Descenders

Genre: Offroad Bike Racing / Extreme Sports (Offroad Biking)

Players: 1-4 (Online), Online Leaderboards

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

Descenders is an Offroad Bike Racing game with Extreme Sports elements originally released on Xbox One and gradually ported to multiple other platforms, with the game coming to Nintendo Switch in 2020. This game works into the genre multiple elements that we tend to see in the Roguelike genre – its levels are randomly-generated, as are its goals, as well as the abilities you gain for completing tracks. As such, each run is guaranteed to be completely unique.

Graphically, Descenders on Nintendo Switch is rough. Seemingly everything took a hit in the transition to the Nintendo Switch – the framerate has been dramatically reduced, the resolution is lower, the foliage and other level details are significantly reduced, lower texture detail, there’s plenty of pop-in, shadow and texture pop-in, ugly jagged shadows where other versions had lovely, detailed lighting and shadows. The result of all of these cutbacks is a game that’s still very playable, but it looks more like a late PlayStation 2/early PlayStation 3-era game than a game that was made in the last decade, let alone last few years.

However, while the graphics on the Nintendo Switch are seriously compromised, the sound here is excellent, with some really good noises for the bike, but the standout here has to be the game’s soundtrack, which is apparently licensed from a Dutch label called Liquicity that produces songs in a genre they’re calling Liquid Drum and Bass. It’s kinda’ an upbeat techno sound that’s really catchy, and really make this game stand out, although I’ll say that these heavily-produced tracks don’t quite seem to mesh with the game’s natural environments. Regardless, these are some good beats that really mesh well with the speed and flow of this game, and I don’t doubt I’ll be adding multiple tracks from this game to my playlist.

The gameplay here is pretty unique and interesting too. Players aren’t necessarily racing to beat a time or compete with other racers, but to earn a “rep” by racing fast, doing impressive stunts, and not crashing. Players can chill in the game’s bike park lobbies where they can hang out with up to three friends online, but most of this game will be spent in its single-player campaign, where players will take on a series of randomly-generated courses.

Each course has a track laid out, but it seems like this is mostly a guideline – it doesn’t seem like you’re penalized for deviating from it. Neither are you required to do any of the dangerous stunts to complete a level. However, the more impressive your riding is, the more of the game you unlock, and players will also be tempted by each stage’s specific goal (like finishing without breaking, or doing two backflips), which awards one health point for its completion.

That’s the other element of this game – every run gives players a limited amount of health, and when you get down to zero, your run ends and you’ll need to start it over from the beginning. This acts as a nice risk/reward mechanic to push the player to try to improve their “rep” while at the same time making them think twice about letting things get too risky.

Overall, Descenders is a fun take on the genre, and this makes for both a great Racing Game and a great Extreme Sports game on a platform that could absolutely use more games in both genres, but the port to the Nintendo Switch comes at a heavy price in the graphics department. It’s still a wonderful game well worth playing, but if you can play it on any other modern platform, that would probably be preferable – the Nintendo Switch version really suffers from its more limited hardware.

tl;dr – Descenders is an Offroad Bike Racing game with Extreme Sports elements that has players speeding through randomly-generated environments and performing tricks, with gameplay that incorporates Roguelike elements to challenge the player to push themselves without taking too many risks. It’s a fantastic game, but the Nintendo Switch version has visuals that are heavily crippled in numerous ways. This version is still playable, but if you can get this game on any other platform, I recommend doing that instead.

Grade: B

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Descenders

Genre: Offroad Bike Racing / Extreme Sports (Offroad Biking)

Players: 1-4 (Online), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

When I reviewed this game years ago, I liked it quite a bit, but I also felt this game had a laundry list of performance issues. Trying this game out on Nintendo Switch 2, I hoped for an improvement, but I wasn’t prepared for how much of a drastic difference this would be.

However, before getting into that, let’s get expectations in check. Even on Nintendo Switch 2, Descenders still suffers from numerous graphical issues that remain from the Nintendo Switch – there’s still plenty of pop-in, shadow and texture pop-in, ugly jagged shadows, and a lot of aliasing all over the place.

On the other hand, the framerates are massively improved and stable. The resolution also seems much-improved here. The result is a game that, while still not quite pretty, is immensely more playable on Nintendo Switch 2. And what’s more, the loading times have been massively slashed as well – it took 26 seconds to load from the main screen into the game lobby on Nintendo Switch, and only 14 here, and loading into the game maps is similarly speedy.

Descenders on Nintendo Switch 2 still can’t compare to playing the game on other platforms, but this is still a huge improvement. This definitely makes the game easier to recommend.

tl;dr – Descenders is an Offroad Bike Racing game with Extreme Sports elements that has players speeding through randomly-generated environments and performing tricks, with gameplay that incorporates Roguelike elements to challenge the player to push themselves without taking too many risks. It’s a fantastic game, and although it’s still not on par with the version released on other platforms, the performance has been massively improved on Nintendo Switch 2 compared to the Nintendo Switch. It’s still far from the best way to play this game, but it’s not quite as wide a gap now as it used to be.

Grade: B+

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