Rez was originally a quirky shooting game for the Dreambast. It was recently re-released in HD for the xbox 360, and I highly recommend picking up that version, both because HD > SD, and because Dreamcast controller < dead turtle. Also, the game for some reason supports multiple vibrators. So with the dreamcast version, you could buy wired vibrators to put...on your body. I'll let your imagination go wild with that for a minute. On the 360, you can actually set up additional controllers to act as vibrators for you. I never saw the need, but other reviewers think it increases the immersion.

Rez is a third-person, rail-based shooter. For those of you who don't know the lingo, that means that you have a character visible on the screen, and you can't control where your character moves. Your character moves along a preset path (the "rail") and you move your cursor around to fire at enemies. You have two weapons, one of them can be used infinitely, and a "special" weapon that is really your main weapon fired really fast in every direction. You can lock your main weapon on to up to 8 enemies at once, and the more enemies you are locked onto, the more points you get. Points only really matter for the bonus stages, but destroying 8 enemies at once is rather cool. All in all, this is a rather simple game in concept. There's a joystick and two buttons, like most shooters, and that's it.

Where the game really shines though, is in the graphics and sound. The game is supposed to take place inside a computer system, like a demented Lawnmower Man or something. The computer system mimics natural scenes, but it has a very VR look to the entire thing, and everything is laid out on a visible grid. It's all very stylish. Your character has "levels" that it gains when you pick up powerups. You start out as a wirefram person, and you gradually build more and more silver tiles onto yourself, until you are a complete silver person. Then you start to meditate, and the final form is a pulsating sphere of light. There's another form after that, that you get access to when you fight the final boss, but since it kind of ties into the weird story of the game, I won't reveal it right now. The music and sound effects are the main draw of the game though. The music is a very cool techno beat (which is only cool in games, not for actually listening to, so don't go getting any ideas), and the music is mixed in real-time based on your interaction with the enemies. Your shots are fired in a rhythm that goes along with the music, and you find yourself aiming and firing in time with the music, so that everything, including the lock-on sound, is a part of the song. After I played the game, I kept seeing the patterns everywhere, it's really beautifully done, addicting, and it imprints itself on you.

The game itself is very short though, it took me roughly an hour to play all the way through it once I got good. However, it's a rails shooter, not an RPG, so the length is acceptable. They try to increase the gameplay time by making you play through the entire game all at once with no breaks, and by making the game harder the second time through, but it's still the same enemies in the same patterns. It loses half a point for being so short, despite the fact that it rocks. It also loses half a point for having irrationally hard bosses. I yawned my way through the levels and sweated my way through the bosses, I don't think that's very cool.