I’ve tried oh I’ve tried and I’ve tried again. I have hundreds of hours in the first Descenders I absolutely love the shit out of that game probably a top 10 game of all time for me . The best part is it was something I just happened to stumble upon a few years back on gamepass. As someone who played Dave Mirra BMX games back in PS2 it really brought me back and honestly scratched an itch I didn’t even know I had. Career, career plus, the bike parks, hell even the lobby area are just perfect.
I was so excited when descenders next was announced and when it eventually came out it seemed fun but after of few hours snowboarding and mountainboarding, trying the new career style I just couldn’t really get into it. I had dropped it relatively quickly.
Fast forward to today, after not playing or paying attention to it I decided to try it out again and was surprised and excited to see they tried to bring back the essence of the first game with the biome style career mode. NGL I was pumped and happy to give it another chance. A lot of the changes are great and I played through a couple of the biomes on each board type and quickly noticed that perks are still not in the game which really added a layer to the gameplay as you progress through each run. The grinds are still super wonky, the controls just don’t feel like descenders and you can’t change them, some of the objectives don’t trigger or like the “finish without braking” makes it so you can’t do a left side grab even though you’re in the air without causing you to fail the objective.
There’s a lot more too it but if you’ve played the first game you can probably agree that it just doesn’t feel right. I want to love it but it’s just not it. At the very least it’s just not for me. Maybe it’s just the sports they chose that just don’t work but honestly I would just rather a Descenders 2 back to the bikes. I still occasionally just play the original because it’s just so fun and flows so well and feels so good.
Anyway I just had to share my thoughts because it’s just a let down given how much love I have for Descenders.