People who like Rez don’t just like Rez, they love Rez, the 2001 game which blended electronic music and on-rails shooting. It’s a game likened to a religious experience that opens one’s eyes to the possible. And while I’ve always had an intellectual respect for Rez, my repeated attempts to make it past the first few areas failed for a pretty important reason: I cannot stand the music. Electronic music does less than nothing for me, I actively dislike it. Without that, Rez falls apart. But pop music? Pop music has always been, and continues to be, a genre that speaks deeply to me I love its deceptive simplicity—and its bubblegum formulaic construction. I love the way it can make you nod your head and tap your feet—and curse a catchy chorus that refuses to leave your head. Most importantly, it makes me happy.

Sayonara Wild Hearts, the latest from the visionaries behind Year Walk and Device 6, is my Rez. It’s an interactive pop album, a fusion of game and music, a shooter and a rhythm game. It’s an experience that’s Carly Rae Jepsen by way of Anamanaguchi, an infectious album of music that, on its own, would be excellent, but the journey of flying through its pulsing beats and wavy vocals is inexorably enhanced through play. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call playing Sayonara Wild Hearts a religious experience, but at times...it felt close.

Have you ever listened to a favorite album and let your imagination wander? That’s what playing Sayonara Wild Hearts is like, except someone took that dream and let you play it. Or if you’ve been to a live concert where there’s been a strong visual accompaniment alongside the music, Sayonara Wild Hearts is what’d happen if they then handed everyone a controller.

Nothing in Sayonara Wild Hearts works without the music, and to that end, the music is spectacular. If it were released as its own pop soundtrack, nobody would blink. It’s full of synths and distant, echo-y vocals that’d be perfect in the car as you head towards the beach. It’s clearly been recorded with the gameplay beats in mind, but if it works fine without them. The soundtrack hasn’t been released anywhere (yet), but the launch trailer has a great song:

The act of playing Sayonara Wild Hearts is, at first, straightforward, but as things progress, becomes increasingly hard to pin down, jumping between genres at the breakneck pace of a shaky pop single trying to avoid wearing out its welcome, without realizing everyone would be fine if it took a chance to breathe a little. The breaking of a woman’s heart suddenly puts the universe’s balance in peril, prompting her to be unceremoniously plucked from her bedroom and whisked to a strange world of bright colors, bright lights, and bright hearts. One minute you’re soaring through a trippy version of Rainbow Road, the next you’re straddling a motorcycle through a burning city. You also, at one point, fight an enormous mechanical wolf, and later put on a virtual reality ma—look, you get the point, and I don’t want to spoil much.