Rez | |
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Developer(s) | United Game Artists |
Publisher(s) | |
Director(s) | Jun Kobayashi |
Producer(s) | Tetsuya Mizuguchi |
Designer(s) | Hiroyuki Abe Katsuhiko Yamada |
Artist(s) | Katsumi Yokota |
Platform(s) | Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4 |
Release | |
Genre(s) | Rail shooter, music game |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Rez / Gamer's Guide to… | |
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Soundtrack album by Various | |
Released | January 23, 2002 |
Genre | Video game soundtrack |
Length | 62:01 |
Label | Music Mine Inc. |
Rez Infinite | |
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Soundtrack album by Various | |
Released | January 2017 |
Genre | Video game soundtrack |
Length | 71:16 |
Label | Iam8bit |
Aggregate score | |
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Aggregator | Score |
Metacritic | 78/100 (PS2) 89/100 (X360) 89/100 (PSVR) |
Review scores | |
Publication | Score |
1UP.com | A+ (X360) |
Edge | 9/10 (DC, PS2, PSVR) |
Famitsu | 31/40 (DC) 32/40 (PS2) |
GameSpot | 7.9/10 (PS2) 8.5/10 (X360) 9/10 (PSVR) |
IGN | 8.6/10 (X360) 8.2/10 (PSVR) |
Rez is a musical rail shooter developed by United Game Artists and published by Sega for the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. It was released in Japan on November 2001, followed by releases to the United States and Europe in January 2002. The game has since seen two remasters: Rez HD, released to the Xbox Live Arcade in 2008, and Rez Infinite, developed for PlayStation VR and released to the PlayStation Network in October 2016. Inspired by the work of Russian painter, Wassily Kandinsky, the game was developed under the working title K-Project, and was conceptualized and produced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi. Rez is notable for replacing the typical sound effects found in most rail shooters with electronic music. The player creates sounds and melodies as they target and destroy foes in the game, leading to a form of synesthesia.
The game's development team contained several former members of the disbanded Team Andromeda, the Sega development team behind the Panzer Dragoon series. Rez Infinite, the latest version of the game created for virtual reality, was released to widespread acclaim, and is widely considered to be the best VR game to date.
Rez is a rail shooter in which the player takes control of an onscreen avatar traveling along a predetermined path through the computer network. The player does not control the overall path, only the avatar's position on the screen. The player targets foes by holding a "lock-on" button while moving an aiming reticule over up to 8 enemies. Once the "lock-on" button is released, the avatar fires shots that home in on each target. Failure to hit an enemy or projectile in time may cause a collision, which reduces the player's current evolution level by one and changes the avatar's form. The game is over if the avatar is hit while at its lowest possible level. At higher evolution levels, the avatar appears as a humanoid figure, while it appears as a pulsating sphere at the lowest level.