When thinking of train games, you think of simulators, not the out of the box concept Denshattack! created by Barcelona based studio, Undercoders. Instead of slowly chugging around a realistic map, players take control of physics defying reimagined Japanese trains that zoom through Japanese locales that exude style - a throwback to the arcade era of the Sega Dreamcast.

After a world altering catastrophe leads the Japanese mega corporation Miraido to build domed cities to protect the chosen few from dangerous forces, those left to live outside survive without the corporation's influence.

You play as Emi Araki, a ramen delivery driver that uses Japan's railroads to make her deliveries. Relying on her father's old train, she meets Fernando who introduces her to Denshattack: a rebellious sport where competitors called Denshattackers compete against each other to see who's the fastest and most skilful train operator that can ride rails and perform tricks like a skateboarder. Think a literally on-rails, high-speed skateboarding game where the skateboard is replaced by a train.

As Emi learns the basics of Denshattack, she travels to new regions to challenge new gangs and prove her ability, like a gang of Gyaru fashionistas, baseball fans, and Miraido's personal task force. But during her journey, Emi sees Miraido's impact on Japan and vows to use the Denshattack community to change her country for the better.

After a voiced animatic establishes the world, players are thrown to the colourful world map - a hub to select levels, go to the garage, E-zine headquarters, and shops. The first chapter predominantly acts as an onboarding tutorial to teach the basic gameplay mechanics. You instantly see the quick pace of levels that last anywhere from two to six minutes, as you race along train tracks to reach the finish line.

You first learn how to make the most of your train: timing your initial acceleration at the end of the initial countdown for a boost, charge your jump until it sparks to change tracks, brake around corners to drift and boost forward, slam down from the air to avoid obstacles, switch to adjacent rails, honk your horn to interact with the environment, use speed boosts, wall ride massive billboards, and balance to grind along single rails. But as you progress, courses grow in complexity and you'll learn more moves like manuals, air boosts and more.

Even though completing a course is the bare minimum needed to progress to the next level, like any good arcade style game, there's more to achieve. You can attain bronze, silver, and gold medals in three areas: completion time, points scored doing tricks, and finding all collectibles while completing objectives called Dares. These objectives vary from performing specific tricks, jumping over certain obstacles and much more. It's essentially a hybrid of Tony Hawks' time-based objectives mixed with classic arcade speed-running. Yet it plays like a cross between Tony Hawks' trick to manual to grind combos, while tricks are performed the same as Skate's analogue stick control scheme. All presented in a similarly stylish presentation to Jet Set Radio. Even going so far as to being able to select between a Japanese and English announcer. It's the kind of game where you want to constantly improve your skills.

After completing a few levels, Emi is confronted by the first region's gang of Denshattackers - a group from the subculture of Gyaru fashion. But while most writing isn't voiced outside of animatics, the dialogue is optimistic and fun and characterises a diverse cast. It's another way Denshattack! keeps you engaged outside of the fluid gameplay.

As you journey across Japan, each region follows a similar pattern. Emi pursues Denshattackers to combat Miraido's corporate greed, while Fernando sets out to record her journey in a Denshattack! E-zine. These robotic run publications allow you to place collectibles in a sort of regional scrapbook. You place character portraits, text descriptions and photographs of tricks. It allows you take a few minutes away from the non-stop action and appreciate the journey.

You also do this when Emi and Fernando rest an onsen, and take the time to get to know each other. These are quiet and contemplative moments where you make dialogue choices to advance the personal conversation. You learn their motivations, and pasts that mould them. It turns the simple plot into a more emotionally resonant experience.

Emi also finds green spray cans and purple cogs throughout levels. These are Denshattack's in-game currency to spend at shops. All regions have their own shops that sell cosmetics and new trains. You can trade spray cans for stickers or patterns to align your train with the current region. I ended up buying the deer stickers from the city of Nara that's famous for its bowing deer.

Whereas, you can unlock new trains that look different, but also have positive and negative perks. So, if you need a little help grinding rails, there's a train for that. However, it counters these assists by including a negative like reducing the amount of points you earn when grinding rails.

Specific trick based trains come in handy when you finally arrive at a trick park. These trick arenas feel like playing Tony Hawks. You have a set amount of time to earn a certain amount of points by following the looping track around at speed and creating a flawless combo without making a mistake. Otherwise, if you fail to reach the quota, you cannot proceed. So, like when you got a huge combo in Tony Hawk, the train also needs to land to register the points. A rapid level type where you're best to abandon low star rated flip tricks for harder moves, then land in a manual by leaning the train forward or backwards, and follow the track. At first keeping a combo going feels daunting, but it eventually feels natural and flows like I remember on the original Tony Hawk games.

But in order to earn more points, you keep your combo going to built up your special meter called 8 million roads. This eventually activates secret rainbow tracks, like a miraculously appearing rainbow road from Mario Kart. These are useful to build up points in a trick park, open up paths towards secrets on regular courses and longer missions, and perfect to take shortcuts during races, and essential to defeat bosses.

But it's races where the feeling of speed sparks to life. While objectives and collectibles remain, your main goal to progress the story is to finish in the top three. Sometimes this is easier said than done, as a couple of slip-ups and it's impossible to catch up. That's why you need to focus on the basics, smash other trains off the track like in Burnout Revenge, discover which of the multiple routes have the shortest path, and then give it your best shot.

But that isn't every mode. There's also missions with bigger scale objectives which act as a sort of proving ground for Emi to demonstrate her skills to the gangs. These are looping tracks with multiple colour coded routes. Each one leading to a specific objective, like performing in a Kabuki show, or destroying Miraido property. By this point changing tracks and rounding corners at speed will be muscle memory and you'll be wanting more of a challenge.

At the end of a chapter, Emi confronts a gang leader. These encounters were what surprised me the most. The unexpected scale and smart and varied game design make each boss memorable. Each one begins like a normal course that incorporates all of the new skills you've learned in their region up to that point. But then, you eventually reach the boss and things change. Instead of being the immovable object, you're now being attacked and forced to dodge killer blows.

One boss transforms into a Gundam style mech that forces you to dodge attacks, in order to grind up its arms and land a slam attack. Another is themed to baseball and has you jumping over obstacles while hitting giant fastballs back at them with a trick to deplete their health bar. But these confrontations go far beyond a simple back and forth attack. Escalating to cinematic set pieces such as when you board and over the giant mech's hand to fly through an expensive cityscape.

Over the course of Emi's adventure, these exciting moments appear in the normal levels while you travel across the countryside, cityscapes, gain upgrade modules to attach to monorails and travel underwater. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the developers never grow complacent as new locations introduce new mechanics to steadily integrate into the vast moveset. Things like doing a trick on a switch to change tracks, exiting a rail to rotate fully around tunnels, bouncing on pads, or changing gravity to ride on the ceiling. Alone these mechanics offer a welcome change. But when every element is combined into fast frenetic levels, Denshattack! is reminiscent of the arcade games of the Sega Dreamcast, where fun was paramount above all else.

Yet, Denshattack! doesn't just have phenomenally responsive finger twitch gameplay, it's unabashedly stylish. Every frame pops in vibrant colour; an anime cell-shaded art style reminiscent of Jet Set Radio and Hi-fi Rush mixed with textured backgrounds that use comic and pop art inspired halftones. But it's represented the best in level design, as key interactive elements like the rails or switches are colour coded. This way controller inputs become muscle memory, and actions requiring balance bars like drifting and grinding are easily recognised.

Sound is also used in a similar way, as sound effects signal switching rails, grinding and every other key mechanic. Characters are also brought to life in cutscenes with solid voice acting that reminded me of a fun cartoon. Despite this, the overall story is the simplest element, but the themes of AI, environmentalism, found family and following your dreams made up for it in abundance. It felt like the journey with a diverse community of characters was what truly mattered and had some emotional resonance between levels.

But another place where Denshattack! shines is the score. It's an arcade inspired selection of tracks that go between hip-hop, punk rock, J-pop and more. It strongly resembles the disc scratching beats found in the Jet Set Radio series. It even features vocals from popular singers and V-tubers like Ironmouse. As it's easy to believe that Denshattack! will become a popular game on Twitch and Youtube. Altogether, whatever the genre, the tracklist has pulse-pounding intensity to keep people hooked on replaying levels like Crazy Taxi before it.

Replayability is an area where Denshattack! excels. With so many medals to attain and objectives to complete, you'll find yourself replaying levels multiple times until you get the gold medal you need. While you can continue the story, it's fun to dip into the trick catalogue called the tricktionary to locate a move needed to be done on a particular level, and then, load up the level and tick off another objective. It's these optional medals, the potential to set speed-running records, a need to set a high trick score, or a player's pursuit for perfection that feeds Denshattack's just-one-more-run gameplay.

Most importantly for an arcade game, difficulty evolves at the perfect rate. It's never too easy or too hard. It finds the perfect balance to offer enough split routes and moments to improvise your way through a level - the journey always feels like your own. Although some people will find its high speed gameplay hard, if you've grown up with games like Tony Hawk, you'll find a polished experience that eases you into everything until you begin to feel like you could beat any level.

But if the performance faltered, it'd destroy the experience. Fortunately, on Playstation 5 Pro, Denshattack! feels smooth and looks crisp as the train barrels through vibrant levels.

By the end of Denshattack, I didn't want the credits to roll. Luckily, I still had plenty of gold medals to attain. All at once, it feels like an arcade throwback and a modern game. It remembers the sensibility of the arcade genre where fun always comes first. Denshattack! is one of the most enjoyable, pure gameplay experiences of the year.

*Review Code Provided By Publisher

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