Blog | Review
Denshattack! is one of those rare games that feels familiar in its aims, but completely fresh in its execution. It takes place in a world ravaged by climate change, where most of humanity now lives inside corporate-controlled domes. Outside of that carefully managed society, you play as a woman selling ramen from an old train.
The rails, unfortunately, have seen better days. While you are technically still travelling on tracks, getting around means jumping gaps, pulling off kickflips, grinding rails, and chaining together tricks in ways that make your train feel more like a skateboard than a vehicle.
Early on, you meet someone who introduces you to Denshattack, a sport where train drivers compete to be as cool, stylish, and fast as possible. Honestly, why wouldn’t you get involved?
The world around the sport is just as charming as the sport itself. Some people compete, while others make a living by decorating trains, creating zines, and celebrating the culture around these stylish rail-riding daredevils. It gives the game a strong sense of personality, even before things start getting truly strange.
At first, you are simply learning how to turn properly, which takes more skill than you might expect. Before long, though, you are pulling off increasingly absurd stunts, chaining tricks together, and pushing your train far beyond anything resembling sensible public transport.
Denshattack! does not stop at tricks and time trials. The game also features boss fights, and while we will not spoil them here, they become wonderfully ridiculous.
As you progress, you learn new techniques that expand what is possible. Manuals let you connect tricks and grinds for higher scores, while later abilities allow you to grind along magnetic forces surrounding the world. These appear as psychedelic rainbow trainlines, which is about as wonderfully unhinged as it sounds.
There is almost no way to describe Denshattack! without making it sound completely wild, and that is part of its appeal. It is strange, stylish, loud, and refreshing in a way that makes it stand out immediately.
At its heart, Denshattack! is about fighting back against evil megacorporations while performing ridiculous train tricks with as much style as possible. That combination works far better than it has any right to.
The characters are engaging, the boss battles are memorable, and the side objectives give you plenty of reasons to replay levels in search of higher scores and better medals. It also becomes surprisingly challenging after the opening stages, but once you hit that flow state and start chaining everything together, it feels fantastic.
Denshattack! is bold, energetic, and gloriously odd. If you like games that take a simple idea and push it somewhere completely unexpected, this is absolutely one to watch.
