I must admit that when I first saw the presentation of rollerdrome in the last State of Play it left me a little cold. Roll7’s skate-with-guns game was so far removed from what the OlliOlli World studio usually has in store for us that I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrow a bit.
The feeling was maintained in subsequent revisions of the video because, broadly speaking, it seemed very difficult to me to unite two worlds as far apart as that of the tricks of a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and that of third-person shooters.
On paper the mix could be as exciting as it is fun, but in my head it could end up being an uncontrollable singod. In cases like this I love being wrong.
Tony Hawk with guns
Actually there is not a great twist on the concept that many of us had when we saw it, this is without any doubt or hot cloths a tony hawk with guns. Moving around a skate park at high speed doing jumps, flips, grinding and grabbing your skates to do tricks while spinning is there. Shooting enemies with pistols, shotguns, and grenade launchers, too.
The idea behind each level of rollerdrome It is, in the first instance, to complete it by eliminating all the enemies that appear until the stage says enough and announces that you have completed it. The depth layer is put both by the challenges, pick up these items and kill X enemies in this way, as well as the pique of maintaining combos to achieve the highest possible score.
By completing levels and challenges, new scenarios are opened in which you can face more and worse enemies with the weapons that you unlock. The base doesn’t change at all, but the difficulty of the challenges and the bloody character of the targets to hunt never stops growing.
rollerdrome is, as incredible as it may seem at first, as good as it sounds. There is no possible downside in a formula that turns out to be as addictive, fun and challenging as you have in your head right now. And the doubt that clouded my judgment about its control is a cloud of smoke that vanishes as soon as you complete the tutorial.
How to play Rollerdrome?
Nothing to worry about. Very fine in control for following to the letter the laws written in stone that the saga of Tony Hawk, both jumps and tricks are very rewarding and follow the same scheme for grabs, grinds and turns. The feeling of knowing how to play this when you pick up the controller means that the basic controls are already in your head before you even start.
Beyond the jumps and tricks you’re probably already familiar with, the rest is adapting to the shooting mechanic to take out enemies as you flip over their heads. Despite how chaotic it could be, by innovating in that sense they have also been able to take the best of each house to make it much easier than it seems.
The key is that every time you press the aim button, the game goes into a sort of bullet time long enough to be comfortable but also short enough that shooting isn’t a chore. If you’re close enough to an enemy, auto-aim will lock your sights on them so you can fire at your leisure with the only concern in mind of what trick and takedown to pull off next.
Much easier and more fun than you can imagine
It adds a dodge system for ranged and melee attacks that, pressed at the right moment, in addition to moving us to an even slower camera, will also give our bullets more power. If you run out of charger, dodge it at the right time and the tricks you perform on each jump will gradually fill it up. rollerdrome it’s incredibly well thought out.
Run up that ramp, flip back into the air, aim for the explosive barrel next to an enemy, blast them with a bullet, dodge when the laser sight above you goes blank, and take advantage of the perfect dodge to finish emptying your magazine on a second enemy that is on the opposite side of the one you just killed. Now for the next trick to reload your weapons so that the combo doesn’t stop.
That action, which despite seeming super complex is insultingly easy to perform, puts you in a loop of jumps, shots and insane scores from which it is difficult to escape.
rollerdrome It’s one of those games where finishing a level makes you angry because you’re always ready to eliminate another enemy, so jumping to the next screen, or repeating the same one to finish completing challenges, is something that your body ends up asking you for shouting.