Denshattack! is Too Much
Games like Denshattack! are important from every angle. Regardless of what component of a video game resonates most with you, from the art to the music to the story to the gameplay, be firmly aware that Denshattack! treats each bit as essential to its overall message: that games can be loud. They can be radical. And perhaps most importantly, they can be fun to play. It’s an optimistic and empowering attitude, one that’s unfortunately rare in many facets of this medium, but Denshattack! still has a lot to say. It wants its message to travel far and loud, but keep in mind that when you’re shouting at the top of your lungs for so long, eventually you’ll start to lose your voice.
Denshattack! is shamelessly urgent. It’s not only a game that rejects the industry’s anti-consumerism by delivering a confident, feature-rich, 8-to-12-hour-long campaign that’s all about enjoyment, but also one that smirks against the AAA corporations that are eroding away the game industry’s workforce and eating away at the very world it exists in. Its story of a ramen delivery worker swerving their train into full-on anti-capitalist freedom-fighter territory is the kind of stuff that needs to exist at this moment in time. The protagonist Emi and her crew challenge the conglomerate within their universe, Miraido, which is represented by an anthropomorphic mole, who treats the cast as terrorists who are trying to ruin the lives of those who reside in the domed cities it controls. The game refuses to sloppily bathe its accusations in soft ambiguity (one mission literally has you destroy an AI data center). In that regard, all of its values are unwavering, and that drive to point a finger directly at the culprits is something that I can’t help but praise.
But within that urgency is a playfulness that needs to be commended. I’ve been pretty vocal about how optimism is sorely lacking in many video games these days. The idea that you need to be stern and depressing to get an artistic or emotional message across is a mishandled motive in my eyes. It’s one thing to keep the player grounded to avoid unrealistic expectations, but when the end product is so devoid of anything uplifting, it just starts to feel regressive. It’s why I’ve praised the game Pragmata so much: it doesn’t only have a pretty damn optimistic dynamic between its main duo, but it uses its “game-y” mechanics in playful ways that are built to make you smile. I never felt like Pragmata was trying to bring me down for the sake of an artistic message. Denshattack! is another powerful example of optimism by design; it’s embedded in the game’s code. Its story of an enthusiastic up-and-comer steadily earning the respect and encouragement from the people around her, despite insurmountable odds? That’s the kind of stuff I like to see, because within a medium that fits naturally with growth and empowerment, it makes so much more sense to lift someone up instead of pulling them back down.
So it’s a damn shame that Denshattack!’s story just can’t stay on its feet. I understand that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; we all have our influences that drive us to create what we want to see, but this is a game that’s terrified of being its own thing. Every single character, every single plot point, every single setpiece; it’s all pulled from an existing source. You have all of the character archetypes, from the tough gang leader with a heart of gold to the arms-length rival who revels in backhanded compliments. And it’s not limited to the characters. You’re gonna see the Akira bikeslide. You’re gonna see the idol musical themes. You’re gonna see the kaiju fights. You’re gonna see the mecha transformations. You’re gonna see a ton of allusions to other video games, from Guitar Hero to Ikaruga. And eventually, it becomes difficult to see the sincerity within that imitation. Denshattack! can wink and nudge all it wants, but it doesn’t take long for its overt infatuation with the anime medium to ring incredibly hollow. I would be far more forgiving toward this game’s anime pastiche if it did anything remotely surprising with its narrative, but once again, that stems from its fear of stepping beyond the anime and manga that inspires it. For a game that spends all its fanboyish effort in the shadows of its influences, all Denshattack! proves is that standing on the shoulders of giants will eventually leave you cold.
The art of first impressions is a barbed and unsteady one, but Denshattack!’s developers knew the assignment in that regard. The concept of using a train to launch off ramps and perform death-defying skateboard tricks is the kind of literally off-the-rails idea that only becomes more compelling in motion. As someone well-versed in the joy of motion, I can confidently say that Denshattack!’s spectacular animation and tight controls contribute so much to its clean and crisp feeling of motion. When your sweat-drenched hands are digging into the controller and your combo multiplier continues to climb into the double or even triple digits, it’s comically easy to let your reflexes and instincts take over, embracing the attributes that make motion so captivating. At that peak, Denshattack! is an electrifying feeling; it’s clear as day just how aligned the various departments at the Undercoders’ studio are toward this singular creative goal.
The levels routinely deliver cocktails so flavorful that they’d leave you in a dizzy stupor by the final smash to the finish line. Billboards to wall-ride, looped rails to grind on, ramps launching you across country western miles, they all can be chained together with your toolbox of tricks and acrobatics. Taking cues from the infinite combo machine of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, Denshattack! emboldens the player to experiment and express themselves with the various tricks. For a game that’s largely forcing the player forward, there are plenty of branching paths and it’s fun mixing up your trajectory to amp up your score to extravagant highs, with every move opening up with high scores or alternate actions. Hope your controller is in good shape, because its right analog stick is going to get plenty of work, thanks to tricks being handled by fast taps and quarter-circle combos, almost like a fighting game. If you’re coming to the party to kickflip a train off a giant swordfish’s nose, Denshattack! has you covered. It is absolutely fun to play in the moment.
Denshattack! does so much to make the very act of playing it feel wild and untamed. By all accounts, this should be the victory that any maximalist, optimism-jacked indie game should work toward achieving. But for a game that’s so loud, so empowering, so optimistic in the face of an unfairly tarnished climate-catastrophic future, why do I feel so little toward it?
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It all comes down to this. Denshattack! is just…too much.
I keep using the term “maximalist” to describe Denshattack! and that’s an intentional choice. It’s a game that revels in the firing-on-all-cylinders approach, flooring the gas pedal right when the countdown hits “GO.” And it never slows down. You’re always feeling the flashiness of its visuals, the energy of its soundtrack, the intense rush of your movement, and the sky-high ambitions of its characters’ goals. Maximalism is the delicious, sugar-packed energy drink that so many of us crave. While there’s value in using more subdued tactics to gauge a reaction from players, being able to go all-out with an avalanche of positive feedback hits so hard.
But you need to be careful when you’re on that sugar high, because it doesn’t last forever. Games that are maximalist for the long haul, the ones that can feel endlessly empowering for their entire runtime, those are extremely, EXTREMELY rare. They know how to balance their over-the-top nature with a good management of their pacing; they can carry their maximalist attitude the whole way.
And Denshattack! doesn’t do that.
Early moments will obviously fare better. You’ll be totally mesmerized by the game’s rampant disregard for the powers in place, the rebellious, devil-may-care attitude that its protagonist follows from minute one. You’ll be heel-flipping into a manual, leaping with a hardcore acrobatic, then grinding and wall-riding toward the finish line. Then you’ll do it again. And again. And again. Note that Denshattack!, for all its alternate paths and occasionally open-ended missions, is still pretty linear. You’re being pushed forward along the rails toward an end goal, so you’re limited in the kinds of actions you can take. This linearity is a frustrating pace-breaker in a game where the entire attitude is all about doing what you want in the face of the rule-making overseers. This is why the trick-focused missions are usually the most enjoyable. You don’t just have a more open-ended playground to perform tricks (once again like Tony Hawk Pro Skater), but getting a high score is usually the core gist worth investing in. If you’re up for side objectives, you will need to grab some collectibles or trigger a set-piece, but you’re not nearly as railroaded (no pun intended) into a set path to accomplish this when tricks are the major goal…though you’re not given that freedom most of the time. You’re expected to just get from Point A to Point B, with whatever minor, inconsequential detours appear.
But these limitations aren’t the biggest fumble here. Denshattack! commits a cardinal sin that a game like this should never, ever commit: it gets boring. Remember when I said that keeping that maximalist energy for the entire runtime isn’t easy to accomplish? Well, Denshattack! seems to have skipped that step. It’s always hitting eleven, and even though that’s an impressive feat, that doesn’t result in any kind of meaningful dynamics. Even if all those combos are cool to see, they’re still the same thing over and over and over again. For a game so confident toward flashy, over-the-top, train combo arcade action, Denshattack! cannot carry itself for its runtime. It starts to creep into repetitive territory as early as the five-hour-mark, and if you’re going for the gold medals, that gets SO much worse. The game’s built for short bursts of play, but even with that in mind, a single mission still drags on longer than it really needs to. And I’m not just talking about the long-as-hell boss fights; some objective-focused missions can drag on enormously, awkwardly yanking you into other directions without any spectacle to show for it. Denshattack! tragically overstays its welcome, and while that might make for a compelling purchase based on content quantity alone, seeing such content squandered by repetition is a heartbreaker.
It all wraps up with an incredibly anti-climactic final act that doesn’t produce any kind of worthwhile spectacle. For a game that’s all about clinging together for a greater goal, the last mission is very much like all of the others, and very little spotlight is shone on the band of misfits that tag along with Emi. In fact, the penultimate mission does a much better job of giving the cast time to shine, almost as if the two missions should’ve been reversed in sequence. If there’s one thing I expected an anime pastiche like Denshattack! to nail, it’s the climactic last wave. Japanese games in particular have routinely made their final moments memorable, pulling out every single stop for the sake of a good future and an endlessly invigorating message. Denshattack!’s final moments are shockingly weak, and for a game that already overstays its welcome, it’s an unfulfilling feeling all around.
I want to like Denshattack! In fact, I did like it at first. This game’s opening hours are wild enough to keep your sweaty hands glued to the controller, and once you start learning trick inputs and build up that combo, its best moments become very visible. You start to revel in the over-the-top graphic design, jive with the surprisingly diverse collection of level songs, and immerse yourself in its crazy, no-holds-barred vibe. But when you’re perpetually cranked to eleven, eventually that spectacle becomes uninteresting and stale. It doesn’t matter how high the dial hits when you hit the ceiling with such a thud.
As mentioned at the start of this article, games like Denshattack! are important from every angle. They’re loud, radical, and fun to play (in bursts), but I’m hoping its importance as a learning experience resonates just as strongly. Denshattack! may be the current poster-child of indie maximalism reaching for the stars, but the studio’s next project should refine its ambitions to more manageable pacing, because making an idea like this feel boring at any point is a tragedy that can (and should have) been avoided.
