I fear I’ve authored some kind of Boy Who Cried Wolf situation, vis à vis Denshattack. It’s shown signs of greatness ever since its reveal last year, but in hindsight, I wonder if my enthusiasm for its silly side – it is undeniably a game about trains doing skateboard-style flips and grinds, sometimes while chased by giant baseballs – ever contributed to an impression of it as a mere novelty. A joke game, disinterested in anything beyond breakneck wackiness.
I hope not. Because Denshattack is utterly and genuinely brilliant, and not just because it lets you blow up an AI data centre by ploughing a locomotive through it.
A while prior to doing the Lord’s work, you – or rather Emi, your profoundly anime-eyebrowed train driver character – are running a humble ramen-on-rails service. Rail, apparently, is the only way to travel across a climate-ravaged Japan, where the rich have retreated into a network of domed cities while everyone else scrabbles for tonkotsu in the rubble. One delivery, however, sees Emi pivot to a country-spanning career in Denshattack: the art of physics-disregarding stunt racing, only some of which is actually on-rails.
To Denshattackers, train driving – and I use the phrase loosely, as this has about as much in common with real railway operation as One Punch Man does with boxing – is a rebellious, yet also spiritual and even mystical endeavour. It’s illegal, with themed gangs formed around it, but then these ruffians know the secrets to beyond-the-veil techniques that Emi must learn to progress.
Quickly, these coalesce into a driving style that feels both unique among games and very, very generous with the ol’ dopamine dispensers. Whether you’re multi-track drifting down a hill or grinding over a ruined bridge, the sense of barely-controlled velocity is delicious, and the ease with which the thumbstick flick-based trick system can be picked up hides enough digit-coiling depth to keep score attack chasers entertained for hours. The game’s Tricktionary (great name) lists every individual move and its corresponding input manoeuvre, and the only way I could pull some of these off is by surgically retrofitting my bones with additional joints.
The drip feed of new skills, which start utilitarian before deciding to just let you ride rainbows, also helps keep things fresh across the nine-ish hours of story stages. So too do the set pieces, which aren’t just reserved for climactic boss duels – almost every normal stage seems to have at least one smile-raising megastunt, or a moment where you’re served some ravishing view of an enduringly verdant Japan. Few games have an eye for spectacle as wide or as keen as Denshattack’s, including its most obvious influences of Jet Set Radio and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
It’s not just dumb fun, though. You do not, to quote the classic cop-out expression, “switch your brain off” and simply absorb the spectacle. There is earnest challenge here: the price of Denshattack moving so bloody fast is that you really must pay attention to rapidly approaching hazards, adding a demand for reflexes more akin to another source of inspiration, pacey rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution. I also learned, the derail-y way, to watch out for new stretches of track suddenly falling out of the sky. Multiple stages take place amid collapsing skyscrapers or in the middle of tornadoes, so reacting to last-gasp level-rearranging becomes as much of a skill as balancing grinds.
And, while you never strictly need to master advanced tricks, securing any halfway decent score does require chaining flips and manuals into lengthy, multiplier-raising combos. The risk/reward ratio of these can be immense, with one errant jump or mistimed dodge instantly ending an entire track’s worth of built-up bonuses. Having something to lose like this heightens the emotions as effectively as any grand action moment – stacking up a 30x combo is rapturous, and losing it is agonising. That this heart-wrenching happens to take place inside a bright yellow and impossibly airborne limited express is neither here nor there.
Besides, those spectacles only exist because developers Undercoders were inventive enough to dream them up. Without wanting to spoil too much, here are some certified Rad as Hell things to do with a train that LNER never thought of: Mech fights. Kabuki theatre performances. Boat hijackings. Deer prison breakouts. Guitar Hero. There is a section that is literally Guitar Hero. Denshattack also commits to the bit, with regular dramatic camera shifts and giddyingly high-energy OST tunes that juggle funk, rock, jazz, and electronic bops. Many of these songs appear to have been commissioned with the brief of ‘Make a fun song with train lyrics’, evidently a wise use of the audio budget.
As several of those set-pieces will tell you, Denshattack also loves invoking elements of wider Japanese culture, which can be a risky business for Western developers like the Spain-based Undercoders. Do read Ashley Schofield’s piece on Coffee Talk Tokyo, and how Japan-set games can borrow the country’s aesthetic and iconography without engaging with it on a societal level, if you haven’t already. It was certainly in my head whenever Emi produced yet another ramen bowl, or when her burgeoning revolutionary ambitions were put on hold for another pre-race onsen visit.
Still, I don’t think Denshattack is just surface level Cool Japan propaganda. While it never puts anyone up against the wall, its biggest antagonists are a power-grabbing, AI-hocking big tech conglomerate who’ve become the nation’s de facto government, making Emi’s rejection of authority and conformity play more specifically into Japanese counterculture. This is represented more overtly by the different Denshattack gangs you battle and, usually, befriend: Emi ends up collecting yankii, gyaru, and pompadoured rockabilly pals like they’re Pokemon, and there are clear parallels between outlawed Denshattack crews and the real-life bōsōzoku motorcycle subculture. Genuine wrong’uns like corrupt private cops and the Yakuza are, in contrast, soundly thrashed then left behind.
If I did have to dig out some criticisms, I’d probably shrug towards one specific Denshattacking upgrade that lets you drive on inverted tracks. Logically, if such a word can apply here, it’s no more outlandish than previously-taught techniques, but it’s introduced just a bit too late to fully grasp the up-is-down, left-is right braintwisting of it before the finale. And on the subject of practice, it’s strange that there’s no free ride mode, even as an unlockable extra. The closest thing you get are the story missions in looping trick parks, which (like all levels) are replayable anytime, but will also repeat the original time limit.
That’s all I got, though. Denshattack is overwhelmingly joyous, wonderfully vibrant, and far too smart to be dismissed as just that comedy train kickflip game. It is, in fact, the best thing I’ve played so far this year. Did I mention you get to blow up a data centre?