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0 Descenders Next, like its predecessor, is an adrenaline-filled downhill racing game featuring a massive array of mountain trails to explore and stylishly fall down from. This new title from RageSquid and No More Robots is out now in Early Access on Steam. Let’s take a deeper look.
Snow Big Deal
The franchise retains its core DNA with short but intense runs full of helpful checkpoints, optional objectives, and tough choices. Whether you’re speeding down through a beautiful alpine forest or racing over rugged dirt, your goal is to calculate risks, land tricks, and avoid brutal wipeouts. Although this time around, we got boards instead of bikes.
Shred. Spin. Slam?
Before you even make it to the main menu, the game immediately kicks off with a tutorial to get you acquainted with the basics like turning your snowboard, grinding on obstacles, jumping, and side missions. Once completed, the game map, with all its mountainous slopes, is revealed along with the customization shop. To unlock more slopes, you first need to master the mountain range available to you by getting down to the finish line without breaking every bone in your body and by completing extra challenges. Which is honestly easier said than done. Descenders Next has a steep learning curve, as I painfully learned from falling on my face more times than I would like to admit. For this game, you’ll need to have a ‘Souls-like’ mindset. Just be mentally prepared to fall off your board and start over again, and again (and again).
Gameplay
As mentioned, Descenders Next has a rather steep learning curve. By which I mean, it took me an embarrassingly long 30 minutes to even get through the tutorial. The dual-stick control system takes some time to wrap your head around. The left joystick controls the board, and the right stick controls your body. To make a full right turn, for example, you need to turn both joysticks to the right. Hold them for too long, and you might instead turn sideways or even backwards, which will drastically reduce your downhill momentum and speed. Though frustrating at first, the controls give you the sort of freedom of movement when jumping off ramps that few games do. Additionally, the right-hand bumper and trigger on your controller help you spin sideways while in the air, thus letting you turn, spin, and twist in every direction.
The real fun begins when you get an hour or two of gameplay behind you, and you’re dialled in. This is when the game truly started to click for me. Once you get a better sense of the game’s laws of gravity and aerodynamics, you start more accurately calculating the risks of crashing, which will let you stick clean landings more often. Let me tell you, the rush you get from finally sticking a clean landing after performing a gnarly rail grind, a nose grab, followed by two backflips, makes every slam in the face worth it! Just like slaying a dragon in your favourite fantasy RPG, or finally winning that boss fight you’ve been battling for the past three hours, landing tricks on Descenders Next feels highly rewarding.
Graphics & Audio
The graphics of Descenders Next aren’t precisely jaw-dropping, but nevertheless a solid step up from its predecessor. That being said, do you really need crisp high definition graphics of snowflakes when you’re flying downhill at maximum speed? When jumping off a ramp, and you have milliseconds to decide what your next move will be, will you really care if the pine trees in the background don’t look very distinguishable? The lighting on the snow looks great, the backdrop is a beautiful alpine scenery, and the boards glide smoothly over the snow or dirt. That’s all you need.
The audio is what brings this game together. The high-adrenaline drum & bass in the background is what keeps you going after getting absolutely wrecked in your first 14 tries of taming a trail. It hugely adds to the immersive experience of surfing down a mountain on your board. The sound effects for grabs, rail grinds, jumps, and falls are punchy and satisfying, even if they don’t always feel super refined.
Longevity
The longevity of these games, like any racing game, sports game, or fighting game, really depends on the eye of the beholder. Some people can feel disengaged rather quickly after only playing a few hours, bored with the repetitive nature of the game. Whilst others will enjoy this game with its many challenges for endless hours.
There is an abundance of slopes to discover, each with its own unique challenges to add variety. Yet, I feel some trails are very short, ending the fun just when you’re finding your groove. Additionally, as someone who is a bit of a competitive player, it would be great to add a game mode where you’re gliding down alongside other fellow speed demons like yourself. The game could use a race mode, where 8 or 12 players all take off from the start line at the same time. This would add an edge of competitiveness to the game.
Final Thoughts
As of right now, the game still feels a bit bare-bones, if I’m being brutally honest. There are only two boards to choose from, with minimal customization options, and I do mean bare minimum. Likewise, the avatar has surprisingly few options for personification. In a world where players enthusiastically throw money at companies through microtransactions just to add small personal items to their little digital characters on a screen, it is baffling how little content there is.
Descenders Next is a fun game that I can see myself coming back to in the future. That is, when the game developers have added a bit of variety to the play modes, and more creative customization options beyond a black hoody or an open purple jacket (literally the only two options). The game has got some great potential, but something is missing, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Developers RageSquid need to put in a bit more razzmatazz, add sauce, that extra something something. Right now, it’s missing attitude, or a personality, even. The game is good, I would love for it to be great!
For now, the Descenders Next deserves a Silver. The Thumb Culture Silver Award, that is! But I still believe there is room for this game to improve and eventually get the Gold Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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