Rez

Rez is a 2002 on-rails music shooter game developed by United Game Artists and released by SEGA.

Gameplay
Rez is a rail shooter, meaning the player moves automatically. The player, as Swayzak, navigates through five areas full of viruses that Swayzak must destroy.

Development
The game had three working titles over the course of its development: K-Project, Vibes, and Project Eden.

Swayzak went through many different designs throughout the development; at one point, he was going to be wearing headphones; another, he'd be sitting on a couch. These designs more strictly resembled a human being, one of them sporting orange hair and wearing jeans and a yellow sweater. Swayzak was also to hold a remote sometime in the game's development before that was replaced by the Lock-on Laser.

Music like "Come to Daddy" by Aphex Twin and "Music Response" by the Chemical Brothers were used as placeholders in the game's beta. Underworld's songs "Rez" and "Born Slippy" were part of this beta; when Underworld found the game involved shooting things, they denied Mizuguchi the rights to their music, but seconds-long samples of the two songs are left over in the actual game.

Plot
In the future, the information network K-Project is the source of all information. The network's AI, Eden, processes this information.

But one day, she becomes infected by a virus named Swayzak, and thus so overloaded with information that she starts to question her existence. She shuts the network down, along with herself.

Now, Swayzak, who has entered the network again, must find a way to repel the attack he caused and awaken Eden.