You Should Play Descenders

You might think that the golden days of playing Xtreme Sportz games might have been a few years ago, but they’ve actually been something of a resurgence of late. With games like Session out there you’d be a bit silly to ignore how good these games can be. Just because the pre-title screen doesn’t shout “EA BIG” at you, doesn’t mean the games aren’t just as Xtreme as they used to be. One of my favourites from the last couple of years is Descenders, which is a downhill biking game that will beat you until you look like the aliens from Eiffel 65’s only memorable song. Sorry for the shade at the band there, just in case you’re reading this, more people know that song than will ever know anything else, so you’re probably still good.

In Descenders your aim is basically to get to the bottom. Everything around that is up to you, although you’ll be given a bonus for managing to accomplish certain things, like a sick backflip, or not being sick while doing a backflip. It’s a fun system designed to keep you coming back for one more run, and it works really well.

There’s a load of gear to unlock, leaderboards to climb, and maps to complete. It helps a lot that the levels are procedurally generated and so are the mutators that can mess with how you play. It’s just pure fun, and while it can be frustrating at times, it’s incredibly moreish at the same time.