Kickflipping your way across Japan in Denshattack! is a thrilling joy

If you have spent time around a generation of people who played a lot of games on the Sega Dreamcast or Saturn, you will eventually hear the term “blue skies games.” Games like Jet Set Radio, Daytona USA, Outrun, Crazy Taxi, and more. Games about blasting through beautiful places at great speeds without a care in the world, fueled by a banging soundtrack. Plenty of games in recent years have sought to recreate that feeling, but few have managed to capture the vibe of the digital equivalent of a breeze running through your hair as Denshattack! has.

The game follows Emi and her ever-growing gang of misfits and social outcasts teaming up to travel across Japan in their Densha, performing sick skateboarding tricks like manuals and ollies on train tracks, wallriding off of buildings, slaloming through ruined cities as if they were half pipes, all while reconnecting with nature, fighting back against big tech, and forming friendships. Even if its unique control scheme and track layout can take some time to get used to, once things start to click, everything about it is raw delight. Denshattack! is an antidote for cynicism, and a cure for defeatism. All bolstered by set pieces that feel properly spectacular, along with one of the best soundtracks of the year.

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Denshattack! follows Emi and her ever-growing gang of misfits and social outcasts.

Trick, flip, it’s all in the mind

The biggest hurdle to becoming enamored by Denshattack’s charm is getting to grips with its controls. You will certainly find yourself more at ease if you’ve played your fair share of the Tony Hawk games, performing directional inputs to combo out tricks when you ollie and hit jumps, but there are two catches. Firstly, this game only supports analogue input; if you grew up with the original PlayStation versions of Tony Hawk and religiously believe those games should be played with a D-pad, I have bad news for you. The other, probably more noticeable, difference is the distinct lack of freedom to roam.

Most tracks in Denshattack! are point-to-point. While there might be some branching routes, you will start somewhere and have to reach an endpoint, while being scored based on a combination of your trick score, your time, and side challenges you compete. If you were sold on this game by someone presenting it as Tony Hawk meets trains, you can probably hear emergency brake alarm bells ringing as you have flashbacks to Downhill Jam. Thankfully, in practice, these levels feel less like linear chores where tricks don’t matter, and more like balancing acts that will have you quick-resetting as you learn the track layout and juggle between putting on a show and getting through levels as fast as possible.

The aforementioned levels are broken up with the help of Tony Hawk 1-3 inspired two-minute-long time score attack levels that focus solely on score, complete with combos taking you into extra time. On top of that, there are also several Tony Hawk 4 through THUG 2 style open-ish levels where you have several challenges across a large map and have to figure out the right lines (see what I did there?) to take you to different parts of the level. It works shockingly well, and a large part of that is down to the breakneck speed of it all. No level drags, and almost every single one has a fun gimmick or stylistic choice on top of the variety of structure.

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Denshattack! feels so good to play once you get used to the controls.

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There are some great set pieces in the game.

Speed, Sightseeing and Spectacle

Speaking of speed, it is probably one of Denshattack’s greatest assets. The game feels so damn fast. In fact, the sense of speed on the track is so great that it continues the ongoing lineage of indies that manage to capture the spirit of Sonic the Hedgehog better than those games do. It might appear an odd point of comparison, but the movement system — and how generally restrained you have to be with inputting directions so as not to veer off course — is actually pretty similar to 3D Sonic games.

Denshattack’s stylized art also helps mitigate one of the biggest problems with creating Sonic-esque linear levels that you blast through in seconds. The focus on style over fidelity has clearly allowed Undercoders and its partners to create a lot more levels and assets that you will blow past at such pace that it’s only really the broad strokes of the Japanese countryside or domed megacities that they need to capture.

That isn’t to say there isn’t detail and care here. Local landmarks litter each level, and if you’ve visited any of the regions featured in the game, you’ll probably recognize some of the references to real-world locales. This is paired with a nice journal kept by Emi’s new best friend and zine author, Fernando, outlining bits of local culture and the game’s post-post-apocalyptic lore that expands as you grab collectables across different tracks in each region.

However, the secret sauce that ties the whole experience together has to be the set pieces. From fighting a magical girl mecha formed by transforming train carriages, to an end sequence that is up there with Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s big finale as an experience that will make you believe you can do anything, the unique boss levels throughout Denshattack! and the ever-evolving deluge of mechanics are a total delight.

Each of these boss fights is punctuated by some of the best music in the game, including songs from 2Mello, Tee Lopes, and even guest lyrics courtesy of Lotus Juice.

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Getting used to performing tricks takes a while.

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The stages that you play in across Japan are varied and always offer something new.

Running on time

The real wonder of Denshattack! is that there is virtually no component that doesn’t work in harmony with the rest to make the game better. Like the national rail service it’s inspired by, Denshattack! is a well-oiled machine, mechanically complex and rewarding, but breezy and relaxed enough to be enjoyed by almost anyone.

Characters in Denshattack! might not be the most complex, but each crew member and rival gets a few moments to highlight their charming personalities and grow. The game’s not-so-subtle anti-AI message works well with the blue-sky nature of the rest of the package, harkening back to a time when art was created for the joy of the craft and the joy of play.