Rez HD

Rez HD brought to Xbox Live Arcade one of the strangest and, at the same time, most beautiful games of the turn of the millennium, originally released on the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. The premise is simple to the point of austerity: as a wireframe figure, the player races along a predetermined path through an abstract cyberspace, locks onto enemies by dragging the cursor, and releases the button to send a volley of up to eight homing shots at them. The magic lies in the fact that every hit isn't just a sound effect, but a beat in the rhythm. As the level progresses, the track layers up, adding percussion and melody, and the player becomes a co-creator of the music he's listening to.

The game is divided into several areas representing what feels like layers of a digital network, culminating in a battle against a giant boss. The character evolves and devolves depending on how many hits it takes, replacing a classic health bar. Besides the main campaign, Rez also offers unlockable training modes and a so-called fifth area, which is more of a meditative ride than a game. It's all over quickly, but it's the kind of title players return to again and again, because it's an experience of mood rather than content.

The Xbox 360 version bumped the resolution up to high-definition, smoothed out the wireframe models, raised the frame rate, and added surround sound, which for a game built on synesthesia makes an enormous difference. The visuals are purely vector-based and geometric, so they've aged remarkably well; today it still looks just as stylish as it did on release. The original concept's creator is Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and his obsession with linking music, image and vibration shows up in every single second. Critics received the XBLA release enthusiastically, calling it one of the proofs that digital distribution can rescue overlooked gems. Rez's influence is visible across a whole generation of music-driven action games that came after it. Today it plays like a short but extraordinarily focused experience, one worth going through in a single sitting on a darkened evening with headphones on.