Throughout my 10+ hours with Denshattack!, my brain was engaged. It had to be, otherwise I missed a dead-end jump-off point, I careened into a building, I was wiped out by a tidal wave seemingly summoned by Poseidon himself. This is a game about reflexes and innate responses to any given situation.
It got a bit much toward the end of the game, with the skill check hitting me like a ton of bricks, but Denshattack! is a simply ravishing, raucous, and rip-roaring good time, packed with content, and if you want a spiritual OG Tony Hawk’s successor, then I choo choo choose this.
A Veritable Skatopia
To be a Denshattacker is to master an indestructible train that moves at ungodly speeds, pulling off more tricks and revolutions than Rodney Mullen and Bob Burnquist in their heyday, all the while staying on the track and showing everyone who’s conducting this madness.
As Emi, you start as a lowly ramen-delivery driver, and it isn’t long before you start battling some of Japan’s fiercest Denshattackers, with each character being as animated as the last.
The story isn’t the game’s strong suit, and I kind of wanted to skip the cutscenes towards the end to play more levels, but it’s a respectable, albeit bog-standard, beat-the-boss, they join your crew, move onto the next, and defeat the bad guy at the end kind of story.
Solid and unspectacular, which can’t be said of the gameplay.
The game has over 30 trains, each with major upsides and downsides that affect the game’s core mechanics: Speed, tricks, points earned, grinds, manuals—everything you’d want from a skateboarding-adjacent game is here.
The Most Ridiculous Game I’ve Ever Played
Some levels zip by quicker than a turbo-charged Shinkansen, whereas some are extreme gauntlets that can take close to 10 minutes, and blinking is almost considered a sin. Levels feature mini-objectives to complete, a top score to beat, and a best time to topple. The replayability is staggering, and fully completing Denshattack! could send you off the rails.
There’s a decent amount of variety, with race levels giving you three laps of the same circuit, and objective-based levels, whereby you have three to five tasks to complete, and need to choose your routes carefully. In Denshattack, I’ve ridden rockets, Ferris Wheels, battled darkness, dodged hazards, and evaded death more than Evil Knievel, and made sure to land a kickflip (again, with a train) whilst doing so to keep my combo going.
My personal favorites were the boss levels, which were so bonkers that not even Dizzee Rascal could comprehend their insanity. It was hilarious as I questioned how they could get more ridiculous: I promise you, they did. I don’t want to spoil them, but different genres of game enter the fray, you fight iconic Japanese creatures…and I can’t say anymore, you’ll just have to see for yourself.
You gain a new ability or two throughout the game’s nine chapters, and there are dozens of levels. However, I started to feel a bit tired toward the end, and like I was starting to play the same level and segments over and over—you can have too much of a good thing.
The final few levels, in particular, are also so punishing.
The great thing about Denshattack! is that—outside of the race levels, where you need to finish top three—you can’t really fail.
But the homestretch is gruelling, especially one gravity-defying ability that adds to a lot of other controls you need to remember. Also, Denshattack presumes you have the reaction time of a cat, and there were so many times I crashed without even knowing what hit me.
Trial and error creeps more than I would like, but those who want to perfect the game will have a blast mastering the myriad of mechanics.
A Treat For All The Senses
I basically summised by saying the story is decent, but not even Harry Houdini couldn’t escape how good the art is during cutscenes, non-spoken conversations, and Denshattack in general. It’s your typical vibrant anime art style, but everything about every level pops and punches you in the face with its dazzling beauty.
I’m going to have a blast watching other people play this, not so I can watch their gameplay, but so I can enjoy the carefully curated world that exudes style. Such a fast game means it’s hard to appreciate what is unfolding before you. Keeping a fixed eye on a grind rail meter means I can’t appreciate the finer touches of the falling building I’m whizzing past.
These sad moments are offset by the soundtrack; my goodness, the soundtrack pops. Every level is a pulsating, electro-charged, trancey, bouncing, buzzing fusion of tried and tested anime elements that will have J-Pop lovers in heaven.
I would go as far as saying that Denshattack’s gameplay could be so bad that I wouldn’t care. Many components make up a game, and the art and sound here necessitate a ticket to ride.
Denshattack! Review Verdict
Developer Undercoders has thrown a lot into the pot with Denshattack!, and for the most part, it works. Nearly every level is riveting, and the fast-paced action means you don’t have a single second to disengage. There are plenty of fun sections thrown in for variety, and levels are designed for a round trip or two.
Denshattack! feels like a test ride in some ways, but it’s an incredible first run out, and a train ride that rarely loses steam.
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Denshattack!
Andy is Insider Gaming's Senior Evergreen Editor and has been in the games journalism sphere in one way or another for over 7 years. His video game taste is as…
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