thought a lot about downhill domination (bakuso maunten baikazu, ie 'Roaring Mountain Bikers' for the real ones out there) while playing this. both games borrow from the same conceptual base, being an extreme downhill cycling game with tricks to perform and varying paths for the worldly cyclist to take, but only one is an aesthetic experience with any communicable soul or attitude, and it's the one with the cooler name. by contrast, descenders is a cobbled together unity engine project that consolidates all the dull trademarks of the minimalist game movement. everything has been given a sleek, mawkish corporatized veneer - you don't pedal to the metal in this game so much as you trailblaze to soft, inoffensive synths and thumping techno. you race to accrue sponsors and randomized crew members who dote on you and make your career marginally more convenient, tweaking the shape and form of procedurally generated races through too-pristine nature that all feels excessively anodyne and humdrum. progression structure youve seen just about everywhere else constantly emphasizes the same question youve heard thousands of times elsewhere: can YOU, intrepid player, become the next LEGEND? load screens continually fragment the action and detract from an experience that already starts off too slow in the career mode. the fact that its actually still pretty fun when the game does finally decide to go hogwild is a consequence of the designers emphasizing cyclist fragility, ensuring a modicum of tension in each career session that styles itself as a 1CC attempt at a couple dozen, maybe more, downhill environs. i suppose bombing hills at 80mph is always gonna be a joy regardless of how you bungle anything else.