YMMV / Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Faux can be read in all sorts of ways: Was he genuinely a Friendly Rival to Felix and Cyber before his jealousy drove him to murder the former, or did he always dislike them and was simply good at hiding it until Felix drove him over the edge? For that matter, was he sincere about going All City with Tryce or was he just planning on using him as an Unwitting Pawn to snag the top spot for himself? Was he in on his father covering up his crimes, or was Officer Vogelaar doing that of his own accord in order to protect his pride?
  • The motive for his murder of Berlage is up for interpretation, too. Was Berlage starting to catch on to Faux's true intentions? Was it some sort of payback for the twisted state Berlage had put him in? Or was it just a spontaneous act of rage?
• Aluminium Christmas Trees: There's a lot of obscure jargon in the game that many might assume to be Future Slang, but is actually real graffiti terminology. Examples include "toy" (a rookie graffiti writer), "heaven spots" (graffiti spots that are dangerously high above ground) and "all city" (being known for graffiti throughout one's city).
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • All things considered, Tryce is pretty well-adjusted for a guy who saw someone get suddenly decapitated (and later, outright shot) right in front of him.
  • Despite the knowledge that 8-Ball and Cueball are brothers, the latter doesn't seem upset at all that his brother was sniped and killed when you next talk to him in the post-game. Similarly, 8-Ball himself is relatively calm when he's inside Red's third hallucination, only advising him on how to intercept police signals and asking him to find his killer.
• Awesome Moments: The Final Boss fight against Faux. After tagging his robot body’s arms, Red’s friends including DJ Cyber come in to expose the face. Red flies right at him and finishes Faux off with a massive headbutt that shatters his cyberhead revealing Felix.
• Awesome Art:
  • This game has an impeccable vibe to it. The low-poly style makes things look bold and colorful, yet it's not Retraux enough to try and confine the player to small spaces, proudly showing off the detailed cityscapes of New Amsterdam in their massive glory. The graffiti art especially gives a lot of character to the individual gangs, and the massive amount of art available for the protagonists all underscores the bold, punkish, streetstyle aura the game exudes.
  • Some of the graffiti art featured are winners of Team Reptile's graffiti contest, with pieces submitted from more than 700 participants.
• Awesome Music:
  • All the songs provide great highlights to the game's streetstyle vibe, but Hideki Naganuma's tracks, like with Lethal League and Jet Set Radio before it, are standouts as absolute funky awesomeness.
    • In particular, the song used for much of the prerelease marketing and used to underscore victories in crew battles, "GET ENUF", is something players will rarely get enough of, with its groovy synthetic beat adding a ton of energy to the game as they compete with other crews for turf.
    • "GET ENUF" and "JACK DA FUNK" were known by BRC fans to be in the game well before its release thanks to preview material, but when the game dropped everyone was pleasantly surprised with Naganuma's third song, "DA PEOPLE". A funky track with a bit of edge and political speech sprinkled in for intense flavor, many have favorably referred to it as "The Concept Of Love 2".
  • But the love for Naganuma isn't to say the rest of the guest tracks have been slacking off. "Big City Life" perfectly encapsulates the high-energy street vibe this game oozes, its hip-hop beats providing the perfect background noise to splattering the city with spraypaint.
  • '80s throwback "Next To Me" by LEOPARD DAVINCI & LOUIS 707 is almost guaranteed to get you busting a move listening to it.
• Complete Monster: Faux, despite his severed head being one of the main driving forces for the protagonists in the game, is revealed to be a shockingly vile person. In the past, when fellow Big 3 member Felix finds out about Faux getting his father to frame innocents for his vandalism, Faux murders Felix in cold blood, deliberately having him fall into a fan which leads to him being decapitated. After the New Amsterdam police inserts Faux's head into their Project Algo program, Faux is able to control the minds of the force, using them in his plan to kill every writer in the city so he can become "All City King", while killing Chief Inspector Berlage, who revived him in the first place, once the word gets out about Project Algo. After the Bomb Rush Crew fight him for the first time, Faux takes their leader Red, who is actually Felix, and brutally snaps his head off, immediately followed by kidnapping BRC member Solace so he can use his younger body as his own.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Red getting shot in the head by a sniper? Terrifying. Said sniper running up to him until he's five feet away from him, his rifle almost against Red's head, "sniping" him with all the subtlety of a public stabbing? Hilarious. Bel, Tryce and Vinyl immediately freaking out and running off to find the Flesh Prince? Right back to terrifying.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite only appearing three times throughout the campaign, Escher has gained quite the following for his sleek design and status as a Mirror Character to Red.
  • DOT.EXE have developed quite a fanbase thanks to their unique, eye-catching appearances, to the point where quite a few fans have made their own Original Characters for the group. It helps that they have Millennium Mall as their base, and have more relevance to the story than most of the other gangs by leaking the existence of Project Algo.
• Fan Nickname: Prior to release, the characters Dion Koster had drawn before being included and named in the game were given nicknames based on the descriptions that accompanied them: Vinyl had "Vinyl Girl", DJ Cyber had "Vinyl Boy", Red got "Runner", and Tryce was "BUSTR" (the only one named at the time).
• Fanon:
  • Due to the presence of both Faux-body Red and Felix in the postgame content, it's become a popular headcanon that Flesh Prince managed to get ahold of Faux's old body after his defeat and bought Red back as a proper Cyberhead independent of Felix, or even that Faux himself was resurrected and took up the identity of Red as a way to finally cut himself free from his roots and atone for his actions.
  • It's surprisingly common to see Faux considered the youngest of the Big Three, given how DJ Cyber and Felix have blockier frames and more experienced attitudes while Faux reveals himself to be very insecure, dependent on his father to clear his criminal record, and has a strange mix of jealousy and feelings of betrayal towards Felix.
  • There's a common belief that Solace and Felix really did have a geniune friendship in the past, and the only reason Red couldn't recall it was because he didn't have all of his memories back at the time.
• Fridge Horror:
  • Since Tryce was jumping with Faux when the latter got his head lopped off by DJ Cyber, it's more than likely that the poor guy had to deal with the body afterwards. It's a wonder he's taken it so well...
  • There's probably been a lot of hapless writers who've been injured or even killed by the handcuff turrets, given how their main purpose is to yank the target back and restrain them so the police can make an arrest. That'd be dangerous enough on a stationary target, but throw in the extreme stunts most writers would be doing while trying to evade capture, and those chains are likely to dislocate a limb at best — and at worst...
  • The idea of Cyberheads in general; they're people who, for one reason or another, no longer have their original head anymore and got their memories uploaded into a robotic one which is then surgically attached to their original body, or even more chilling, someone else's.
• Friendly Fandoms: Given how much inspiration is taken from Jet Set Radio, it's not much of a surprise that many JSR fans also love Bomb Rush Cyberfunk.
• Goddamned Bats: Oddly enough, staircases - landing on them even for an instant stops any tricks you're doing and forcibly reverts you to on-foot movement, which kills your combo on the spot. While you can manual/slide down stairs to keep your combo up, there's no such ability for going up them — and with how many rails are attached to stairs, you had better hope you have your Double Jump saved up if you want to keep your combo going.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Trick-Boosting and catching the very edge of a billboard in a very specific way will launch the player character off at very high speed, much to speedrunners' delight.
  • Dancing animations don't take into account the player character holding their phone and spray can at the same time. The result is the player magically break-dancing in the air without using their hands whatsoever.
• Memetic Mutation: The various catchy lyrics in some of the game's soundtracks have become infinitely repeatable within the game's fanbase, for better or worse...
  • OPERATE OPERATE OPERATE^note From "Operator" by GRRL
  • GOT MY HAIR DUN AND GOT MY NAILS DUN I GOT MY HAIR DUN^note From "Hair Dun Nails Dun" by Color Plus
  • ASS ASS ASS ASS ^note From "Precious Thing" by Olli
  • LISTEN UP PLEASE/Gru Jumpscare ^Explanation  The song Lightswitch which inexplicably uses a sample of Gru's distinct voice from Despicable Me, startling many players upon recognising for this first time.
• Moral Event Horizon: The Final Boss is revealed to have crossed it when he murdered Felix out of jealousy. And if that wasn't bad enough, he then practically leaps and bounds over the line when he hijacks Project Algo in order to kill every other Writer in New Amsterdam so he can become the All-City King.
• Narm: Some characters having unemotive, stone-dead facial expressions isn't usually an issue since the camera is a decent distance from the characters usually, but during Cyphers, it can really kill the mood when they finish showing off their dance moves only for the camera to zoom in tight for a close-up of a joyless poker face.
• Narm Charm: The stone-cold facial expressions work in the case of the Final Boss: the constant neutral expression puts in a decent amount of effort in making Faux seem more like the stoic, cold-blood murderer he is, while also being innocuous enough to not look like there's anything special about him at first.
• One-Scene Wonder: Felix with his old mask and 'Red Felix'. The former exists only for one cutscene and the latter only in the finale of the story, both are amazing designs but unless you use mods you won't see either outside of those sections.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The heat mechanic seems standard fare at first, but as you go further into the game the police starts to develop more and more of a hair-trigger to even the most minor of graffiti tagging. It doesn't help either that in a lot of maps there seems to be a severe lack of toilets to be able to hide and change your outfit in to reset the meter, thus forcing you to either waste time looking around for one or just brute force your way through and try to ignore them.
  • The Taxi meant for fast travel isn't unlocked until roughly halfway through the game, and unlike the toilets there is only one taxi sign per map, making going back to them a gigantic chore. Not only that, but the only way to summon the taxi driver is by *dancing* in front of the sign, which can be difficult itself if you've aggravated the police enough.
    • You also cannot simply fast travel to locations you've previously visited; the only way for a place to become a fast travel spot is by locating the solitary sign on the map and interacting with it.
• Spiritual Successor: To Jet Set Radio, naturally. Both are about powerful city vibes, following graffiti artists as they move around their futuristic home cities, spraying paint down while clashing with rival gangs and cops, all flavored with an artstyle and aesthetic that exudes a flavorful, rebellious attitude.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Fans favorably consider one of Hideki Naganuma's new songs for this game, "DA PEOPLE", to be a successor to one of his previous JSR songs, "The Concept of Love". Both sample the exact same political speech as their core lyrics, set to funky electronic beats and guitar strings.
• Tearjerker: Those who are fans of The Oldheads might have their heart tugged when Classic reveals that the reason he became a cyberhead is because he was practically knocking on death's door due to a brain tumor. It's amazing that he's still alive thanks to the technology of New Amsterdam, but it's still hard not to feel for the guy because of the situation he endured.
• That One Level:
  • The way up of Brink Central, located at one end of Brink Terminal is a towering parkour dungeon that requires quick observation and calculated air-dashes between free-floating vertical bars, quarter-pipes and abysmally short upside down railings that can send you plummeting back into water at the beginning if you're not looking ahead or if you're mashing your Boostpack. Hell, just learning the route that can get you on the terminal's roof leading to the way in at all is a test in itself. All this effort is just to get three graffiti spots in a fine art gallery at the very top of the tower.
  • Pyramid Island is a vertical maze of pipes and platforms that's quite easy to get lost in, and has several graffiti spots that are tricky to reach. Not helping matters is the amount of rail-hopping required to reach the top. Miss your grind, and you'll be sent plummeting back down to the bottom level. Thank god for that fast-travel Robo-Post box halfway up. This level is also where the police start to get way more aggressive in response to tagging, introducing attack helicopters at level 5 that can chase you down wherever you are in the area.
• That One Sidequest: The post-game score challenges you can do to recruit members from the rival gangs are the most demanding in the game, having score requirements in the millions. They practically require a full mastery of each area, knowing which spots can quickly increase the multiplier and what trick strings can be pulled off to ensure the combo is maintained between rails. Not to mention, dropping a combo more than once during all of this is an all-but-guaranteed fail state.
  • If you want to up the ante even more, a majority of the "Tricked" achievements on Steam require you to get a score around the 10 million range in a single combo. In order to achieve such a feat, you need to do a trick practically off nearly every viable object on the map.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: The most critical reviews of the game claim that the game sticks too close to its inspiration, content with being an imitation rather than create something original from the framework. On the other hand, fans of Jet Set Radio don't see this as a problem.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Escher is conceptually a very interesting character, being one of only 3 named Cyberhead characters in the entire campaign and serving as something of an ideological foil to Red in his initial appearance. Cue disappointment when he only appears two more times and all but disappears from the narrative after Vinyl beans him with her skateboard, never being mentioned again while Rietveld largely takes his place as the focal cop character.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Right after conquering Millennium Mall, Red's nightmare sequence features the just recently killed 8-Ball sharing his mind space. Similarly, DJ Cyber is the only other character to ever come into Red/Felix's mind, but this case is justified since he owns the tech that allows him to restore Felix's memories in the first place. The idea of other people, including what should be the dead, invading a cyberhead's mind space is interesting and could have provided some more tension and lore, but it was only ever featured two times.
  • Much fanfare was made about Faux being the son of a policeman, and said policeman's constant covering of Faux's arrests in the finale of the game. By all means, Faux's roots were the least important thing about him, and his connection to the police after being used for Project Algo has nothing to do with his (now retired) father, with only Berlage making any comment on it. Officer Vogelaar doesn't show up at any point in the game either.
• Unpopular Popular Character: In-universe, Solace is a Butt-Monkey who is often ridiculed by other Writers for his bizarre appearance and claustrophobia fetish. Meanwhile, the fandom loves him for his meek personality and the humour he brings to the game, especially since he gains prominence right as the story starts to get dark.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The game never really brings this theme to the forefront, but it's very easy to view Bomb Rush Cyberfunk from an anti-law enforcement lens.
  • The idea of unnecessary police escalation and them being overequipped and overfunded is clear enough: during gameplay, they'll send in lethally-armed snipers, attack helicopters, and Giant Mecha for the sole purpose of taking out a single dude on a skateboard that drew one too many graffiti murals. The city also has police deployment pods/elevators practically on every major street, and bizarre handcuff cannons pre-installed in major throughfares and neighborhoods. The New Amsterdam Police also keep insisting that the Bomb Rush Crew are armed and dangerous when they only ever have spray cans, in a clear attempt to exploit Shoot Him, He Has a Wallet! and justify lethal force; police sniper Escher and some officers report that the Crew are not armed, only for the Police to continue authorizing lethal force. Project Algo is an extension of this, since a mere criminal detection database is equipped with brainwashing technology, needs a decapitated human head to run, and is capable of moving on its own.
  • Project Algo is a mind-subverting technology that makes police act more aggressively and is deemed a "corruption" within the force by Rietveld, but can be read as a metaphor for systemic corruption in law enforcement that leads to the actual normalization of brutality. That, or the metaphor isn't necessary — even after the events of the game after Faux is seemingly killed and Project Algo should no longer exist, the police still escalate situations to lethal degrees that were initially caused by Project Algo, suggesting that the police were corrupt all along and the Project was merely what brought it all out.
  • Escher and Rietveld, who both have some reservations against the extreme nature of the police, can be viewed as examples of what anti-police activists argue happens to "good" cops. The former doesn't like the extreme enforcement against the writers because he sees that they're not hostile unless provoked, but he ultimately still complies with his superiors and becomes part of the problem; the latter believes that Project Algo is too extreme, and during the postgame, attempts to reform the police from within via an anti-corruption unit, only for that to fail — she's found being cornered and threatened by at least one of every single police unit type in the game — before she ultimately decides that they're irredeemable this way and quits the force.
  • As for the other named members of the New Amsterdam PD, they're either dangerously incompetent or unmistakably corrupt. Berlage authorizes Project Algo to be headed by (from his perspective) a former officer's civilian son, having no clue who he actually is before plugging him into control of the entire force. Officer Vogelaar, on the other hand, scrubbed said son's records of trouble whenever Faux got caught, applying the law in a corrupt, favoritist, obviously-distorted way.
  • Devil Theory: territorial gangsters who disrespect everyone who isn't like them, to the point of actively attempting to harm them. Alone, this could be interpreted as a case of of Fantastic Racism, but that they have an explicit agreement with the police to do all of Devil Theory's dirty work leads to NAPD coming off as corrupt police that serve racist ideals.

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