Bomb Rush Cyberfunk Review – Tagged For Success

Strap on your blades, toss on your helmet, and let’s ride! Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is here with hip hop dance vibes mixed with futuristic technology. Developed by Team Reptile, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is made for everyone that loves a good skating game. I was so pumped, it got me back on my board again!

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk’s story is anything but ordinary. Escaping from the cops, an evil DJ slices off your head during your esteemed get-away. With the induction of the Bomb Rush Crew, you journey through the multiple boroughs of the city, tagging all the spots with your name and trying to get your head back. Along the way you confront various skating troupes. Each group has their own kind of dance style, weapon (I mean, vehicle) of choice, and their own clothing style. By doing their challenges, spray painting over their tags, and finally getting more points as a team in a head to head challenge will defeat them. Besides battling against the other skaters, which is more friendly competition, the police come after you with chains, riot shields, and guns. In the mix of it all, your new robot head is acting funny, and you keep experiencing strange psychedelic dreams. The story ties itself together with twists and turns that’ll leave you on the edge of your bike seat.

Screenshot 1928
This one rail in the mall you could literally grind forever if you wanted to

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is what I would call an “arcade” kind of skating game. Unlike Tony Hawk or other skating games, there’s no need to memorize any button combos. None of the challenges really require specific tricks to be performed, just a high rate of combos or points to be achieved. While the ease of pressing a single button to do a certain move is nice, the lack of complexity makes the gameplay feel a little stale in parts. With moves cycling through easily, the importance and interest in the moves dwindles. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is mostly about grinding rails, so most of the time you’ll spam the buttons to rack up points, not caring what complicated maneuvers your character is actually doing. Unsure if it’s the moveset’s fault for being streamlined, but battling the police is also simple. Your character automatically gets off their board to start swinging their legs around. Police are tricky because it’s difficult to know if they’ve been killed or not. Most of the time the police get in the way of you scoring combos. Like a mosquito attacking your face as you’re walking on a hike; the police don’t add much to the game besides being annoying. Even the large bosses are pushovers.

The controls in Bomb Rush Cyberfunk aren’t 100%, but they don’t need to be for an arcade skating game. While jumping and boosting is cool, there’s never more height that is gained from doing so. This means that certain spots to tag can feel unreachable, and other moves land just below where you want them to. Half pipes are a drag to deal with, as going off of one sends you traveling to the other side (not straight up, as how physics works). Actually Bomb Rush Cyberfunk breaks a lot of physics. You’ll find yourself grinding straight up the side of a telephone pole or even upside down on the underside of walkways. The lack of modern physics is probably why there are too many ramps in the game. It’s unfortunate that it doesn’t have great physics because there are times during a boost that I’ll try to launch off an incline, only to go straight across.

Screenshot 1915
There’s definitely no physics during the dream sequences

That all being said, however, the vibe of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is top-notch. The art style reflects PlayStation 1 graphics, with awesome graffiti art. I found myself simply watching the idle animations of the characters as they danced in place. The mood is upbeat and the colors are vibrant. As mentioned earlier, each group of characters has their own style. The Bomb Rush Crew have colorful baggy clothing, the Franks are all hacked together basketball playing monsters, Dot Exe are breakdancing cyborgs with billiard ball heads, and the list goes on. The theme each character emanates is spot-on, and the little animations they do accentuate the fact.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk also boasts a popping music catalog to keep the gameplay engaging. Not every song is enjoyable, and you can’t skip a song unless you play a song you found. Each area has around 3 songs it cycles through, so at times it can feel repetitive. The worst decision the music has made was to play music with singing in it when I had to read dialog for a conversation. The sounds fit Bomb Rush Cyberfunk well, and the dialog exclamation still adds a good amount of character even for being a short blip. Some of the dialog sounds are my favorite, notably the mechanical “Yo” that the old robot says when they announce the winner for the points battle.

Screenshot 1903
The Oldheads are probably my favorite skate crew

In summary: Interesting story with a wacky cast of characters, solid gameplay with some parts a little too easy, old school art, and popping audio to fit the mix.

Jordan played Bomb Rush Cyberfunk on PC with a review key. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is also available for Nintendo Switch, and Playstation 4 and Xbox One.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments