The evening begins with a pixelated preamble introducing us to the game, explaining that we—yes, all 19,000 of us—are now players. Our chosen fighter: “KP143,” a hyper-femme avatar pitted against an AI overlord named “Mainframe,” who has done the unthinkable—stolen the planet’s butterfly population. The stakes are cartoonishly high, but the execution leans more into shock-value than substance. 

What follows is immersive, expensive, and choreographed within an inch of its life. It’s not that Perry isn’t present—she is, in hologram and in flesh—but the show often feels like it’s happening around her rather than through her. The narrative scaffolding is dense, the visuals relentless, and somewhere between her aerial laps on a robotic butterfly and a half-hearted boss battle soundtracked by her 2011 smash “E.T.,” the music occasionally takes a backseat.

While the material from Perry’s latest, 143, barely mustered a ripple beyond the pit, the arena’s eruption during “Dark Horse,” “I Kissed a Girl,” and “Firework” served as a reminder: Perry may be chasing relevance in the cloud, but her legacy is already carved into pop’s hard drive. 

Still, there were moments when the theatrics paused just long enough for Perry’s millennial-core humour and genuinely impressive vocals to shine. During the “choose your own adventure” segment—where fans vote via QR code on which “deep cut” she’ll perform (spoiler: it was her five-times platinum single “The One That Got Away,” apparently classified as such?)—she delivered a stripped-down rendition that reminded everyone she can, in fact, sing. It was a rare moment of intimacy in a show otherwise engineered for scale.

Opening duties fell to Rebecca Black, who delivered a gloriously campy set that managed to be both ridiculous and genuinely fun. Hot off the evangelical heels of her early-2025 project SALVATION, Black resurrected with a bite-sized version of her holy roller fever dream. The set featured backup dancers wielding doomsday placards (“TIME TO REPENT,” “SALVATION IS COMING”), while Black herself stalked the stage in a sign that read “SHACKLED BY LUST? TURN TO ME.” It was absurd, committed, and—in its own twisted way—deeply entertaining.

In the end, Perry “defeats” Mainframe with a line so earnest it could double as a Hallmark card: “Power isn’t everything, Mainframe. You’ll never have what we have… heart.” It’s the kind of saccharine declaration that’s almost sweet—if it weren’t delivered amid a barrage of AI-generated visuals so meticulously crafted you’d swear a human had nothing to do with it. So, while Perry’s heart apparently triumphs over cold, calculating power, the entire show is ironically a shrine to the very technology she claims to out-feel. It’s like winning a dance-off by unplugging the speaker.

The plot is downright silly, the new songs barely register, and Perry spends half the show talking to pre-recorded robots. But honestly? She sells it. Because even when the concept short-circuits, she’s still got a few things no machine can fake: a decade’s worth of charisma, a killer smirk, and the guts to call this art.