The 2019 Goaties: #6 - Sayonara Wild Hearts
Sometimes, the universe just lines things up in a beautiful way. Games pair with certain moments in life, scenes or set pieces reflecting the things going on in the day-to-day. They'll hit your emotional core and linger far beyond their playtime. Ideally, most games would leave some sort of lasting impression, but not nearly as many feel tied to a place and time.
While this post rapidly, recklessly veers into "Soccer Mom Cooking Blog" levels of tangential platitudes, Sayonara Wild Hearts is completely a "place and time" game for me. I bought the Switch version a few days before a flight only to start it during the plane's take off, the musical crescendo of the first level building as we left the ground. It was an exhilarating synergy, and I don't think I've had an emotionally resonant moment like that one in games before this year.
“SAYONARA WILD HEARTS
(Apple Arcade, EGS, Steam, Switch)”
Sayonara Wild Hearts is, at its core, an interactive pop album brought to life through flashy, neon-tinged visuals and a REZ-like gameplay loop. You are a woman, working through a heartbreak so profound it shatters the foundation of spacetime, a goal accomplished by riding a motorcycle across dimensions to defeat a series of more elaborately designed gangs and restore balance to the universe.
Oh, and if that batshit insane beauty of a narrative wasn't enough, it's all commented on and established by Queen Latifah. Yep.
Broken up into roughly thirty short chapters punctuated by boss battles with vocal tracks, Sayonara is a blisteringly quick experience, only running about two or three hours on an initial playthrough that then unlocks an option for a chapterless "full game" mode. Developer Simogo wastes no time at all with that constraint, however, with each of the bigger story "movements" having their own distinct feel and experiences. It feels like a profoundly confident affair, gradually growing more lavish with each new character reveal.
Actually navigating through this world is, thankfully, much more straightforward than the premise. You could probably get away with calling Sayonara Wild Hearts a rail shooter, as you fly through levels - often literally - locking onto enemies, collecting coins and dodging incoming projectiles. Along with the occasional quicktime event, you'll pick up a few extra abilities as the game unfolds, some of which are specific to certain sections. It never feels like you have too much to worry about mechanically: this just isn't that kind of game.
Sayonara is exhilarating, filled with positively radical moments and moving at a steady but ultimately understandable clip. Its short length makes it easy to replay in totality every now and again, and the score attack nature of both the game as a whole and each individual level gives you plenty to strive for in terms of maximizing a run, if that’s your preferred way to approach a rail shooter. If you’re not familiar with the genre, I think this makes a phenomenal entry point. It’s also not so difficult that I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending it to just about anyone.
There are very few experiences quite like this, and at the end of the day it’s in a class of its own. Its themes are universally understandable, its confidence is unparalleled, and - most importantly - it is just a blast to watch and play.
