Within the first few minutes of Rollerdrome I understood why this game is so well received. It has everything: stylish aesthetic, intriguing dystopian backstory, bullet time, and fast-paced challenging roller-skating! This is an action-shooter like nothing I’ve played before.
Gameplay
Welcome to the near-future where you play as Kara Hassan, a new competitor in the games. What is the game? Well, welcome to the Rollerdrome where you essentially mix roller-skating around exciting arenas and performing tricks at high-speed while trying to not get shot by the house players and scoring points by taking them out. It’s a unique concept with some seedlings of a dark, dystopian story underneath. As you skate around the arena you can perform a vast variety of tricks, which also replenishes ammunition, and the game, while only single player, does feature a scoreboard system so you can really push for those high scores.
Movement in the game is fluid, and fast. It feels good to glide about the arena performing jumps, tricks, and flips. The tutorials are very well designed, being interspersed by showing you new things as you progress and can access them. What enhances the excitement in this game, aside from the pace, is that you can’t really fail a trick or crash (beware you can fall off the arena in some stages!) this means gameplay never feels unnecessary, or frustratingly interrupted. Keeping the octane levels high means, you really must focus hard and time your moves, and dodges, and use the game’s version of bullet time effectively to be successful.
Controls feel logical, and the PC version has controller support.
Rollerdrome gives us great Bullet Time
Bullet time is always one of two things. Badly implemented and annoying or fantastic fun that makes you think you’re in the Matrix. Thankfully, in Rollerdrome it’s the latter. Ok, so it’s called ‘Reflex Time’ in the game, but it’s the same idea. When used, it allows Kara to slow down and you as the player think about things, aim at targets, and look great while doing it. This adds an extra dynamic to the strategy you need to be thinking about, timing it perfectly to get the most advantage and not messing up your movement when the speed returns that you end up flying uncontrollably out of the arena.
It should be reiterated that Rollerdrome is fast-paced, but thankfully it isn’t unforgiving. If you fail a trick the worst thing that happens, is you don’t generate ammo. The game does its best to walk you through everything and has stages of tutorial scattered throughout. The way Kara picks herself up and allows you to carry on in a way raises the stakes, it’s a warning that if you continue to fall out the map or get hit it will be game over. This is a difficult game though that requires great hand-eye coordination, timing skill and quick thinking if you really want to survive the stages later in the game. While it can be frustrating to repeat stages, it never is that annoying because the game is just so fun to play and learn how to do new tricks.
Graphics
Rollerdrome is visually wonderful. Comic book-styled cel-shaded art paired with punchy vibrant colours. Everything from the character art to the environments and enemies on the course is superb. You can’t help but feel slightly uneasy, however. While everything is bright and fun the underlying story is one that is intrinsically dark and dystopian in nature. Sadly, you never get enough of the story (it’s just not that kind of game) and I would love it if this world could be fleshed out in some way.
Is Rollerdrome really that good?
Yes. Yes, it is. How could it not be? Fast-paced movement in a variety of course locations with varying enemies to shoot at with an assortment of weapons. On top of that, you have a scoreboard. If you’re competitive, it’s addictive. Finally, you get bullet time and as you know, that makes everything look cool. It’s very well polished and any gripes you may have quite quickly vanish as you work out how to do some awesome matrix-style moves on skates.
