Has there ever been a clearer and purer game pitch than “Tony Hawk but you’re a train“?
Denshattack is a game I have been both playing a lot of but also thinking about a lot. About how fun it is, yes, but also about how it’s so clearly a game about a weird strain of nostalgia, a heavy word in video games (and the wider culture) these days, but one Denshattackis able to sail right past like a speeding train on a grinding rail.
Where so much video game nostalgia has uspining for eras in time, orsqueezing the life out of decades-old intellectual properties, or even just paying direct homage to the genres of yesterday, Denshattackfeels like a glimpse both backwards and forwards at once, into a better timeline than our own. One where, instead of witnessing stuff like mass layoffs and the slow and agonising death of Xbox, we’re all celebrating this as a launch title for the Dreamcast 4.
Which OK, is not the strict definition of nostalgia. Maybe we need a different word, one for looking back then pining for a present we never had, something that speaks to the past and draws a line forwards from there. Because I didn’t idly name-drop the Dreamcast there; this feels absolutely like a Dreamcast game in all the best ways imaginable, just one that has become something a bit more modern, while losing none of what makes a label like that special.
There’s a frantic, joyous energy to Denshattack, which is actually simpler than the ‘Tony Hawk But Train’ pitch above, because at least in Tony Hawk you had some freedom of movement. Here you’re on rails nearly the entire time–you’re driving a train, that’s how they work–but what you lose in exploration and 360-degree skating you gain in the precision thrill of an on-rails platformer, and the never-ending assault on your senses because there is wild shit happening on the screen at all times.
I don’t know the last time I played a video game and said “oh that is fucking cool” out loud so often. It happens multiple times per level! You can pull off a combo of sick jumps and grinds and spins, only to have the track explode beneath you while you fall into a mountain, only to then blast out of the mountain and have to surf on some waves, only to then land in a ruined city where there are giant robots smashing around the place. There are colours everywhere, everything is going POW and WOWand you’re doing skating moves the whole time through and man, it just puts a smile on my face the whole time. Look at this!
Fuck, it’s so good! Go play it, it rules.
