For many years now, the downhill biking viral sensation Descenders has been a mainstay on many people’s Xboxes, in no small thanks to a seemingly quite permanent Game Pass presence. Years of excellent support has eventually led to a transformative sequel – one completely changing the sport(s) at hand, in fact. Here’s what may become your next Game Pass addiction – Descenders Next, entering Game Preview on Xbox Game Pass and Steam Early Access…today!
Familiar hills
After muscling through the quick tutorial, one that reveals a challenging but accessible riding model, it’s easy to feel right at home with Descenders Next, because the game’s core structure has been retained. For those not in the loop – well, do try the original Descenders, because it is really good!
But anyway, the original Descenders is an extreme-sports-roguelike of sorts, with the player being tasked to roll down these tricky hills with dirt roads on their bike. Falling off makes us lose a life, but completing optional objectives can net us extra lives, new perks, higher scores. It’s risk versus reward in extreme sports form, and it’s a brilliantly addictive formula.
It is then quite fortunate that Descenders Next starts by not messing with this formula, representing it with a brand new ride under our rider. Bikes are gone – for now anyway, as future updates promise further sports, and maybe bikes will make a glorious comeback one day. What we get now are boards. Snowboards, to be more exact, to slide down snowy mountains as we do gnarly tricks where we continuously risk our neck.
There’s even mountain boards, which are somewhat closer to skateboards but with larger wheels, which allow us to do… basically the same as snowboards, but on dirt paths, in a very similar way to the original Descenders. Fun!
More tricks
By virtue of its nature, Descenders was actually fairly limited in its scope and variety. Sure, the randomly generated terrains of various styles gave for many peculiar paths, and the trick variety was quite neat, but at the end of the day, you were always just rolling on your wheels or doing airtime.
Descenders Next adds a “secret” third option – enter, the grind! If you ever played a snowboarding game like SSX, Steep or Shredders, you know what this means. The paths will feature rails, fallen trees and more, on which the player can put their board sideways and just… grind it, basically.
It’s not quite as automated as you’d find in a Tony Hawk game, for example – in fact it’s a lot more grounded and realistic than that. But it adds a further layer to the risks the player may be willing to tackle in order to progress. ‘Should I slow down for a safe finish and not get any cool bonus?’ ‘I have an optional objective to grind on 3 different rails, should I risk losing a life for it?‘ ‘There’s checkpoints on the suggested path, should I try and risk a glorious shortcut to skip some tough parts, but risk having to be reset at the start of the descent?’
Now throw in this sort of thinking for jumps and general speed management as well, and you get why staying on board is crucial, and figuring out which risks it’s better to take is basically the game itself. Because riding and doing tricks is incredible, but it’s when your strategic choice worked out perfectly that you truly feel the rush.
I am speed
Speaking of managing your speed, there’s quite an important shift in style from bikes to boards – there’s no brakes! You can’t just press a magic button to lose speed, you need to achieve this by turning your board “sideways”, greatly increasing the risk of a clumsy fall if done improperly.
The same goes for accelerating, as this is also done by straightening your board or managing your rider’s position and stance. As for the tricks, you can rotate in any direction, grab the board and more, also combining these movements as you prefer. You can invert your riding, as in deciding whether you want to ride with your right or left foot forward, and connect all sorts of gnarly tricks. There is a score system, though it’s not really as egregiously loud and combo-based as, again, something like a Tony Hawk game.
The roguelike aspect comes into play in many ways, and not just in the random generation of paths and the eventual perma-death. Players always get a selection of paths, defined by their steepness, trick difficulty and more, and there’s usually a path or two for every playstyle to proceed towards the next level.
After completing enough levels, we proceed to a new area, one that’s even harder, so be prepared! Much like the first game, we can even meet other players on our paths, or play as a team from the get go to try and achieve the goals at hand together. It’s incredibly fun both as a solo and a social game alike, one with tons of replayability given its virtually limitless skill ceiling and roguelike progression.
Gnarly!
The visuals of our very riders can be customized to quite impressive lengths, with their physical traits, individual clothing pieces and even the boards being changeable in models and colouring alike. Even replays can be edited, to showcase our ‘skillz‘, and there’s already plenty to unlock and explore in the game’s large playable, randomly generated world.
I only managed to play the PC version thus far, with no access to the Xbox version beforehand, and there I encountered some iffy performance here and there, especially when teaming up with others online. Still, it’s in Game Preview on Xbox and Early Access via Steam on PC, so some issues will surely be ironed out in the future.
Indeed, much like the original Descenders, Descenders Next is already an incredibly addictive and enjoyable game, one that transports this really sweet game formula into a whole new extreme sport style. There’s already a high variety included and plenty of unlocks to go for, though many of the game’s sports and features are yet to arrive.
But the first Descenders was a game I kept going back to for years, just keeping it installed on my console and sometimes going back for a single run, or for hours at a time. This sequel is already setting up to be one of the next Game Pass addictions for me and many other gamers out there, and I’m excited to see what Descenders Next’s future bring us. The transformation for Descenders worked, and this Game Preview version is already a very strong starting point – go check it out, will ya?
Descenders Next | Review-in-Progress
Played on
PC
PROS
- The new sports work well
- More customization than ever
- The Descenders formula still slaps...
CONS
- ...though it barely changed for now
- Lacks sports variety for now
- A few technical hiccups
