Roll7 is at its best when its games are, fittingly, all about rolling around. Laser League and Not a Hero had their quirks, but the excellent OlliOlli is why the studio is as beloved as it is. The British developer has taken the essence of OlliOlli’s skating mechanics for Rollerdrome, swapped out the skateboard for roller skates, and given the main character more than a few guns. It’s about shooting as much as it is about doing tricks and that symbiosis creates some truly mesmerizing gameplay, even if it doesn’t maintain that high for as long as Roll7’s other skating series.

Read the full review here:
https://www.comingsoon.net/games/reviews/1233845-rollerdrome-review-ps5-worth-buying

Pretty good. Really good at times! Combining roller blading with third-person shooting is a blast, and the style/art/sound has this retro future vibe I adore. It brought me back to Deathloop (one of my favorites of last year) a bit with its 70s look.

The controls feel weird at first and take some getting used to (it's arguable that I'm still getting used to them, lol) and I kind of wish there was a little more story than they gave us (though what's here is good). I also wish there were more (and more diverse) bosses and the opportunity to face off against a few of the other skaters in combat.

I was leaning toward a 3.5 for these reasons, but I gave it a 4 on two points. One, it's extremely earnest (if that's the word). I conceptually understand that game development is hard work and most retail games are made with some kind of love, but you really feel it here. I can't put my finger on exactly why. Two, the harder Master Quest-style campaign that unlocks after the 4-5 hour initial campaign is really pushing me to learn the combat system better, and I'm enjoying it more as a result. I've only played one level of that so far (it's tough) so thoughts may change as I get deeper. Probably not though -- I feel pretty good about giving this a 4.

Made the mistake of playing the PS+ trail knowing full well I can't afford it.

Genuinely one of the best feeling games in a year of great feeling games, between this and Neon White I'm being spoiled in my love of fast paced twitchy action games with complex yet buttery smooth movesets.

I WILL be getting this ASAP and it WILL be one of my top games of the year, I already can feel it.

Very cool mix of intense bullet time combat with the momentum of roller skates and stylish air tricks. The best thing about its gameplay is how tricks and dodges give you ammo and a higher score, so you’re in a constant flow of trying to take out enemies without a single hit while also pulling off skating moves, and it’s really fun! I’m always a fan of Moebius-inspired art styles like this too

The game is short since there’s only 11 stages, but since they’re gated by completing extra challenges you’ll be replaying them a few times to progress to the last ones. All the levels are good and get progressively more chaotic with enemy placement, though they did lack a bit in variety since past the first four they all looked pretty similar

There’s also some first person sections at the start of every competition where you can look at items and piece together details about your opponents. There’s not much to it, but a nice addition nonetheless

Rollerdrome asks you to perfect its gameplay. You have to maintain momentum, while both dodging a myriad of enemy attacks and endlessly executing tricks to keep your ammo topped up.

You need to blend that momentum with the combat. Switching between weapons on the fly to best suite your next enemy. Timing your attacks and rationing your ammo before your next big trick.

It's the arcade-y combo game of Tony Hawk mixed with the frantic arena combat of Doom although it is not as deep as either of those series' focus. But blending them together elevates Rollerdrome to be something special.

Art style is fantastic, reminiscent of Sable but with its own spin. There is some issues with clarity of the line work which made the fidelity fall short on occasion and made text hard to read (even on maximum size).

On the side of story and characters, Rollerdrome makes an attempt but it is a half-assed one and therefore doesn't give the game the rounded edges to be an all around stellar experience.

I had a ton of fun mastering this games systems but I felt that as soon as I had done that, it was over! I could have used another round of the tournament but then I'm sure there would have been the need of more enemies and another weapon. I applaud the game for staying focused with its vision and tight design, but its use of a pseudo-new-game-plus and additional challenges isn't enough to keep me engaged past rolling credits.

What an exhilarating game.

When you boil it down, Rollerdrome is Tony Hawk with guns. And it's exactly as fun as that sounds. This game does this really fun thing where your multiplier is mostly tied to kills and the points are tied to the score you get from doing tricks. That makes for a really interesting dynamic where I constantly need to make sure I have an enemy ready to kill after I land a trick. It's a ton of fun. It's also probably the best looking cell shaded game I've ever played? Game just looks like absolute fire. There's also a kickass electronic soundtrack that helps maintain this electric energy throughout the campaign.

Oh and there's a story too! But it's just kind of there. There are three or four first person segments that provide these spaces where there's supposed to be some environmental storytelling. I liked the spirit of these sections but they felt very half-baked. I would have loved to see a more fleshed out version of those.

After I had beaten the game, going back to do challenges while listening to a podcast was also really fun. So I think it's also a great "podcast game" if that's something you're looking for.

Overall, Rollerdrome is a game that oozes style and has just enough substance to make the 5-10 hours I spent with it fly by. I think by the end of the game, it exhausts most of it's ideas and there's a disappointingly small amount of maps in the game. I think more variety or disruptive elements introduced in the gameplay loop would have elevated this game to an even higher level of quality. As it stands though, it's still a great game that I hope finds an audience.

Rollerdrome is a game that’s very easy to give an elevator pitch to; Third person shooter meets skating game. Usually things like this tend to turn me away from games, but Rollerdrome’s striking sense of style and high-octane gameplay merging the two disparate genres with grace made me willing to try it. I’m glad I did! The shooting is less important than the movement, as you barely need to aim with how the lock-on and bullet time systems work, but with the speed and pace you blast through the levels it’s far better than really having to take the time to aim. The movement and trick system plays back into the shooting; tricks don’t just increase your score but refill your ammo depending on how long you hold them and how much you mix up what you do. I constantly found myself making tiny pathing decisions, hitting ramps or grinds from a specific angle or direction so I can get the biggest refill in one shot. The score multiplier gets increased whenever you kill an enemy, further incentivising you to rush from point to point, constantly swapping from making tricks to blowing up goons until it brings you into a zen-like state of quick action. Although it’s hard to get into how this game works, it pays off in a great arcade-style shooter experience that’s incredibly rewarding to get better at and aim for the highest scores you can.

One of the greatest compliments I can pay Rollerdrome is that it feels like a game from twenty years ago. You know, when they made stuff like SSX Tricky and Quake III and Tony Hawk's 2. Infinitely replayable, unique games with no real skill ceiling. You can get really good at this, and every new hurdle you get over feels great.

It's a rollerskating arena shooter. This could have gone badly wrong, but everything's well considered. Your movement is largely based on momentum, while you aim in all directions around you. If you need to take a sharp turn, you can use the same dodge roll you use to evade rockets and sniper fire. All the enemy types are instantly readable, with their own attack patterns and weaknesses. You're constantly balancing distance, quick kills and major threats, looking after your health and combos. Get good enough and the THPS stuff becomes second-nature. It starts to feel like Geometry Wars. Just one where you can throw grenades at fuchikomas while backflipping.

The aesthetic's pretty cool too. Like a very specific branch of early 80s sci-fi. Not like those ironic American parody throwbacks. It feels part of the scene.

Rollerdrome is very difficult, and it plays entirely by its own rules. Familiarity with Tony Hawk's (or better yet, Aggressive Inline) will definitely help you out, but there's a lot to take on board and practice until it's second-nature. The game's structured so you have to get better than you think you can be before it lets you onto the next set of levels. You can kind of flub your way through a lot of the early stuff, but you feel each new level of competence you gain, and it's exhilarating.

Do not pass this one up.

Some occasional odd camera quirks aside, there's very little to complain about here. Incredibly stylish and challenging with a flow, not unlike 2021's Boomerang X. The immediate comparison is to Tony Hawk's but there's just as much 2016 DOOM in the chess-style mechanics of the combat.

Few moments this year will be sweeter than pulling a frontflip over a grunt's head while wasting them with a shotgun.

Essential.

For such a great concept, presentation and use of the Tony Hawk's formula I found it rather disappointing

Firstly, level design wise the game only has really 3 maps with very minor changes between them. They suffer from various problems, way too much open flat space, lack of ramps, halfpipes and rails to give the platforming more variety. Some levels have very open gaps in the middle and edges where you will end up falling because of the bad design and the confusion while dodging enemies, they end up just interrupting the gameplay.

For the weapons the biggest issue is the ammo carries over for every weapon, so there's no rotating weapon incentive, you may pick the one you think is best for each enemy, but that's it. You also have to reload after killing only 1 of most enemy types and for such crazy amount of enemies I found the weapons to have too little ammo to do this, like 2 shots? For a rotating grenade launcher? Really? This maybe would've been less of a problem if the levels weren't so open and flat as mentioned above.

And then there's the enemies, the melee type are a joke and stand completely still instead of chasing you, the ranged ones are fine until too much of them spawn and you have to dodge sniper fire, lasers and missiles, some being more obnoxious to play around than others, aimed at you at the same type making you spam the dodge button, there's also a boss which is repeated and offers no real challenge.

Lastly for a music genre I usually like a lot, the soundtrack was very lackluster and so was the sound design of the weapons and explosions, they feel like have no impact. Overall I think most of these issues are easily fixable and hope for a sequel to do it eventually.

A bold blend of skate and shoot, Rollerdrome feels like a retro John Carpenter sci-fi with Tony Hawk in the lead role, at least aesthetically. As I generally suck at both skating and shooting, this game manages to make both feel seamless and effortless, with a small margin of error and thus making me feel like I'm not the most incompetant little cretin in all of gaming. With the super slick visuals and flowing gameplay, Rollerdrome will be a satisfying title for many, even if for the miserly 35mins of the trial run!

I am surprised that this game didn't pop off similarly to other indie games released this year. It is so fast and frantic with an extremely high skill ceiling without being overbearingly hard. Combine that with an extremely harsh scoring system and this four hour game becomes an almost endlessly replayable game, not including the new game plus mode, which seems to be way harder than the normal campaign.

I will sing this game's praises all day, however one thing I absolutely hate about not only this game, but most fast-paced games, is slow-motion. Ghostunner, Katana Zero, Severed Steel. These games have a slow motion system, but are mostly optional with the exception of Ghostrunner, where there's a few essential spots and one enemy where you have to use slow motion. In Rollerdrome, slow motion (also referred to "reflex") is an essential mechanic. Not only does it make enemies significantly less tedious to deal with them (shield enemies), but the slug shotgun is locked behind the reflex mechanic. In addition, if you play on controller, reflex mode is the only way to aim while doing tricks.

Other than that one flaw, this game is excellent.