New for RPS in 2023 is the RPS Game Club, a kind of monthly book club for games where we pick a game to play each month, write some cool stuff about it, and have a great live discussion with you, our readers, at end of it. It’s a project I’ve wanted to get going for some time now, and finally, the doors of the Treehouse Game Club have opened… and there’s toe-tapping guitar music from within? That’s right, we’re playing Hi-Fi Rush as our first RPS Game Club game, and we hope you’ll join us on this month-long musical journey.

Stealthily announced during Microsoft’s Xbox Direct showcase at the end of January, Hi-Fi Rush has been an instant Game Pass hit. An infectious rhythm action brawler from the creators of Ghostwire Tokyo and The Evil Within, Tango GameWorks, it’s all about pummeling enemies to the beat in a colorful, futuristic world filled with robots and corporate thugs. You also have a cute robot cat sidekick who acts as a makeshift metronome. What’s not to like?

You can read our Hi-Fi Rush review to see exactly what we did with it, but needless to say, it’s a game I’ve certainly been meaning to make time to play since it came out, and make it our first. The RPS Game Club game is, selfishly, a great way to go. Of course, I hope it also gives you the perfect excuse to play it too, if you haven’t already.

if you have game pass, I highly recommend grabbing it there. You can also buy it at Steam or the epic games store if you prefer. But the main reason we chose it is because it’s available on Game Pass. We don’t expect you to buy games in advance to join Game Club, and future games will generally focus on free or very cheap stuff (or other great parts of Game Pass) that (hopefully) many people can access.

If you’ve already played Hi-Fi Rush or don’t have Game Pass, don’t worry. Game Club’s main goal is to provide a fun and inclusive space to talk about great games and the things we love about them. That’s all. For our part, we’ll write a couple of articles about our chosen game throughout the month, and then at the end of the month we’ll all come together for a big live blog session where you can chat with us about that month’s pick. ask us questions about it and just generally have fun and relax chatting about something nice. You don’t have to have played it to join the live blog discussion, but it will of course help if you have.

I’m excited to see how it all pans out, and of course, if you have any suggestions for future RPS Game Club picks, please let me know in the comments below. I’ll announce the exact date and time of our Hi-Fi Rush live blog in another post closer to the end of March, but for now though, go ahead and enjoy. We look forward to hearing what you think of it in a couple of weeks.