“Even still, Sayonara is immediately entrancing from its opening moments and rarely slows as you pursue its masked villains in cars, through forests, on foot, and even through virtual reality. Bronze, silver, and gold tiers are earned for achieving varying high scores through greater precision, but outside of the reward of hearing Queen Latifah exclaim “Gold rank!” at the end of a level, I wasn’t compelled to chase those awards. I felt many things while playing Sayonara, but rarely fear of failure, which made the whole trip sometimes feel disappointingly passive. Even the occasional rhythm-game moments where you have to press a button with specific timing are incredibly forgiving and let me press the necessary input well after the window had seemingly closed.

No matter the scenario, movement is limited to the constraints of that level’s linear path, and while its simplicity let me focus on the wonderful art and sound, I rarely felt challenged in a meaningful way. The frequent setting changes always caught me off guard in the best way, and I had no idea what was coming next. Sometimes I was driving a high-speed motorcycle through a city, aiming for jumps and dodging dead ends, while other levels had me falling downward as though I was skydiving. The setting changes drastically level to level (and sometimes moment to moment), but that basic structure generally stays the same. You move your heroine left and right to grab hearts which boost your score, all while traveling at impossible speeds.

Sayonara wild hearts hltb