Steady beats serve as an invisible force that powers its vibrant cyberpunk world, but I can hardly ever feel that restriction in a musical quest that plays like a creative improv session. Rather, everything about it is built around that music, like a band naturally locking in after a drummer’s opening count-in.

Tango Gameworks’ rhythm-action game, which surprise-launched on PC and Xbox last week, doesn’t just throw players a good playlist and ask them to keep time over it. While some music games could stand to learn a thing from that video, Hi-Fi Rush is a model student. Then, she switches over to the rhythm, replicating the actual pattern of notes that weave around that tempo. In one clip I stopped to watch, the teacher starts by pointing out a song’s beat, steadily tapping out its tempo like a metronome. For a few weeks, all of them seemingly latched onto the same trend as they put out quick videos highlighting the difference between beat and rhythm, two specific terms that get mistakenly interchanged with one another. Last year, the app’s unknowable algorithm briefly decided that it should only serve me reels from music teachers (a passive-aggressive move, if you ask this self-taught guitarist).

Hi-fi rush ps5