More games should be on rails (literally)

It’s been a good few weeks for games on rails. Nintendo’s Star Fox remake wisely kept the tightly scripted, action-packed levels from Star Fox 64 largely the same, and they’re still fun to fly through nearly 20 years later. Denshattack!, a new game from Undercoders, similarly features levels packed with carefully orchestrated sequences to great effect. Except instead of flying through space as an unnervingly realistic anthropomorphic fox, you’re flying — and flipping, and spinning, and grinding — through Japan while driving a blindingly fast train.

Calling Denshattack! a train game radically undersells what you actually do. Across a bright and colorful version of Japan, you’ll tear and trick your way through towns and landscapes like you’re playing a supercharged version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. You fly through levels like a bullet, drift around corners and try to catch a boost, and leap off ramps to do skateboarding-inspired stunts. Imagine if Sega made a cel-shaded Sonic game for the Dreamcast where he drove a train, and you’re in the ballpark of what actually playing Denshattack! feels like.

Even in its early stages, Denshattack! is thrilling, but as you explore the game’s 10 worlds, you’ll slowly get new abilities that turn you into a supercharged acrobat. Before you know it, you’ll be grinding rails, riding on graffiti-filled walls, looping around tunnels, catching wind currents to fly through the air, and flipping your gravity to drive upside down, sometimes all in succession. If you fill up an energy bar by scoring enough points, you can even ride a magical rainbow track that unfurls in front of you like some kind of magical Rainbow Road. And it’s all backed by an upbeat, catchy soundtrack.

I loved barreling through the game’s levels, and I eagerly awaited each turn of the track to see what unexpected surprise I’d run into. Just a very limited selection of highlights: grinding along a swordfish’s nose, precariously dodging blades in a sawmill, and hitting baseballs back to a gang leader in her track-filled baseball stadium — and then, in a later level, challenging that leader again as she piloted a sandworm train.

It works so well because it’s all on rails. For the most part, you don’t have to worry about how you get from place to place. The track will generally take you where you need to go. What matters more is how you react to the twists, turns, and unexpected obstacles the game throws your way — and which sick tricks you’ll pull off with a flick of a joystick as you leap from track to track. That gives the developers a lot of leeway to toss you into action-packed scenarios and tightly plot out the sequences of everything you’ll have to deal with. Each level is typically just a couple minutes long, which helps keep things snappy.

At times, it can be a lot. You go really fast, so you have to respond to things quickly. The game helpfully signals turns and obstacles with various signs that pop up on screen. But as you learn new mechanics, there are a lot of different moves to remember, and in the moment I’d often trip up and press the wrong button or just slam into whatever was in the way on the track. Thankfully, checkpoints are generous and bring you back in a second or two, so you can tackle a tricky section repeatedly without much penalty.

The game also lets you make it as hard or as easy as you want. After you finish each level, you’ll see a results screen that grades you on things like how many points you earned, how quickly you finished the level, how many collectibles you found, and if you completed any of the per-level “dares.” If you want to chase medals on all of those, you can. But you can also ignore them completely and just focus on finishing each level, which is what I did.

Like other on-rails games, however, Denshattack! occasionally felt repetitive. Each region has the same general structure, meaning you’ll tackle the same types of levels over and over again. The game also has a lightweight story, but I mostly mashed through it. Like Star Fox, this isn’t a game you’ll be playing for the narrative; it’s all about the levels.

But those are nitpicks. The sheer maximalism and expertly crafted levels meant that every time I started a new one, I couldn’t wait to see where the rails would take me next.

^{Denshattack! is available now on Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X / S.}