With Descenders Next, the primal videogame pleasure of going really fast down hills has been honed to near perfection

GamesRacingWith Descenders Next, the primal videogame pleasure of going really fast down hills has been honed to near perfectionWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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One of my favorite games is about riding pushbikes down hills really fast. It’s called Descenders, and lately I’ve been playing its follow-upDescenders Next, which appeared at thePC Gaming Show: Most Wantedtoday. At first I was a bit nervous about Descenders Next, because it’s the sequel to a game about riding pushbikes downhill, and yet it doesn’t have pushbikes. Instead, it has snowboards.

As I’m sure you can appreciate, these are two very different things. But they do share one important quality: they can both go downhill really, really fast.

I’m no longer nervous about Descenders Next. What I’ve played is brilliant, and like its predecessor it beats the blockbuster competition—thinkRiders Republic—in terms of the sheer poetry of its gamefeel. This is a videogame about going really fast on a snowboard, performing dazzling tricks midair, and mastering a control system that feels great out of the box but blossoms with subtle complexity over time. A game like this must feel not justgoodbutincrediblein the hand. It must give me complete hairbreadth control over my hurtling avatar. I must feel assured that every wipe out is my own fault. Get one of these wrong and everything feels broken. Descenders Next ticks every box.

The structure will be familiar to Descenders players, though it hybridises what used to be two discrete game modes. Starting with two lives, I have to complete short (we’re talking two minutes max) downhill courses towards the next “park,” which serves as both a savepoint and a chill out sandbox. If I use all my lives before reaching a park, I lose my progress and go back to the last park I unlocked. If I pull off mini-objectives mid course—such as performing two midair backflips, or reaching a certain speed milestone—I get an extra life. When I complete a course, I can select one of several from the world menu, all leading in different directions towards different parks.

This gives Descenders Next a blissed-out arcade feel: weaving between deathly trees at high speed on my last life before the next park is nail-biting, yes, but overall I’m not too concerned because whether I reach the goal or not I’m loving every moment. It’s the small things that contribute to this: after death, restarts are instantaneous. When I’ve done my dash and run out of lives, I’m thrown back to map and within seconds I’m back on the slopes. There’s no traversing an open world towards icons. There is no resistance along the way to getting on the field and going really fast down hills.

Descenders was basically a sport roguelike; Descenders Next adopts a smoothed over version of its progression system where punishment is less severe. It rewards progress with the aforementioned parks, which are stress-free sandboxes for practising or just mucking around in. I spent most of my time in Descenders mucking around in the parks (chiefly Mount Slope) and while none I’ve seen so far in Descenders Next are as spectacular as my favorites from the first game, I’m sure (I’m hoping!) they’ll come.

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