Rollerdrome is a video game based on the dystopian trope of a deadly futuristic sport that placates and distracts the masses of a crumbling society. Movies like The Hunger Games, The Running Man, and Gamer are good points of comparison. Rollerdrome is basically roller skating with guns, and the contestants are tasked with doing tricks while trying to survive and kill a variety of well-armed opponents. The game was released on August 16th, 2022 for PS4/5, Xbox, and PC.
Roller skating with guns
At first glance, Rollerdrome would seem to resemble Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (THPS) mixed with the slow-motion shooting action of the Max Payne games. On a certain level, that description is apt, but it actually has a significant amount of bullet hell shooter mixed in (bullet hell is a genre/ gameplay feature where there are a lot of bullets on screen that you must dodge). Rollerdrome was developed by ROLL7, whose previous titles include the OLLIOLLI series and Laser League. Knowing this, makes Rollerdrome feel like a natural evolution for the studio. OLLIOLLI is a successful side-scrolling skateboarding series, and Laser League is a competitive futuristic sport with an aesthetic that resembles the film TRON.
Graphics
ROLL7 games are known for having distinctive styles and Rollerdrome is no different. Adopting a cell-shaded comic book style, the colors, enemy design, and style screams retro-futuristic. It’s what I imagine people in the 70s imagined a dystopian world would look like. I have no problems with the graphics, they are inoffensive but after the initial novelty wore off, they start to feel a bit too plain. This isn’t helped by levels that seem to fit 2 categories, stadiums, and snow-filled levels. On the upside, this style allowed the game to easily run at 4k, 144 frames per second (FPS) on my RTX 2070 super PC, and the list of new games that system can run over even 100 fps is getting shorter and shorter each year. FPS is a measurement of how many frames appear on screen in the span of one second. This is important because the higher the FPS, the more responsive a game can feel. Rollerdrome’s gameplay is very responsive and I didn’t experience any slow down, graphical glitches, or crashes.
Gameplay
As I mentioned before, Rollerdrome combines the gameplay of THPS with the gunplay and bullet time of Max Payne. ROLL7 does a fantastic job emulating the feeling of THPS, despite having a much more limited trick system. You have a grab button, a grind button, and a flip button. the flip button really confuses me, because the up & down on the left stick does nothing in the air. THPS and pretty much every game with a similar movement system has not used a button for flipping, and it detracts from the gameplay. A great option would have been to put flip controls on the left stick. Rollerdrome does a great job implementing the slow-motion gunplay, and It all fits together incredibly naturally. Unfortunately, the 3rd person bullet hell aspect is where the game struggles.
Rollerdrome is a ridiculously hard game, and this is coming from a person that likes challenging games but the challenge in Rollerdrome is like a boot to the face. One of my favorite recent games was Returnal, a 3rd person bullet hell shooter that many gamers said was too difficult. I found Returnal significantly easier than Rollerdrome, so that gives you an idea of how hard this game is.
Each level is filled with rounds of enemies that spawn after all the previous enemies are killed. There is a good variety of enemies, like spiked bat wielders, snipers, riot shield users, and even mechs. It is required to beat all of a stage’s enemies, as well as complete a number of challenges to move on to the next stage. These challenges include things like getting a certain trick score, collecting items, and killing enemies in certain ways. Killing these enemies adds to a combo meter that multiplies your score, but you are also required to do tricks to refill your ammo. So in the middle of a barrage of bullets, snipers, and homing missiles, you must dodge, slow time, and constantly do enough tricks and grind to refill your ammo.
All of this is fine, but it becomes overwhelming. Usually, bullet hell games have patterns to them and are meticulously tuned as to be challenging but not overwhelmingly difficult. Unfortunately, Rollerdrome does not feel properly tuned. Enemy spawns feel entirely random and not planned out. Attacks don’t feel like they have a discernible pattern, so you constantly feel like you’re being hit from all sides. A great challenging game has to feel fair, but after the first couple of stages, Rollerdrome never feels fair again. As much as the game nails the THPS feel, the rest of the game feels like it needed much more play testing and planning.
Level Design
Rollerdrome consists of 11 stages, repeated across 2 modes, that range from concrete with snow, rocky, shopping mall, and generic stadium. They all blur together and none of the stages particularly stick out as interesting or memorable. They also have a big layout problem. None of these stages would be interesting as THPS stages and they also don’t feel planned around the shooting mechanics. If you look at a game like Returnal, the levels usually have areas of several different heights and walls that can obscure the enemy’s view of you. Rollerdrome’s levels are primarily wide open, without much height difference and very limited walls for cover, and when they are filled with incredibly accurate snipers and missiles chasing you, the lack of verticality or walls becomes very noticeable and adds to the frustration of the game.
It’s also incredibly easy to go out of bounds on certain stages, which takes a huge chunk of health. This seems like an unnecessary shot at the player in an already super challenging game. Sometimes I’ll admit me going out of bounds was my fault, but a lot of times it felt like a flaw in the level design. The levels with out-of-bounds problems often feel too small already, so it makes you feel really constricted.
Story
Rollerdrome has a light story experienced thru free roam areas between levels. For example, in the early game, you’re in a locker room and the fantastically voiced radio announcer, as well as objects around the room, give a bit of backstory. You play as Kara Hassan, a character with no personality or voice, it’s all really limited and feels very much like an afterthought. There’s an interesting plot of the Rollerdrome games being used to distract the masses but it’s barely explored and feels very insignificant. There is a new game plus type mode that ups the difficulty even more and has some additional story elements. Considering how lackluster and limited the story is, I doubt it’s something anyone will feel drawn to, it’s all just a loose excuse to go roller skating with guns.
Accessibility & Assists
Surprisingly, Rollerdrome has no difficulty options, but they added what amounts to a totally open cheats menu they call “ assists”. This menu contains options like invulnerability, infinite ammo, and lower enemy damage. If you play this game and are getting extremely frustrated, I recommend lowering the enemy damage to 60%. That change made the game much more palatable, but you’re still constantly getting hit. I actually significantly enjoyed the game more once i did this, but considering it tells you that none of your high scores count for the online leaderboards when you use the assists, it felt like the game blaming me for its inadequacies in design. I tried some of the other assists, most weren’t my cup of tea, but I did have some fun with unlimited ammo, it took a lot of pressure off but that also made doing tricks feel pointless.
At a minimum, every game should have control mapping, and Rollerdrome does, as well as a few key options. There are options to turn off screen shake, as well as contrast and size options for subtitles. There’s also high contrast audio, which accentuates important sounds. Besides that, I think the assistance options provide kind of difficulty options as well as accessibility. Lowering damage, turning on unlimited ammo, etc, all make the game easier for more people to play.
Audio
One of the most important parts of a flow state trick game like THPS is a great soundtrack, but that’s another flaw in Rollerdrome. The game is filled with generic and repetitive music that becomes irritating quite quickly. Rollerdrome would have been better off with a licensed soundtrack or just less generic music. It feels a lot like the elevator music of gaming, and even Super Nintendo games had soundtracks with more variety and depth.
Prognosis
Rollerdrome has so much potential and is so close to being a great game, but level design, difficulty, and enemy placement really hold this game back. If you play with the assists menu you can make the game significantly more balanced and enjoyable but it doesn’t fix some of the game’s bigger issues. Roller skating with guns can be incredibly fun, but as is, the game needs a lot of updates to balance, enemy spawn locations, and the unlikely; updates to map design.
6/10
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