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Rollerdrome Preview: Taking on the horde in rollerskates

... if you've got the skills, that is.

Rollerdrome is the latest from OlliOlli World‘s Roll7, and while the titles share a love of shredding, things get drastically different from there.

Rather than skateboarding, Rollerdrome places you in the rollerskates of Kara Hassan, an up-and-coming contestant in an utterly savage sport. Kara relies on an arsenal of guns, her skates and some damn fine tricks to mow down wave after wave of baddies, all in the name of televised entertainment.

While a combination of skating and shooting sounds simple enough, it’s not. Like OlliOlli World before it, Rollerdrome is incredibly simple to grasp, yet insanely difficult to master. It’s one big exercise in the management of minutiae; players will skate to position themselves on a set battlefield, using a handful of guns to shoot at opponents. You can jump, dodge, grab, spin and shoot, and the challenge is chaining all of your abilities together to deal damage in a stylish way. In fact, a combo meter will inform you of just how slick your skating and shooting is.

You can slow down time to focus on enemies, and certain weapons like the shotgun have secondary features that deal even more damage when you time your shots perfectly. You don’t just do tricks for fun or visuals, either — assigned finite ammo, sick moves are the only thing that can replenish your stores. If you take too many hits from cannon fodder, snipers or elite units, you can skate past the corpses of those you fell to bolster your health.

With all those basics in mind, every encounter can either be a matter of survival (in my case) or looking the coolest you can and racking up some serious points (if things come naturally to you). If you’re in that latter camp, you can also ensure you pick up a couple collectible types during a combo chain to extend it or to simply increase your score.

Able to access the first six missions of campaign for the purposes of this preview, I found myself immediately enjoying Rollerdrome’s first few missions. Tutorials aside, you’re first let loose in a fairly standard roller derby circuit, relatively oval and without a lot of obstructions. There, I thought I was good at the game, gaining speed to pull off some jumps off a ledge, grinding on rails and air dodging to avoid snipers before dealing my own damage. Subsequent arenas got larger and less symettrical — a canyon outpost, a shopping centre and even a set of rooftops — and it’s in those stages that I found I was pretty awful at things.

On the rooftops specifically, you’re tasked to perform jumps between three separate buildings, each packed to the rafters with challenging enemies. The cannon fodder and snipers are joined by big bruisers with shields that’ll pop after one hit with your shotgun; therefore, you not only need to manage enemies, but timings of shields and the like as to not waste shots. Oh, and those shielded guys? They shoot rockets at you, which you either need to shoot or dodge as well.

I continually kept missing jumps and falling between buildings — which doesn’t kill you, only knocks off some of your health and resets your combo meter — or just finding myself overwhelmed when trying to stay alive. That, of course, resulted in me dying and failing the mission.

Outside of the campaign missions themselves are glimpses of a narrative; you actually kick things off in a locker room, greeted by a message from a long-time champion that welcomes you to the contest. You can interact with items in the room before you enter the arena itself, and doing so shows you the type of world you exist in. To say things are bleak is a bit of an understatement. I’m very interested to see how much of this scripted narrative is actually woven into proceedings, or if those inclined will really have to work at it to piece things together.

In the end, I’m of two minds with Rollerdrome — it’s fun in some aspects and overly frustrating in others. The real kicker is its price point — I have far less trouble recommending it at its initially discounted price of of $29.67 AUD on Steam and PlayStation Plus subscribers than I do its regular price of $44.95 AUD. If the gameplay below excites you, perhaps get in early and save yourself some dough… just in case your skills are simply on par with mine.

Rollerdrome will be available from 17 August 2022 on Windows PC via Steam, PS4 and PS5.

Rollerdrome

17 August 2022
PC PS4 PS5
 

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About the author

Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.