Rez Infinite

Rez Infinite (2002) is a shooting game where you fire musical energy rather than bullets. As you guide a figure through the darkness of space you bring down enemies in time with the music. Rez is novel for its use of music and vibration feedback to create a sense of synesthesia - a melding of music and shapes.

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Drawing on on-rails shooting games like Panzer Dragoon (where you don't control movement but focus on targeting weapons) you fight off viruses and corrupted security programs in a neon-tech environment. You do this by aiming your sights at up to eight targets before triggering a series of energy blasts.

As you shoot down enemies, the impact automatically syncs with the background track to create additional musical layers within each level. This is fed back to your experience through controller vibration. Each Area ends in a boss fight that is scaled in difficulty based on how well you have done on the preceding level.

As you progress there are new areas and modes unlocked. But really you are working to build up your energy level through each level by destroying certain numbers of enemies. You can also try out an enemy-free exploration mode, score attack, and boss rush.

There have been different releases of Rez:

• Rez (2001) PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast
• Rez HD (2008) Xbox 360
• Rez Infinite (2017) PlayStation 4, PSVR, PC, Oculous Quest

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Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Rez Infinite 3 years ago. It was re-examined by Thom Robertson and updated 11 weeks ago.