OlliOlli World is the third game in the OlliOlli series from developer Roll7. On the off chance that you may not know about the OlliOlli series, OlliOlli, named after the skateboarding trick, is a 2D skateboarding game that functions as both a runner, platformer and nails as hard arcade skateboarding game.
The focus of OlliOlli World is on high scores with near perfect runs of continuous combos to get you from the start of its grind heavy and big air levels to the end with as few retries in-between as possible.
OlliOlli World continues that tradition, albeit with some changes to the games difficulty to allow new and casual players to reach its end without having to break a controller (though Landfill Mountain came perilously close to making me do just that!) in the process of trying to maintain continuous combos, while still letting you feel like a rad skater in the process. However, don’t let this change in accessibility drop your guard because OlliOlli World still brings the challenge.
OlliOlli World ditches the 2D visuals of the previous games for full 3D polygonal design. However, it’s still all set on a 2D plane just with more added visual depth to the world and branching paths. And what a colourful world it is. While the shading may be simple, the quirky designs and characters more than evoke an Adventure Time style vibe and visual design. Each of the games areas sports a unique visual design for the landscape and the characters that inhabit them, helping to make Radlandia feel like a fully formed world whose impossible tracks are as much a part of the landscape as everything else.
As the new skater on the block, you’re put to the test to see if your skills will let you become Radlandias next Skate Wizard, a proxy of the skateboarding gods of Gnarvana whose place it is to make sure everything stays gnarly. To do that you’ll be taken across all of Radlandias various locations, learning new tricks at each one while impressing and surpassing the skaters that call it home. If you’re good enough, you’ll get to meet each of Radlandias skate gods in turn and become the next Skate Wizard.
Once you’ve created and customised your character, from a variety of cosmetic clothes, decks and deck parts – there are no stats thankfully – the game begins your training. The Left Stick controls all of your flip tricks and jumps, X has multiple uses as your kick and to land in manuals or to ride stairs. Square changes lanes while the right stick is used for grabs and the shoulder buttons are used for spins. Grinding rails or walls is as simple as holding a direction with the left stick when you’re over a wall or landing on a rail. For the right and left analogues, which direction you hold or flick the sticks in will determine your tricks, wallrides, grabs and grinds. The more complicated tricks require some serious left analogue dexterity as you start to enter Street Fighter levels of stick rotations to pull of more tricks with half-circles and forward to back rotations, among others. It’s a system that epitomises the easy to use but hard to master motto.
Initially, you’ll be pulling of mad tricks like a pro as the game takes it’s time to get you up to speed. The developers have wisely escalated what’s required of you with each new technique you learn. So you’ll start off only needing basic flip tricks for a couple of levels. Then when you learn to grind, you’ll need to combine your flips with the grinds for a few more levels and so on moving forward until you find yourself needing to utilise you’re entire repertoire of skills.
Levels have multiple paths to them, usually with one been trickier than the other or hiding sidequests. To progress through the game you just need to beat the level, though each one has its own set of challenges to complete and high scores to master. As with teaching you the ropes, these start of simple but escalate. Later high scores reach the stratosphere and will require you to master the art of a perfect combo run if you have any hope of reaching those numbers. The scores and challenges just aren’t for bragging rights as completing them also unlocks further items for customisation while having the added benefit of adding a not insignificant amount of replayability to the game.
Learning the level layout and mastering the games speed are essential because OlliOlli World is an incredibly fast game. You’re going to need to learn just what the right velocity you need per area is along with lightning fast reflexes to hit your grinds and jumps. Go too slow and you won’t have enough speed to clear a gap. Go too fast and you can completely overshoot it.
Once you’ve started meeting the games various gods, you’ll unlock a masteries list which is about completing a certain amount of various techniques and tricks. There’s also a random level maker to keep the thrills and spills going. And if that’s not enough, there’s also a competitive skate league to compete in against other players high scores.
OlliOlli World is the sort of game that screenshots simply do not do justice. This is a game that needs be seen in motion to understand just what a thrilling and exhilarating ride it is, to understand what the developers have accomplished. Watching someone varial heelflip into a nosegrind, then Olli off a rail into a wallride, kickflip off the wall across a fifty foot gap and drop to land another railgrind before kicking off the rail into a manual, simply doesn’t come across in a static picture. That white-knuckle sense of accomplishment that comes along with been the person that just pulled off that move is what this game is all about.
If OlliOlli World isn’t on your to play list, it really should be. It’s full of thrills, spills and an exhilarating sense of accomplishment and just happens to be one of the best skateboarding games on the market. The love of skateboarding doesn’t get any purer than this.
Developer: Roll7
Publishers: Private Division, Take-Two Interactive
Platforms: Xbox Series X and Series S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5
Reviewed on PS4
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