Gaming

Denshattack! review: 2026 finally has the best 3D Sonic game of all time

Jul 15, 2026 - 19:11

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Denshattack! review: 2026 finally has the best 3D Sonic game of all time

Published Jul 15, 2026, 11:01 AM EDT

The eccentric game about a skateboarding train captures the spirit of 2000s rebellion

Image: Undercodes/Fireshine Games

Denshattack! lands some truly impressive tricks. It nails the freewheeling high score chase of a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game, but with a kickflipping train instead of an aging skater. It understands how to construct a thrilling 3D Sonic game better than any actual 3D Sonic game. And it bottles up the visual flair of the in-your-face Jet Set Radio with panache. More important than any of those stunts, though, is that it’s rad as hell, man.

Attitude is as crucial to Denshattack!’s genre-defying spectacle as any tightly designed gameplay system. Developer Undercoders knows that the game’s “it factor” can’t be engineered by simply mimicking the sickest media of the early 2000s and grinding on that nostalgia. It’s earned by making some daring moves, or at least by being so out-there that you have no choice but to respect it. A game about skateboarding trains should not work; the fact that Denshattack! lands as one of 2026’s most exciting indies is a testament to how much it captures the spirit of cool.

Set in a futuristic take on Japan, Denshattack! plays out like a plucky anime. Due to the country getting ravaged by climate change, trains have become a critical way of moving supplies between cities, which exist under weather-resistant domes. These trains are operated by daredevil conductors dubbed Denshattackers. Beyond that backstory, the story itself is simple: there’s an evil corporation that needs taking down, and a squad of countercultural misfits have decided to go for the jugular. It’s not a terribly memorable story; this is your standard tale of punk rock rebellion against a vaguely nefarious company, with some anti-AI sentiment to lend it some low-hanging timeliness. It’s just enough of a narrative framework, though, to power a gameplay hook that’s so wacky, you just can’t help but give it a curious try.

Trains are everything in Denshattack! They’re the primary way of navigating cities buried in criss-crossing railways, they’re weapons reserved for heated duels, and they’re a cultural currency that earns you the respect of underground factions and zine makers. Undercoders applies the Fast and Furious series’ street law to a world where locomotives are king, creating an inventive world that’s surprisingly easy to buy into once the initial “WTF” novelty has worn off.

Denshattack conductor drives a train toward a giant bear

Inventing a delightfully eccentric world is one feat, but the true challenge is making that actually work in a video game. After all, a game where you control a vehicle that moves along a set track sounds restrictive on paper. That’s where Denshattack! really impresses. Through excellent level design and enough trick systems to power a full-on extreme sports game, Undercoders makes a train feel no different than a skateboard. It’s an expressive tool capable of powering a stylish improv routine throughout cities constructed like enormous skate parks.

That success starts with the tricks. Your train can grind, ollie, manual, shove-it, kickflip, and more thanks to some Skate-style stick-flicking. All of those basics are as easy to pick up as they would be in a Tony Hawk game, despite the fact that you are controlling a 50-ton hunk of gravity-defying metal. Undercoders is wise to pace out new information gradually, letting you get acquainted with a new trick and work it into your combo before introducing the next one. Soon enough, your simple kickflip becomes one small piece of a long combo string that can last an entire level if you can think fast and maintain your balance.

It’s an explosion of creative energy that feels like it was born from several rounds of “yes, and…” between developers.

Denshattack! looks like a one-trick pony at a glance, but it finds plenty of ways to iterate on its kooky premise throughout a surprisingly beefy 10-hour runtime. Tricks like crane swinging and dual-track sliding throw more balls into a juggling routine that only gets more gleefully absurd as the mechanics build on themselves. The skill sets you start and end with are miles apart, but the progression is so smooth that you’ll be nailing complex maneuvers without thinking about the complicated controller inputs you’re hitting. It all becomes second nature, which is a bizarre thing to say about a game about, again, locomotives that can perform pop shove-its.

Level variety goes a long way, too. Your goal in Denshattack! isn’t usually to set high scores, though there are a few levels that flex that muscle. Sometimes you’re just speeding from point A to point B while spectacular chaos unfolds around you. (Tricking underwater, grinding around volcanos, balancing on a runaway ferris wheel, etc.) Other times, you’re dropped into a race where you can sniff out shortcuts and run over your opponents. Most surprising is a handful of standout open-ended levels that send you following different lines around a city to chase objectives in any order you want. Throw in some larger-than-life boss battles that rise to the ridiculous spectacle of anime, and you’ve got a game that rarely feels boring. Denshattack! keeps its foot on the gas from start to finish, earning your attention at every wild turn.

Denshattack drives train toward big baseball

None of that would work if Denshattack! wasn’t a level design marvel. Undercoders draws on the power of 3D Sonic games to create a series of speedy roller coasters that still require you to pay attention and make quick decisions. You’re rarely just riding along one straight path; levels are filled with alternate routes constructed out of rails, ridable walls, cranes, and rainbow paths leading to collectibles that you can hop between. If you take a leap of faith over to another rail, that trust fall will always be rewarded by a path with killer combo potential or a hidden secret. You could easily make the case that Denshattack! is the best Sonic the Hedgehog game ever made.

All of this is pumped up by aesthetics that are energetic enough to keep pace with the ever-evolving gameplay. The visuals capture the spirit of anime with bright color pops and speed lines that emphasize your movement. The cities are dense with details and visual nods to Japanese culture — though Denshattack! can at times feel like an eye-rolling act of digital tourism more than a respectful ode to a country. The soundtrack is full of sunny jams that give you a good rhythm and tempo to keep up with. Collectible zines and graffitti-covered train skins give everything a true youth-in-revolt feel that harkens back to the heyday of 2000s counter-culture.

I’ve played plenty of games that aim to recapture the energy of that era but end up falling flat, whereas Denshattack! nails the assignment with finesse. Where those games often go wrong is in their little brother syndrome. That is, they are too eager to crib the look of other games they look up to rather than finding their own style. That can leave you with games that sure look and play like Jet Set Radio, but just lack a certain something that’s hard to put your finger on.

Denshattack! knows what that something is. The games it spiritually draws from were trendsetters of their time; nothing played or sounded like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater when it first launched in 1999. It was a daring attempt at something new, and it stuck the landing so well that everyone wanted to emulate it — including its own makers. The trend of the series resulted in more games that looked and played exactly like THPS in the decades following, too cushioned by thick knee pads to feel like an exciting risk. (Even the series’ own remakes are hampered by that sense of safety.) Denshattack! remembers that reinvention is what made games of the time so radical, and it isn’t afraid to totally jump the shark in creating an over-the-top variation of an old extreme sports formula that’s just ridiculous enough to work. You can’t help but keep playing to see if it can really land the 900 it's going for.

Miraculously, it does. Even if it faded from my mind not too long after beating it, Denshattack! delivers mile-a-minute thrills in the moment. It’s an explosion of creative energy that feels like it was born from several rounds of “yes, and…” between developers. Every design decision is an act of defiance aimed at anyone who saw a trailer and said that a game about skateboarding trains was a thin gimmick that surely wouldn’t carry an entire game. If that’s you, get ready to eat crow: You will believe that a train can perform an Akira slide.

Denshattack! is out now on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on Windows PC using a prerelease download code provided by Fireshine Games. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.