Is social distancing ruining your hopes of going outside? Let me introduce to you, video games. Why go outside and risk getting a deadly disease, when you can see the outdoors from the comfort of your home! Descenders is the latest from developer RageSquid, published by No More Robots, and is a downhill mountain biking game unlike any I’ve played before. Descenders has so much charm, playability, and overall pleasing aesthetic that I honestly don’t have a ton to say other than: the game is really good.
Descenders brings a unique energy, as it has the appearance and feel of a racing game with hardly any racing. Instead, Descenders allows you to take as much time as you want on a given course as long as you eventually reach the goal. You’d think this might make the game less challenging, but you’d be wrong. Descenders’ Career mode really shines and brings that challenge with an unexpected Rougelike element. There are four main stages in the career, each with their own assortment of nodes you need to complete in order to finish the stage. The player will always start with four health, losing one or two every time they bail, depending on how hard the bail is. Upon reaching zero the player must start over from the first stage. I found this to be incredibly refreshing as I played the game and it made me want to come back for more and more.
Descenders even encourages you to do so. Not only is there a main career mode, but a secret level to the main career and a bonus career mode with four more challenging stages. Additionally, each node in a stage has a bonus challenge that will award you one health for completing the challenge as you cross the node’s finish line. Finally, if you complete the bonus challenge on a boss level 3 times, you can earn a checkpoint to start at the next stage. And I haven’t even mentioned the Freeride options. This game is meant to be played, and a lot at that.
I do want to talk about some of the other modes and features Descenders has in supplement to the Career mode. Freeride is a mode where you do just that; you pick a course and just ride around. You can unlock new Freeride maps by finding secret nodes in the career mode and completing their given challenge. Now, let me talk about the Bike Park mode. Bike Park is just like Freeride, but wowowowowowowowow, the maps are HUGE. When they say Bike PARK they mean it. I spent a good half hour trying to explore all the different parts of just one of the maps.
Descenders also has a wealth of customization options for your avatar and even the tracks. As you play through the career and complete specific challenges, you will be rewarded with an array of different costumes and bikes, and there is no shortage of selection. When it comes to tracks, there is a large community focus on building and sharing tracks with other players. In Descenders, you can customize just about everything and that is exciting.
As much as Descenders has going for it, it is not a perfect game. While the overall aesthetic of the game is fantastic, particularly the level design, the amazing soundtrack (full of artists signed to the Liquicity label), and how fluid and solid every motion feels, there are some inconsistencies. Firstly, the graphics are good, but not great. The development team for Descenders knew how far they could reach while keeping the game stable. What they were able to reach is really wonderful, but some of the graphics look blocky and/or plain. The only other main critique I have about Descenders is the User Interface (U/I). Just like with the graphics, in some places, the U/I is excellent. Starting the game, though, is merely a static image with white text in the bottom right corner prompting the player to “press any button,” and I was expecting a little bit more flair. I have to think about resource management, and that the majority of focus was put into making the actual play of the game good, but I was a little disappointed with some of the U/I just being text placed over the game screen.
Overall, Descenders made me want to come back for more, It made me want to play the career over and over. From the unique take on the racing genre, to just how good it felt to control my racer down these perilous courses, I may never ride a physical bike again. Descenders has become my bike, I have become Descenders, I have begun to question what is real and what is Descenders, are we all just bikes…? Ever riding down the perpetual mountain of life?!
Anyways… the game is really amazing and it absolutely gets my seal of recommendation.
9/10
Check Out the Descenders Trailer:
Descenders is now available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and MacOS via Steam.
For more information, please visit: http://www.descendersgame.com/
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PlayStation 4 Review
I am a writer from Portland,Oregon who has loved gaming since early childhood. Writing and sharing about the best in visual arts is one of my favorite things. Some of my all time favorite games are: The Last of Us, God Of War (2019), Journey, Persona 5, Borderlands 2, and Shadow of the Colossus.
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