I'm skating at full speed and a sniper's laser sight is still pinned to my chest. I wait until the last moment, just as they're about to pull the trigger, to dodge the oncoming bullet and fire my shotgun, right at the thug swinging a spiked club at my forehead. After heading for the nearest half pipe, I turn a nose in the air to reload my pistol ammo and land on a shredding rail, toward the snipers.
Now it's just a matter of firing some homing rockets into the air, engaging idle, and unloading my dual weapons, all before I get to safety. I feel like an armed martial artist on wheels. I look like a high speed death suit. And I'm having a lot of fun.
Introducing Rollerdrome, the upcoming single player arena shooter from Roll7 that will enroll you in the titular fictional blood sport. Comprised of a series of deathmatches that play out over a full narrative single-player campaign, Rollerdrome challenges you to battle waves of enemies in battle arenas filled with skatepark paraphernalia. With nothing more than a small arsenal of weapons in hand and a pair of skates on your feet, you'll pull off combos, complete challenges, and pull off a host of crazy tricks worthy of the most extreme sports games.
While lead producer Drew Jones bluntly describes Rollerdrome as "a skate shooter," fans of the studio might recognize it more as a mix of two of Roll7's previous releases. Combining the fluid skating in the shadow of Olli Olli cells with the frenetic arena survival of Laser League, the game took on a surprisingly bizarre premise for what could be its zenith.
“The goal was not just to create a game that blended genres, but to create a game that was its own genre,” says QA manager David Jenkins. "And not having a game that just says 'Oh, it's a skating game and you can shoot it' or 'Oh, it's a shooter and you're wearing skates' is really its own separate kind of system.
Beyond Thunderdrome
After spending several hours playing the first six levels of the game, it was the skating half that really got me. Rollerdrome is robust enough to give you a variety of tricks to perform (spins, grabs, and shreds) and intuitive enough to make even the most advanced techniques a breeze, like throwing acid into a quarter pipe or extending your time. of air. It's also all fluid, with a fluidity that sells the magnificence of your violent performance.
Gunplay is also not excluded from this equation. With proximity mines to dodge, laser sights to wave, homing missiles to dodge, and fiery bolts of ionizing energy to reflect, Rollerdrome's frenzy is manageable thanks to a generous targeting and cooldown system. Your reticle will automatically move towards enemies when you're close, and slow motion can be activated to let you rain down hell on your opponents as you sneak around at breakneck speeds.
“It's a kind of enthusiasm; throw caution to the wind,” says Jones. “These enemies want to get you and you have to face them. If you try to play a little more carefully, you won't get as much as you would if you were just fighting enemies.
Rollerdrome's shooter game is simple yet elegant. It seemed to me like a rudimentary imitation of the Doom reboot.
An ingenious ammo and health system further encourages this aggression, as you'll need to dispatch enemies to replenish your fragile health bar, while performing various tricks to replenish your limited supply of ammo. I started with a couple of pistols, quickly unlocked a shotgun and grenade launcher to engage in fights, and was impressed with how many miles the game was able to squeeze out of even this small array. You'll have to think carefully about your weapons, switching between them at your own pace to get around each enemy's defenses.
It is simple but elegant. Rollerdrome's shooter felt like a rudimentary imitation of Doom Eternal to me, as you dance between enemies, swap weapons on the fly, and dash forward to keep your health and ammo afloat. Add to that the set of skill challenges that come with each level, ranging from pulling off a particular trick, to breaking a wall of a specific object, to beating a set score, and the range of mastery is huge.
false start
Where Rollerdrome begins to bloat his performance, though, is outside of deathmatches. Set in a retro-futuristic dystopia, marred by monopolistic corporations suppressing civil unrest by televising riveting blood sports, Rollerdrome punctuates its levels with bits of world-building. Between each set, you'll wander through empty locker rooms and gyms, read newspaper clippings or listen to radio segments to get a sense of the world beyond.
"There's such an obvious source of inspiration in '70s genre movies like Rollerball and Running Man," says Jones. "So once we got the gory element, a lot of the setting, theme, and timing fell into place."
Not that it made a big impression on me. The main plot is relayed to you so sporadically and with so little fanfare that I've largely written off the narrative altogether. I found myself more intrigued by my latest high score than the fate of this fictional world. A series of roller-skating deathmatches might well be fertile ground for telling a story of corporate moral turpitude, but with that story so divorced from the main events of the game, it became little more than a forgettable aside. Let's hope that the narrative promise of Rollerdrome becomes a full game.
Distributor on wheels
The most amazing thing about Rollerdrome is its single player exclusivity. The idea of a cel-shaded, roller-skating arena shooter sounds like the perfect starting point for the next blockbuster battle royale or competitive left-field phenomenon in Rocket League mode. . While Roll7 already has some experience in multiplayer development, why did they approach Rollerdrome as a single player experience?
"The trap we really didn't want to fall into was going too far with a new subgenre of video games," says Jones. “We had enough on our plates, and enough to understand the basic idea of the game and the single player idea that we started with. We really wanted to pick a focused experience and take it as far as possible.
For the most part, it appears that Roll7 did exactly that. Rollerdrome may trip up the convoluted launch pad of story-studded storytelling, but it delivers such a finely balanced blend of skating and shooting that it will enthrall you all the same. Maybe it's time to dust off those skates that were sitting in the garage, because when Rollerdrome goes on sale on August 16, you'll want to hit the skatepark.