Denshattack! PS5 Review. From reveal to release, there are very few games that have had me as intrigued as Denshattack! An arcade esque platforming romp where you control a train hurtling down a variety of obstacle courses, doing tricks and jumping from rail to rail; it itches the part of my brain that wants a new Sonic game, and goes far beyond just that.
Denshattack! takes a simple concept and spends the entire game constantly building and developing these fundamentals into something that fully satisfies the potential I thought it had. In terms of mechanics and pure spectacle, Denshattack! aims for the stars and nearly perfectly sticks the landing, only very slightly threatening to go beyond its reach.
Denshattack! Review (PS5) – Surfing The Subway In Style
A Concept As Simple As You Can Get
The conceit of Denshattack! is deceptively simple; what if you could skateboard, but as a train? It’s the type of idea that a toddler would come up with while playing with their toys, and yet Denshattack! proves that such playful concepts have the potential for mighty legs to stand on. Over the course of a shockingly long campaign, you begin as just skating and tricking off of rails, into wall-riding and grinding down particularly treacherous roads.
Being set across the entire nation of Japan following a climate crisis event, each track of the game goes between urban wrecks, natural skate formations, and populated urban spaces, and consistently introduces both new mechanical and visual set pieces to explore. Mostly down to the fact that you’re going that fast, you’re never in one area for too long.
Most main stages will have you moving through a linear course to a defined end point, with the main goal of just getting to the end with as many points or as fast as you can for the sake of getting a better rank. Each stage has defined time and score goals to aim for, as well as a selection of bespoke hidden collectables and tasks called “dares” to complete. Most of these only contribute to better ranks, but spray cans and gears can be spent in garages across the game to unlock new trains to ride.
There are a handful of other levels included, that encourage a more free-flowing approach; particular levels task you with following several objective markers across a bigger stage that folds in on itself, others are more traditional three-lap races, and there are also score-attack stages. As fun as these are, I felt that the score-attack levels are pitifully easy, and never manage to push me to newer heights to succeed. Not that there’s an issue with the game pushing you forward, but I never felt encouraged to learn beyond my means.
To boil this down, you’ll be jumping off ramps, drifting around corners, and chaining tricks together in order to get as many points as possible.
More Than You Bargained For
Based purely on the premise, I wasn’t expecting Denshattack! to offer anything more than a light premise to string the game’s levels along. What I found was a shockingly earnest story about discovering your latent potential, and transforming potential into action.
Emi is a humble ramen delivery driver who is scouted out to dive into the world of Denshattack, a rebellious sport practiced outside of the domed cities of civilisation following a climate crisis. These walled cities live shrouded lives, believing that the outer world is a total wasteland, where those living outside the walls are living relatively normal lives.
This tension between inner and outer drives much of the ‘conflict’ at the heart of Denshattack!’s story, outside of Emi’s own personal development. Starting from the bottom of the pile, her journey takes her across the entire country of Japan, defeating the clan leaders of every area and proving herself as the queen of the sport.
Each self-contained chapter invites a new ‘threat’ for Emi to deal with, but each are characterised in fun ways, and none of them are especially antagonistic. Saturday Morning would be the best way to summarise it without getting into some of the brilliantly quippy cast, with each bringing something new to the cabin, without feeling like they’re slipping too far into tropes.
Denshattack! is a game that encourages you to succeed and believe in yourself, and that comes through the encouragement from this ensemble cast should you derail. It’s never a disparaging punch-down, it’s almost always something to lift you back up and get you ready for the next go-around.
Sights and Sounds of the Rails
Denshattack! has an unmistakable anime inspiration that is used to the absolute full throughout the runtime of its levels. Each area that you speed through is blessed with an incredibly vibrant coat of paint, alongside an artstyle that disguises simplicity under interesting design that had me looking forward to every mission.
If I’m not going to be slowing down to inspect every aspect of the environment, there’s no reason for the game to waste resources on stuff that I will see for literally half-a-second. Focus is put elsewhere to make a readable experience for the player, and this is vital when considering how quick the obstacles come around the corner.
Level design is supported by an astonishingly good score that again feels like a far-cry to an era that never saw past the early-2000s, and that is absolutely a compliment. No more is this obvious than in the various boss fights across the game, being ostensibly extensions to the main plot.
Each “region” of the game ends with a landmark boss that tends to take the action off the outside rails, and into some stratospheric backwards and forwards that tests your ability to read the environment and improvise on the spot. None of the bosses are exactly the same, with the very first boss being a battle between a giant mecha, and Emi’s humble hometown train.
That description does little to convey the sheer lunacy of it all, but this early demonstration shows that Denshattack! is not a game that is happy to meander through the beginning of an adventure for old time’s sake.
Layers Upon Layers Upon Layers
Denshattack!’s approach to unlockables is where I think the marriage between arcade and linearity comes into a bit of a flux; with the exception of a limited few, most of the abilities that you unlock are only useful in levels that directly call for you to use them. Unlocking the ability to wall-ride is very fun, but doesn’t encourage you to go back and find alternate routes through levels.
This is true for basically your entire moveset, and means that replaying earlier levels for higher scores can feel too simple after you’ve already made it closer to the end. Each train that you purchase tends to have a pretty similar base moveset, with only a few specific traits being changed between each. No matter what, you’ll be pulling off the same tricks, it’s just that some trains will give you higher scores for certain actions, and punish you for others. It’s a score thing, mostly.
The inverse is also true, where I sometimes felt that Denshattack! was on the verge to toppling the delicate card tower of mechanics. Each trick that you can use has a dedicated button during play, and I was having to constantly jump between each one, praying that I could remember commands in quick succession.
This is the definition of a practice-based issue, but it did feel that the game was pushing the limits of what it could do with this kind of track design. There’s nothing better than seeing a game totally explore its premise, but it feels that there’s a third bowl of porridge here. That being said, Denshattack! remains a full exploration of the concept of skateboarding trains.
Enjoy The Journey
All this being said, Denshattack! was a delight from start to end, and is packed with enough charm to support what is a pretty substantial campaign. While replaying starter levels can feel far too simple, and I feel like there is definitely more space for challenging goals across the board, this is an undeniably brilliant game that absolutely shines.
For my concerns about pushing the boundaries of player coordination at points, you can’t say that it hasn’t fully embraced the idea of skateboarding trains. And that’s what counts. There is nothing worse than finishing a game and feeling that there was something missing, and that concepts were left on the table as ‘potential’.
In how it delivers a genuinely earnest narrative and lets itself do the talking, Denshattack! is something special that harkens back to a simpler time. I just pray that the soundtrack releases sooner rather than later.
Denshattack releases on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on July 15.
Review code kindly provided by the publisher!