It turns out both Rollerdrome and Sifu make for a decent double-feature, sharing many of the same elements—combos that make your fingers ache to pull off—and an "easy to learn but hard to master" design ethos.
They also happen to both follow a relatively basic premise to lay the foundation for all the button-mashing combat: In 2030 London, Kara Hassan is the newest contender in a deadly sport called 'Rollerdrome'—essentially a roller derby with guns. From there, it becomes an underdog 'rags to riches' story as Kara rises up the ranks.
There are some brief but interesting interludes between the various leagues that take place in first person as you examine the locker room for information on your opponents and the larger goings-on of the world around the titular tournament. Despite how intriguing these segments are, they are largely superfluous and the wider plot implications in them never really go anywhere.
But still, Rollerdrome's biggest draw is its 'Tony Hawk with Guns' gameplay. For the most part, it does earn that title, with similar trick flow and satisfaction that those games give, only with combat thrown into the mix. It does the most it can with such a premise to decent results; however, it can get in its own way with how complicated it is at times. In order to reload all of your guns, you need to be doing tricks along the way, which might sound reasonable enough but as the encounters gradually ramp up in difficulty, you're going to need to pull off some split-second button combos in order to succeed in some of the later battles. It's an appropriate escalation in challenge; however, the finger gymnastics involved to finish, let alone getting a good score in the meantime, are just ridiculous.
However, I suppose one can't complain too much, as at least there are some quite generous accessibility features there to tweak and change the game's difficulty as you so choose.
The range of arenas (or lack thereof) throughout Rollerdrome might also be a let-down. There's a decent mix of environments here but not so much that you're not going to get bored of seeing the same starting arena in slightly different configurations each time during the competition.
Regardless, Rollerdrome's slick cel-shaded, Mœbius-inspired art style and satisfying core skate-n-shoot loop are almost enough to carry the entire thing, however a lacklustre story and some frustrating levels in the back-half hold the whole game back a bit too much.
7/10
They also happen to both follow a relatively basic premise to lay the foundation for all the button-mashing combat: In 2030 London, Kara Hassan is the newest contender in a deadly sport called 'Rollerdrome'—essentially a roller derby with guns. From there, it becomes an underdog 'rags to riches' story as Kara rises up the ranks.
There are some brief but interesting interludes between the various leagues that take place in first person as you examine the locker room for information on your opponents and the larger goings-on of the world around the titular tournament. Despite how intriguing these segments are, they are largely superfluous and the wider plot implications in them never really go anywhere.
But still, Rollerdrome's biggest draw is its 'Tony Hawk with Guns' gameplay. For the most part, it does earn that title, with similar trick flow and satisfaction that those games give, only with combat thrown into the mix. It does the most it can with such a premise to decent results; however, it can get in its own way with how complicated it is at times. In order to reload all of your guns, you need to be doing tricks along the way, which might sound reasonable enough but as the encounters gradually ramp up in difficulty, you're going to need to pull off some split-second button combos in order to succeed in some of the later battles. It's an appropriate escalation in challenge; however, the finger gymnastics involved to finish, let alone getting a good score in the meantime, are just ridiculous.
However, I suppose one can't complain too much, as at least there are some quite generous accessibility features there to tweak and change the game's difficulty as you so choose.
The range of arenas (or lack thereof) throughout Rollerdrome might also be a let-down. There's a decent mix of environments here but not so much that you're not going to get bored of seeing the same starting arena in slightly different configurations each time during the competition.
Regardless, Rollerdrome's slick cel-shaded, Mœbius-inspired art style and satisfying core skate-n-shoot loop are almost enough to carry the entire thing, however a lacklustre story and some frustrating levels in the back-half hold the whole game back a bit too much.
7/10