Who’d ever expect roller skating and third-person shooting to be a chocolate and peanut butter situation. OlliOlli World developer Roll7 somehow has found ways to combine both the world of the Tony Hawk series and the world of the Max Payne series, that’s Rollerdrome!
Rollerdrome is a single-player third-person action shooter that seamlessly blends high-octane combat with a fast-paced, fluid motion to create an action experience like no other. Dominate with style in cinematic, visceral combat where kills net you health and pulling off tricks and grinds provide you ammunition, in this adrenaline-pumping action shooter.
The year is 2030. In a world where corporations rule and the lines between reality and performance are blurred, the public is kept distracted by the violence and excess of a brutal new blood sport — Rollerdrome. You take control of Kara Hassan, a newcomer to Rollerdrome sport, and are put through trials to climb through to the ranks of Rollerdrome to be the next Champion while unraveling the mysteries and a sinister plot behind the Matterhorn corporation’s true intentions in this distinct retrofuture universe.
There’s a lot to cover regarding the gameplay system in Rollerdrome. Generally, it plays just like your normal shooting games, you move with your normal movement keys and shoot with your trigger/mouse, but there are 3 gimmicks that are implemented to accentuate the rollerskating mechanic more. First, you don’t move your character at all ish after pressing the forward movement key once, the game will just keep moving your character forward automatically. I personally find this annoying and off-putting since I always love to take control of how I move but after spending some time adapting to it, it’s not too bad besides some weird hiccups here and there.
The other gimmick is that you don’t necessarily have to aim at enemies, Rollerdrome automatically does that for you so you only need to shoot. Aiming your weapons is relatively forgiving: as long as you’re within range and your crosshairs are pretty close to your mark, an auto-lock will appear. That doesn’t mean you can’t be precise with your shots, and even hit enemies from further away without the auto lock-on. Though sometimes the system doesn’t want to lock on the enemy you are looking for but it’s easy to move your camera a bit to lock onto the enemy again.
If you don’t want the system to aim for you, Rollerdrom offers you a slow-motion bullet time that, well it does for it’s named for, slows down time and lets you free aim at any enemy you want or use this to escape from imminent dooms.
Additionally, you don’t have reserve ammo used for reloading and can’t do the traditional reload at all. Instead, according to the game’s lore, the future is so advanced to the point that the existence of physical bullets is pointless and they can be materialized out of thin air and immediately put into your magazine. The only ways to gain amo are either dodge right before the enemies hit you or do tricks (the more tricks you do, the more bullets you gain).
Now let’s talk about the meat of the game, the skateboarding mechanic. I’m not a rollerskating aficionado, therefore I’m sorry if I don’t fully explain it or know the terms exactly but from what I’ve seen in real life and played in-game. Roll7 has done a great job making it feel as authentic as it can. You can perform basic tricks such as grinds, grabs, flips, and their variations. The more you progress into the campaign, the more tricks you unlock. There’s a point where you can unlock wall-run and that alone creates a lot of possibilities of tricks that you can perform. Rollerdrome offers dodging and jumping/boarding to further deepen the pool of tricks.
Rollerdrome’s focus on the momentum of the action pulls the tempo of your actions. Each kill notches up your score multiplier, and even just shooting an enemy will let you keep that multiplier from dying out if you’re not able to land and finish them off. Your overall score would be tallied based on tricks, dodges, and successful shots, while the combo score only took into account consecutive kills. Challenges required you to do tricks in specific locations, perform specific tricks during kills, or clear enemies consecutively to keep my combo meter up to move up into the campaign.
Speaking of the campaign, I find the story of the game isn’t really captivating, lacking and just simply overlooked. Like, there’s a story and its path laid out, it’s just not popping up enough to counter the adrenaline-rushing action. But in a sense, Rollerdrome makes up for this by having a killer soundtrack that sort of builds up its tensity based on your combo, and a captivating-graphics that are reminiscent of cinemas from the ’70s and ’80s and reproduced the grit presentation coming from comic books.
Inventing a “new” genre is no easy task so, at first glance, it seems like the two sides of Rollerdrome aren’t in sync with each other. Surprisingly, Rollerdrome finds consistently clever ways to marry extreme skating with fast-paced gunplay. Rollerdrome’s gameplay doesn’t seem to reinforce the critical, political narrative, therefore the story can usually be ignored easily in favor of adrenaline-fueling action. Despite that, I felt that Rollerdrome is right up in my alley after I first saw its trailer; the more I play, the more it hooked me into all of the actions. Rollerdrome is a blast to play, especially as you get the hang of each of its systems. Occasionally, aspects of Rollerdrome can be a little too simple for their own good, regardless of that, Rollerdrome is a fantastic game and a brilliant melding of systems that don’t seem like they should work together, but in practice, combines excellent elements of skaters and shooters to elevate both.
Score: 9 out of 10
Reviewed on PC