Denshattack!

I've 100%'d Denshattack and it's my front-runner for game of the year. I was so scared that it would be like other skate games that really need you to be on top of your inputs to make progress, but it isn't like that at all! This game wants you to have fun more than anything else. Everything about the game design is encouraging and entertaining and the vibes are never bad, even after you crash a billion times. It really succeeds in making failure not feel frustrating. The pacing of the new mechanics felt daunting at first, but it only ever took me a couple of tracks to feel comfortable integrating everything together. Don't burn yourself out trying to medal new tracks right away; it's so much more satisfying to come back to old tracks after you've mastered the new mechanics. Let yourself enjoy the new music, environments, trains, collectables, and characters while you can, because now there's a train-shaped hole in my heart that only Denshattack could ever fill.

This game is an absolute fever dream from start to finish, and I loved every second of it. Every chapter ended with me wondering what they could possibly do to me next, and I was never prepared. I loved every minute of my experience with this game, and recommend it to anyone who's looking for something different and unique. An absolutely incredible OST just adds to the experience in the best possible way. That is not however, to say the game is perfect. I have three things I'll have to mention here, I'd call it nitpicking, but unfortunately in a game as fast paced as this these issues can be problematic. First, track switching wasn't always as responsive as I felt it should be. Sometimes the game just refused to let me track switch, and my controller was tested, so I know the inputs are working. This wasn't incredibly common, but it was common enough to frustrate me when a great run died because the input simply failed. Second, trick inputs were sometimes unresponsive, I'd be in the middle of a huge jump, doing all my inputs, and absolutely nothing would happen. Again, not huge, but with some of the dares in the game, and getting all golds requiring certain combo levels to get the points, this could be very frustrating. Lastly, falling through the world. On more than a few occasions my train phased through the ground after a jump, or walls during wall ride transfers. It happened just enough to be an annoyance, but not enough to be a crippling flaw. Having said that, none of these flaws overshadowed what was truly an incredible game from start to finish. Pick it up, settle in for a ride, and accidentally kickflip your train into a wall at light speeds. It's great.