“Rez” is a synesthesia shooter game developed by United Game Artists and released in 2001 by Sega for PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast. Produced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, a Japanese video game creator.
“Rez” is a game like a fusion between rail shooters like “Panzer Dragoon” (1995) and music game. Japanese and European artists, such as Ken Ishii, Oval, Coldcut, and Adam Freeland, provided music tracks of intelligent techno, trance, breakbeat, glitch, ambient, and the like. On the whole, “Rez” is strongly influenced by rave culture. Its wire frame graphics are inspired by Kandinsky’s abstract art.
The player, as a hacker, keeps on shooting down viruses as enemies by using a lock-on missile launcher, running through a visualized cyberspace. The player can experience a trance state through the shooting action synced with images, sounds and controller vibration.
“Rez Infinite” is a VR-compatible version remastered in high resolution, which was developed by Resonair and Monstars, and released in 2016 by Enhance Games for PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR, and Microsoft Windows.
“Rez Infinite” features a new stage “Area X” in addition to the remastered five stages of the original “Rez” (Areas 1-5). All the stages can be played both on the standard desktop mode and the VR mode. In the Area X, the player can flay around freely in a 3-D space.
The playing on the VR mode is more trippy and immersive than the desktop mode.
The emotional and melodic music of Area X was produced by Hydelic, a team of Resonair sound creators: Takako Ishida and Noboru Mutoh.
The easy mode is also available for those who are not good at playing action games.
“Rez Infinite” won “Best VR Game” at The Game Awards 2016, the U.S.
