Denshattack! Review – Rainbow Rail
Ouch.
So far as I can tell from the pulled muscle in my neck*, this locomotive went from zero to mach 3 in the space of about a second; and also, so far as I can tell, right now it has leaped into the air and started flipping about as though a Godzilla-sized Tony Hawk is perched atop it. I hope, as my shoulder bag floats past my face, that there will be rails to slot back onto when we complete our free fall descent. Never mind: we’re grinding across a billboard now. I’m sure that the giant robot in the distance is nothing to worry about.
*record scratch*
I suppose you’re wondering how I got here? Well, the short answer is that I installed a new game onto my PC. That’s kind of boring, though. So, instead, let’s maybe say that…
It all started with the most haphazardly-delivered bowl of ramen imaginable.
Well, it technically started with an introductory lore dump, but that’s swiftly cut short so that players can quickly undertake said ramen delivery, because little details like this really aren’t important. Except that they are insofar as they can still add flavour, and, cheekily, Denshattack – a Japanese-English portmanteau of train and attack** – knows it.
Denshattack takes place in post-climate-disaster Japan, and essentially follows tracks laid south to north. As such, story and gameplay alike begin on the southernmost main island of Kyushu, in the small city of Beppu, Oita prefecture. While the adventure inevitably passes through Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo, Denshattack seems to make a point of representing parts of the country that the average English-speaker, at least, probably hasn’t given much mind to.
And so we’re delivering hot ramen via locomotive in Beppu, learning how to skid around corners, leap into the air and even slam down mid-flight as we do so. It’s a small shame that the delivery isn’t instead of Beppu-style reimen, a cold noodle dish that seems to be one of scant few local specialities, but c’est la vie. Denshattack’s combined gift and curse is a struggle for a kind of perfection that brings about often superficial cracks in the details. That it goes to the lengths to slip in these local nods really just a special sauce that further elevates something that would likely still be pretty good served plain.
The young man who receives said ramen seems impressed with the speed of delivery. Over the course of a few colourful illustrations, he wolfs down his lunch and then excitedly asks the driver, Emi, if she’s involved in Denshattack. Apparently operating locomotives at breakneck speed and bouncing them around the place like spring-loaded slot cars is an established thing in this future.
Some people need to be persuaded to undertake new endeavors; others are just waiting for an excuse. Emi may be the embodiment of the latter.
It’s a meaningful statement of intent that the art – which seems to rest on the absolutely charming tipping-point between super-competent amateur and properly professional – so efficiently evokes a delightfully excessive vibrancy. Denshattack’s world represents one of the purest expressions of cel-shading of the past several years, using bright splashes of yellow to (mostly successfully) try and keep the conditions of such breakneck gameplay readable. You can almost smell bubblegum wafting from the screen.
Lesser energy might be an insult to Emi’s character, and the game’s attitude at large. There’s an unchallenged philosophy of always moving forward and never giving up, and this absolutely works for stringing one stage to the next as Emi meets new gangs and must prove her worth to move through their territory, although the efficiency with which foes are turned friends and true-believer allies beggars plausibility, even within this hyper-exaggerated reality.
While Denshattack arguably lives and dies by its mechanics, it puts more thrust into its silly lore than might rightly be expected. Notably, details beyond the most essential, forward-moving story pieces are presented in such a way as to both fit in both with the tone of the world, and to respect the player’s time. The young man, Fernando, to whom Emi delivered noodles during the tutorial mission, follows her around to take photos for his fanzine. As players gradually progress from Kyushu to Hokkaido, multiple stop-offs appear on the map that allow for checking in not only on how the fanzine is doing, circulation wise, but on its actual content as a means of learning more about the characters and the messy future-juice that Japan has apparently gone and pickled itself in.
This fanzine, by the simple nature of documenting the realities of this future, evolves into a document of resistance. From the jump, we know that much of the Japanese population now lives in the safety of ‘domed cities’ constructed by corporate… benefactors, and these zines serve as a key point of knowledge about the world outside, fleshing out details about the dystopian level of control that led to such segregated communities. It’s ridiculous because it should be. This is in part because this is a game about speeding across railways that may as well be oversized pinball tables, but in larger part because, as actual reality itself becomes increasingly absurd, we may need a sufficiently cartoonish mirror to hold up to it. So, why not let the resistance be led by daredevil locomotive drivers that fight giant robots?
Suffice to say, Denshattack has numerous boss bottles, and they are all excellent. I barely knew that this was possible for video games. Each and every one finds creative ways to integrate the game’s fundamental momentum and the skillsets that players have been practicing in order to create spectacular clashes that never feel cheap, but that always seem to tease at downright bending genre norms.
This is arguably inevitable. Denshattack is built from familiar pieces, but its final form doesn’t play 100% nice with conventional genre classifications. It may most closely be described as a runner, but that honestly doesn’t feel fair or fully accurate. This is a game about going fast, and as such the most central mechanic is ceaseless forward momentum, with the ultimate goal typically being to survive a kind of obstacle course haphazardly constructed of disconnected train tracks, retired roller coasters and elongated half (or full) pipes. As progress is made and the challenge ramps up, obstacles become more sophisticated and pulling off large trick combos begins to feel more essential. The break is typically used to boost around corners at speed, not stop, and so Denshattack develops its own language of signs and symbols to give a heads-up about oncoming obstacles.
A poor-faith reading of this is that the end result is a borderline collection of quick time events, but it is perhaps better thought of as an old-school rhythm game with the beat of the visual flow taking more central stage and a trick system stapled atop to expressive flourishes. There are so many maneuvers that a kind of fluency for reading the icons that pop up on screen – and instantly translating the to thumb-movements – really needs to be built up in the player. Course readability is excellent, but not quite perfect. There are still moments where something that is supposed to be dodged gets conflated with something designed to be smashed.
While Denshattack offers a pretty satisfying linear game progression that clocks in at around eight hours if played directly from end to end, the greater part of its appeal is clearly in replaying and refining runs of favourite stages. As familiarity is built and scores, times and challenges are chased for gold medals, such niggles fade into background noise as mechanics that once struggled to be recalled become mastered and the risk-reward endorphins kick in.
Said risks can be meaningful. Things like manuals – yes, literally popping and keeping your engine up on two wheels – can keep a score-chain alive while you wait until next you get flung skyward. Just be sure you land it. End a combo by collision rather than choice and you’ll be compensated with exactly zero points. Fortunately, reloads are swift and (most of) the initial story missions aren’t particularly strict about the slickness of your performance. But once you want to leave your mark, it’s go big or go home.
Denshattack is at its best when a player can properly sink into an immersive flow-state. Blunders reload almost instantly, but they also tend to stack when rhythm is lost, and there’s an almost balletic joy to witnessing a pure run, tricks kept alive, obstacles dodged with rhythmic timing, fantastical rainbow tracks appearing and offering wild alternate paths for the joyride. Come for the promise of gold medals, stay for the art of the performance.
Perfecting a run could take some time, too, as there’s an impressive number of pathways here, moments where a rail could be chosen, or a billboard to ground along instead. Never mind some of the more creative uses of the local environments, or those fantastical rainbow rails mentioned above that can appear when everything’s clicking. Considering the number of pieces in play, it’s incredible that Denshattack doesn’t just crumble and fall apart.
There are some rough edges. Moments where the timing for alerts for upcoming hazards doesn’t feel quite right, or even very occasional lack of stick responsiveness when trying to input tricks, but while these matter, they feel like nitpicks against the scale of everything else. Also, there is no way to revisit earlier stages with new abilities unlocked, or to skip over the introductory dialogue. Still, Denshattack is way more polished than might realistically be expected, and it comes at you with 100% energy 100% of the time.
Denshattack presents something unique, and it does so almost flawlessly. Almost. In some ways, it’s like a silicon-valley curse of mechanics design: the closer you get to perfection, the more the imperfections stick out. It brings a very specific energy, and it’s enough to say if it looks like it may be your jam, then it may end up being extremely your jam. It is, if nothing else, absolutely worth a look. Find me another game of note that lets you tear it up around Saga, Mie or Ehime.
Denshattack! was reviewed on PC with a code kindly supplied by the publisher.
* Okay, fine. The real reason for this is (probably) that I slept at an odd angle. Are you happy now that you have the far-less-exciting truth of the situation!?
** Welcome to the space below the review where I overthink things into oblivion. Interestingly, despite Japan basically being in love with smashing words together (Famicom, known as the NES elsewhere, being a portmanteau of family and computer; examples are everywhere), the smaller Japanese text in the logo separates this as Densha Attack. Also, so far as I can tell, densha is the word for train, whereas kikansha is the word for locomotive or engine. So, technically, this game should be called Kikanshattack, but also I’m only about 90% sure on that, and it’s something of a mouthful and Denshattack sounds cooler.
