very inexpensive things (or other cool Game Pass bits) that (hopefully) lots of people can access.

If you’ve already played Hi-Fi Rush or don’t have Game Pass, worry not. The main aim of Game Club is to provide a fun and inclusive space to talk about cool games and the things we like about them. That’s it. On our side, we’ll be writing a couple of articles on our chosen game throughout the month, and then at the end of the month we’ll all pile into a big liveblog session where you can chat to us about that month’s pick, ask us questions about it, and generally have a fun, chill time chatting about a nice thing. You don’t need to have played it to join in the liveblog discussion, but it will, of course, help if you have.

I’m excited to see how it all shakes out, and of course if you have any suggestions on future RPS Game Club picks, do let me know in the comments below. I’ll be announcing the exact date and time of our Hi-Fi Rush liveblog in another post nearer the end of March, but for now, though, go forth and enjoy. We look forward to hearing what you make of it in a couple of weeks time.