I never really got Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, but this surprise Switch 2 game finally has me grinding rails
Denshattack! is the definition of a fresh new idea
There's a big old genre of gaming that I've never quite got to grips with, despite a lot of trying, and that's skating games. I've never been a real-life skater, but the fashion and attitude has always been attractive, and that's meant I've tried over and over to get into giants of the genre like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, without ever really finding my jam.
Little did I know that the way I'd finally get my satisfaction was to swap skating on a board for literally tricking an entire train – the barmy premise of Denshattack!, which is out now on basically all platforms. It sees you take on the role of a train driver in a world where trains can do things you'd basically never believe outside of an anime.
Luckily, anime is very much the aesthetic here, as you make your way through a sci-fi future Japan full of abandoned train tracks. This is a world where rebels pilot trains in a sport called Denshattack, and do so much like skaters, pulling off wild tricks, rail grinds and more.
You drop into a course with a set objective, whether it's to make it to the end of a more linear one or to get a certain amount of combo points in an open-ended arena, and from there it's all about free-styling your way to success. With a variety of button presses, you can jump, drift around corners, and pull off tricks in the air, and chaining these moves together is your best path to profit and speed.
Each track also has a range of secrets to find, from collectables to interactions with the passing world (using your train's horn to startle some birds, for instance). These give you stretch goals to keep an eye out for as you race, and they're consistently fun to achieve.
The aesthetic is also great, all cel-shaded and stylish, with really colourful stages that zip past with an impressive sense of speed. Back in the days of the Switch 1, I think this is a textbook example of a game that might have been really compromised either by blurry visuals or a lower frame rate, but on the Switch 2 it's been a buttery-smooth joy both in docked and handheld mode.
I didn't expect it to get its hooks into me, but a few hours in I'm really loving the core design choices at play. The game's welcoming if you just want to experience its pulpy story and don't have that much manual skill to get high scores, but the skill ceiling is incredibly high for those who want to find it.
This is one of those games that you have to see in motion to really appreciate, and I'm confident that watching the trailer I embedded further up this story will go a long way towards clarifying whether it's for you. Don't be put off by the story, either – it's littered with skip buttons if you just want to get to the train-skating.
That's what I've been doing, honestly, and I've had a stellar time doing it. Weird games are the way forward, I think, and this is a great example of a low-cost game that deserves to build up a cult audience.
