One of my favourite PC gaming experiences of recent years is hurtling down Mt Slope in Descenders without falling off my bike in spectacular limb-mangling fashion. It's the perfect "just one more go" game: think Tony Hawk or SSX, but with bikes. The main course was procedurally-generated trick gauntlets, but the sprawling hand-made bike parks—of which there ended up being dozens—grew to be the main course for me. I even quite enjoyed falling off my bike: sometimes my hapless rubbery avatar would go flying miles into the air.
A sequel, Descenders Next, is set to hit Steam and Game Pass in 2025. I was pretty excited about this news until I read the fine print: Descenders Next is an "evolution" of the original that will grow to cater for a whole range of extreme sporting varieties. When it launches it won't even have bikes. Instead, it'll focus on boarding sports: snowboarding and mountainboarding.
