I do enjoy evading its many electric walls, though they’re never really advanced beyond being static barriers. This one lays a solid foundation for the later levels that eventually kick everything up a gear. It’s a quick, well-paced level that introduces the rapid-fire corners I quite enjoy. I sort of forgot about Hearts & Swords until I played through the game for a third time in the arcade mode. It’s also one of the slower levels, which could have worked well if the concept was explored more thoroughly.

It’s all about quickly navigating your way around incoming shapes, desperately squeezing through tight gaps to survive. It’s a sort of “game within a game”, transporting you into the boxy world of a VR headset. It lacks the assured direction of the game’s best sequences, and ditching the car after a single level means that the concept feels like a total non-starter. Driving this hulking, drifting car is a novel experience at first, but my initial run felt largely aimless as I careened haphazardly across the multiple roads. This one suffers from controls that feel a little… off. Subsequent runs have dulled the frustration considerably, but it still feels cheap. I love the idea behind it, with multiple versions of the same road switching on the beat, but by the time you’re dealing with 3 different layouts, you'll be ready to tear your hair out. The problem is that the bike’s turn is too slow to react to obstacles naturally, which, as I say, forces you to memorise what’s coming. Parallel Universes is that bad idea at its most aggravating. In its worst moments, Sayonara demands that you memorize all incoming obstacles, repeating the same 5 seconds of gameplay repeatedly until you win.

Sayonara wild hearts gif