Nintendo Switch Review Key Provided by Private Division
Bringing a new look to their side-scroller skateboarding series, Roll7 and Private Division have released OlliOlli World. Showing growth in the series itself while maintaining a fun and exciting gameplay experience is something this game definitely proves the developers can do. With simplistic, easy-to-pickup controls and a friendly, interesting environment, this game definitely is one that brings quite a bit of entertainment.
Story
It’s coming time for the current Skate Wizard of Radlandia to find a successor and you’re just in time to be a prime candidate. In order to be the Skate Wizard, you must prove that you can pull off the skills and stunts on your board in the five different regions and styles of the Skate Gods. Do you have what it takes to be the next successor to take on the position as Radlandia’s Skate Wizard?
Gameplay
Keeping it simple and introducing each aspect of the game's controls through tutorial levels dedicated to each little aspect, learning how to play this game doesn’t take long. Even when it is skills as simple as pushing yourself for speed and doing ollies, it has a level dedicated to having you pull it off properly. This is a great practice that they continue in the game all the way through all of your different skills.
They also slowly approach different stunts as you progress through the game. Starting off with a lot of flat land, they introduce multiple pathways, then go on to wall rides, grinds, combos, grabs, and more. Eventually, you will be pulling off all sorts of tricks in each level as you progress and try to claim the top score.
Of course, before you start skating you will need to create your character. There is a full character customizer that pretty much lets you design your character however you want. You will need to make some progress in the game if you are hoping to have a wide variety of clothing to choose from, but there is a solid starting list to choose from. Don’t worry, you can change up your character at any time in the menu.
Each level has a series of tasks and challenges to complete, but all of which are completely optional. You’ll have specifics such as jumping over five bees or doing a specific trick over the crowd. Other than that, you’ll also have three different scores to beat for each level. All of these side challenges will unlock more cosmetic items for your character. Other than these side challenges, your main goal is to simply complete the level and your sub-goal is to complete the level without using any checkpoints.
You will hit a lot of checkpoints as you go through each level, but as long as you don’t wipe out, you won’t actually use one. As for the challenges, you only have to complete them once. Wiping out right after completing a challenge, restarting the level after a challenge is completed, and everything in between doesn’t affect the fact that you completed the challenge. Your score however doesn’t count until you finish the level.
Being able to explore multiple pathways in each level is a pretty interesting aspect for them to include in the game and really adds a lot of originality and replayability to each level. Some pathways will take you down a completely different direction leading to the end while others will be a detour for extra points or a challenge or a secret before putting you back on the main path again.
Visuals and Audio
The playful colors and generally inviting environment this game maintains throughout the entire experience is definitely an aspect that shouldn’t be overlooked. Many skateboarding games just give a basic layout design to what you would expect a skateboarder to skate in, but because they took a mythical route with the story and matched it with a colorful world of interesting sights, it was always nice to play through each level.
The music choice in the game was pretty standard to what I would expect and the sound effects were accurately on point to the actions you are doing in the game. As far as audio goes, this game doesn’t do anything to make it stand out, but it is at least fitting.
Replayability
Thanks to all the pathways in each level, challenges, secrets, and then even the online leaderboard, there is definitely replayability to the game. However, there is also a factor of repetitiveness that the game has since the controls have a somewhat limited number of tricks and the levels are basically mixed versions of each other with a few changes to try and keep things interesting in each one, it did give off a feeling of being repetitive.
What It Could Have Done Better
While I am not sure how they could have done it, the repetitive feeling in the game did make me want to take breaks from it more often than I typically would while reviewing a game. For casual gaming, I can see this being fine as I wouldn’t expect the average player to play more than three or four levels before putting it down for a day or so. But if when looking to long-play this game, the repetitiveness might sink in.
Verdict
OlliOlli World is a fun little skateboarding sidescroller game that shows how far the series itself has come. While there may be some issues when it comes to the general replayability of the game, I can see a lot of players enjoying this one. I would say it is best to casually progress through this game in gameplay bursts so the repetitive feeling never hits them. That said, it’s a game worth having in your library and one I would recommend for players to check out themselves.
