Literally Train Attack in Japanese, Denshattack! is a madcap Jet Set Radio or Tony Hawks, but on rails, because you control a train. Skateboards or rollerblades were just not enough for these devs! With a madcap story about taking your train-tricking across the country and challenging each region’s train gangs, ala Pokémon gym leaders, Denshattack is also laden with graffiti, 90s vibes, sample-heavy funk, and that sweet one-more-run style bitesize gameplay that can be so addictive in this Trials-esque format. Enough with the hyperbole, let’s get on board and pull that whistle, baby!

Pro Train Driver: Dystopian Edition

So if you’ve just watched the trailer above. No, I don’t know how you grind or wall-ride a train, I don’t know how it can then flip a boat, or become a mech, or go underwater – it’s a video game, and it’s off the rails insane. You need to get on board right now and suspend your disbelief somewhere over Japanese airspace. We are flipping trains, okay? Deal with it.

Set in a kind of post-apocalyptic future where humans across Japan live in dome cities, the rest of the rail-littered country has been left abandoned by the one ultra corporation that runs the domes and the country. In these abandoned overgrounds, life goes on as normal, sorry no, the only people around are insane gangs who play an extreme sport called Denshattack. As you can see, it involves speeding trains and then grinding, flipping, wall-riding, and tricking them to score points or win races.

Bullet Train

Emi is an ambitious and highly competitive ramen delivery driver (yes, using a train) who hears of Denshattack from a customer, photographer Fernando, who becomes her first champion as she learns and then becomes proficient at this extreme train driving. Soon it’s on to challenge the gangs in every part of the country, collecting friends. It’s not about the train-flipping, it’s the friends we make along the way.

For a game insane enough to be about tricking trains, there’s a surprising amount of narrative content in Denshattack! Every area has its gang to get to know, a fanzine to collect, publish, and read, and friends to collect as you beat them. Emi is crazy, but very likeable, and as someone who appreciates narrative in games, it was refreshing that a trick-based game had a story and that it was above average.

True, there’s little explanation as to how these trains do what they do, where the money comes from to pimp these trains, and indeed most of the characters are one dimensional and clinically insane, but I maintain – the fact the story is here in this kind of game at all is a win, and for it to be funny sometimes and do enough to keep you interested is exceptional.

Off The Rails

So, you want to know about the gameplay, not the story. I mean, it’s about flying trains. Levels come in small bite-sized chunks of a few minutes each, demanding points be scored via tricks, a time limit achieved, and a number of collectibles be collected and challenges er, challenged. These levels also come in a few flavours. Sometimes it’s just a race, although never really simple, sometimes it’s like a skatepark, where you have to score as many points as possible tricking off the same bits of track in a confined space. Another type features three or so larger bulk challenges or quests to complete in a time limit, and then you can just brake and stop anywhere. Level complete.

Denshattack trains are controlled with some finesse, and largely by the shoulder buttons. R2 jumps your train, L2 brakes and boosts on corners, and leaves the track in tunnels. Combine the two to slam your train down in mid-flight. Tricks are controlled by the right thumbstick – give it a waggle in a hundred different ways and you’ll be pulling off 720s like you’re Tony Hawk himself. You can also grind the normal rails to keep combos going, but grinding the actual single grind rails is automatic, and you just need to balance. Then you add wall-riding, horn-honking, tunnels that you can loop, and the list goes on.

This Hype Train Has No Brakes

I’m not a gamer who handles the nuances of stick twiddling tricks easily. I got the hang of Tony Hawks back in the day, but it’s not a genre I’m good at now. Similarly, I’m not great with combos that involve stick directions in beat-em-ups. However, Denshattack was doable for me; I got good enough in just a few hours to get medals, even ones that weren’t just bronze. There’s a fairly high curve if you want to place higher and get the gold medals for each track, and I can see, upon release, an online leaderboard being something that would make skilled competitive players wild.

There’s a certain amount of automaticness to Denshattack – what I mean is it will stick to the track for you, grind for you (not like that), and it’s kind of essential because you want to be concentrating on all the other cool stuff I mentioned above. That said, it requires quick fingers not to crash constantly as tracks fall away or stop, or just jump and fly off a corner into the sea. The balance of what the developers have made on-rails, so to speak, and what they’ve handed to the player, is really quite impressive, and I feel could have veered like a runaway train into either being overly fiddly or too dull to be fun. Instead, it hits that perfect line between them, optimized for fun and points scoring, rather than actually being difficult to control.

Rhythm On Rails

Denshattack is also fairly close to a rhythm game; your reactions to each upcoming obstacle need to be timed, and you are required to pick the right button input for every prompt on the track, but instead of affecting the music or timing it to the music, that element is missing here. Replacing that musical element though is one of Denshattack’s strongest homages; its Hideki Naganuma-inspired soundtrack.

Every single level and every single menu is a bop just waiting to be savoured – I regularly found myself just head bobbing as I played. So Funky! It’s the kind of Jet Set Radio graffiti sample-laden future funk pop that works so well with tricking, skating, and rollerblading games, and as we’ve said before, what is Denshattack if not Jet Set Radio with a train. If you are in the know, there’s music here from Sonic Mania composer Tee Lopes, a number of producers who recently worked on Penny’s Big Breakaway, and big names like Richard Jacques and 2 Mello (who also worked on Sonic games).

It’s also hits the sweet spot graphically, going for this timeless cell-shaded look that of course evokes Jet Set Radio, but also with its thick black edges, things like Okami. The anime styling of the characters may not be to everyone’s taste, but I liked them, and this is my review, my opinion yadda yadda. Anime is not far off the Jet Set Radio established style, but it may not be what everyone wants. My only real gripe with anything presentation-wise is that it’s all a bit been there before. Yes, it’s clearly an homage to Jet Set, but does it have to be so brazen and lack a clear identity? Beyond the train part, obviously.

This Train Has Left The Station

Denshattack is a ride. An over-the-top, no-holds-barred, on-the-rails trip through an insane world where you can flip trains. It combines the Jet Set Radio aesthetic, music, and graphics with a modern bite-sized, almost mobile gameplay loop, like a Trials game. It’s full of heart, a fun story, and invention at every hair-raising turn. And through all that insanity, like a solid metal rail, lies the most finely tuned of control schemes, tweaked and perfected for fun over anything else. I never put myself down as the type of person who’d enjoy a train driving game, but it’s clearly a spectrum.

Denshattack! is available 15th July 2026 on PlayStation 5 (review platform), Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series S|X and PC via Steam.

Developer: Undercoders
Publisher: Fireshine Games

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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