Setup: iPhone XS Max (iOS 13), iPad Pro (iPad OS Beta), Xbox One Controller/Touch Controls
Developer: Simogo
Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
Release Date: 9/19/2019
Platforms: PS4, Nintendo Switch, Apple Arcade (iOS/tvOS/iPad OS/macOS)
I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know why Apple didn’t put Sayonara Wild Hearts more front-and-center in its Apple Arcade marketing. This game whips entire ass. I’ve said that before about various games, but I think Sayonara Wild Hearts is a different experience than anything I’ve tried before — while somehow also being a very familiar game in almost every way.
The first thing you should know about this game is it is unabashed in its queerness. The player-character is a lesbian. She’s on a Scott Pilgrim-esque quest to save the universe (without all the gross stuff found in Scott Pilgrim), unshatter her broken heart and smooch all the girls. There’s no vagueness here, no misinterpretation possible. The! Game! Is! Gay! And if that kind of in-your-face earnestness bothers you, you might want to turn away now, because the entire game is 100 percent earnest about everything it’s doing. There are mahou shoujo transformation sequences, giant wolf mechs, motorcycle chases, and sword-jet battles throughout Sayonara Wild Hearts, all done without a hint of a wink or nod. This is how developer Simogo wanted to tell their story, and you know what? Hell yeah. Hell Fuckin Yeah.
So what kind of game is Sayonara Wild Hearts? Well, that’s easy: all of them. This game is so fundamentally unconcerned with its mechanical presentation that it seamlessly transitions between a sequence where you’re riding your motorcycle down a city street collecting hearts to the beat of the music and one where you’ve gotta tap X (or your screen) at just the right moment to dodge an incoming fireball or fight back. There are first-person shooter sequences, top-down bullet hell sequences, side-scrolling shoot-em-up sequences and psychedelic platforming sequences, all neatly packaged in this rhythmic arcade game. It’s complete chaos, but never once did I get the feeling like it was directionless chaos.
How does it play? Pretty well, actually, though I did have small gripes with the controls on both a gamepad and using the touchscreen of my iPhone. Moment-to-moment movement felt way better on the gamepad than it does with touch controls, while instant actions like quick-time events felt way better with touch controls than they did on the gamepad. But the one thing Sayonara Wild Hearts wants you to know is that it refuses to sacrifice the story it’s telling for gameplay.
There is no permanent failure state in Sayonara Wild Hearts. You can die by running into things, falling off things or being hit by projectiles, but the respawn is instant. If you die repeatedly in the same area, the game will actually pause itself and ask you if you’d like to move onto the next segment of the level. And there’s no punishment for this, either: if you don’t get enough points in a level, the worst you’ll get is a bronze rank. I never got lower than that. I suppose it’s possible but probably really, really exceedingly difficult to do. Sayonara Wild Hearts simply wants you to progress and not worry about if you’re enough of an eLitE pRo GaMeR to do so.
Which is not to say this game isn’t challenging! Especially toward the end, I had to make my way through a combined onslaught of enemy types and obstacles that tested my reflexes pretty heavily — all while also crying at the experience I was having. It’s hard to ride a motorcycle at 300 miles an hour through a city with changing gravity while bawling, I tell ya what.
Sayonara Wild Hearts does a lot in a very short time. Its musical score serves to enhance the experience and no single part of the game overstays its welcome. I finished the game in an hour, if that. But I have a feeling it’ll stick with me for much longer. Go get it on Apple Arcade, PS4 or the Nintendo Switch – you won’t regret it!
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. If you want to support No Escape with dollars I guess, check out our Patreon!