The year is 2030 and we’re living in a future dreamt up from the 1970s. Large computer desks take up office space with tiny little monitors built into the desk with thousands of buttons of all different colors. The world around you is changing drastically, and not for the better. Matterhorn Global, the company running the International Rollerdrome Federation, has recently entered a bid to privatize the police. Unfortunately, though some of your competitors are making time for that, you don’t have that luxury. You’re not here to become a celebrity or try to change the world, you’re here to clear your debt. And the way you’ve chosen to do that? Rollerdrome.
Rollerdrome
Developer: Roll7
Price: $29.99
Platform: Playstation 4/5(reviewed), PC (Steam)
MonsterVine was provided with a Playstation 5 code for review
Rollerdrome does an incredible job of portraying a not-so-distant dystopian future where the world shown to everyone is carefully curated by news teams owned by megacorps. While Rollerdrome carves out its own story, I feel it’s at least taken inspiration from the dystopian sci-fi 1975 thriller Rollerball or movies like it such as The Running Man with a dash of Mad Max. Both sports are fairly brutal and, like the corps in Rollerball, Matterhorn Global wants to ramp up the difficulty and rig the games for a more entertaining spectacle. However, the primary difference is that Rollerball is a team sport and Rollerdrome is solo. You are Kara Hassan, someone who is in a lot of debt and has been given the opportunity to clear some of that debt through playing a very dangerous sport.
The sport itself has you roller skating around a skate park performing tricks and fighting baddies. As you jump into the arena you’ll be greeted by many different enemy types, adding more and more as the game goes on. It’s impressive, the amount of enemy types in Rollerdrome. I believe there are eight different enemy types, called ‘house players,’ not including bosses. A reductionist take would say that Rollerdrome is just Tony Hawk Pro Skater with guns, and honestly, that’s not a bad sell. I think Rollerdrome deserves a bit more than that though. There’s far more complexity going on here and when you’re in the arena and everything hits you at once, it’s just a completely different game.
First, you’re presented with a list of challenges. You need to complete X number of challenges to move onto the next set of arenas. If you die completing a challenge, that’s okay. The challenge will tick off and you can either replay the arena or move on. I loved that balance. Challenges vary but some remain the same. As the narrative moves forward and opponents are knocked out of the competition, some of the people’s scores you have to beat change. Some of the challenges remain persistent, like collecting all the combo tokens or performing a trick near the trick token. But for the most part, the challenges are playing to the strengths of the house players in the arena and the arena itself. Once you’re in the arena itself, you can pause to see the list of challenges, and once you complete them, they’ll check off immediately. Each arena has ten challenges to complete, as well as a par time you’ll be scored on.
Make no mistake, Rollerdrome is a difficult game. It is completely execution-based. Their willingness to admit this and allow you the opportunity to perhaps cheese out a few challenges to move the narrative forward should be applauded. Your issue won’t be one or two challenges, it’ll be playing an arena to completion. Rollerdrome needs you to learn the game, learn the enemy types, and learn your weapons in order to advance. It’s a very rewarding experience.
In the arena itself, you need to kill all the house players in order to complete the level. You’re given four different weapons over the course of the game. Rollerdrome starts you out with dual-pistols and moves hastily forward with a shotgun, a grenade launcher, and a precision-based laser rifle. All of these weapons are fun to use and all have their strengths and weaknesses. For example, one of the enemy types, the Polybeam, teleports away after being hit. If you’re using the shotgun, a single hit will send them away. If you’re using dual-pistols, you could put a full clip of them into the Polybeam before they get away, allowing you to finish them off in a single shotgun blast the next time you run into them.
Ammunition is a limited resource though that can only be replenished by performing tricks and dodges. Just about every enemy attack can be dodged and only a perfect dodge will give you more ammo. When a sniper aims at you, you’ll see a red beam pointed at Kara, eventually it’ll turn white. When the beam turns white, the sniper is locked on and about to shoot. At this point, if you hit the dodge button, it’ll give you a ‘perfect dodge’ notice and refill some of your ammo. All of your ammunition is shared, consider it a percentage of ammunition. If your shotgun is full and you fire both grenades in your grenade launcher, that shotgun will be near empty when you switch back to it.
Snipers aren’t your only fear in the arena. It’s littered with grunts who have spiked baseball bats, warheads that fire homing rockets and get a shield after being hit, riot guards that have shields that need to be busted through before you can hit them. The number of enemy types is impressive, especially considering you need to deal with each of them differently. Luckily, you have reflex time. Holding the L2 button allows you to slow time briefly, which is a godsend considering how fast and hectic Rollerdrome can get sometimes. Hitting reflex time right after a perfect dodge will activate super reflex, which is a short time where your guns deal more damage. There’s a lot going on here.
Most of what you’re doing in Rollerdrome is controlling chaos. Eventually, you’ll hit a point where an arena is just too much. Too many enemies firing too many projectiles, it’s difficult to stay alive. You have a small amount of health that can only be filled by killing enemies and collecting little green bubbles they drop. Once you’re out, you’ll hear an audio cue I’m a little too familiar with at this point, “Kara Hassan, Eliminated.” Coming to the arena with a different approach though, knowing which enemy type is giving you the most grief and focusing on them the next time, or working on specific areas of the arena to avoid them is key. The strategy going into an arena and watching it all go to hell as you just barely make a perfect dodge or see eight rockets coming your way, two snipers and a polybeam laser, and a stomper reticle on the ground below you. Rollerdrome is madness.
Upon completion of the campaign, the Rollerdrome championship, there’s a second campaign packed in called Out For Blood. It takes place after you’ve won the championship and is really more of an extremely difficult victory lap through the arenas you’ve previously visited. Considering how much time it would take to complete all the challenges in the initial campaign, 110 challenges, along with leaderboards to show off your high score, it’s impressive they went with a new campaign. However, it is just a more difficult version of the main campaign and each arena has only 3 challenges.
Rollerdrome is not without its issues. There were several bugs I ran into while playing the game. While these didn’t happen often, they absolutely destroyed my runs when they did happen. Several times I would be wall riding or grinding and my character would just reset to somewhere near where I was, essentially causing me to die because I was just standing still. Considering how difficult Rollerdrome can get, this wasn’t the most frustrating part of the game. But it was frustrating. Bugs like this can be fixed though and considering how good the rest of the product is, in its pre-released state, I’d expect these to be fixed shortly after release.
Finally, Rollerdrome provides an aesthetic that vibes with me so hard. The game is filled with 70s futurism that is timeless. Navigating around the world in the short narrative moments before the beginning of each set of finals was one of my favorite parts. Little breadcrumbs of what was happening in the world around you while you’re participating in this pointless, yet excessively violent, game. You’ll receive emails from the corps telling you what to talk about and what to avoid, navigating around the world space gives you clues on what corp controlled media looks like in Rollerdrome.
Rollerdrome is an incredible game. There’s a lot of frustration involved with the more difficult arenas, aiming for higher scores, and completing challenges but when it hits, it hits so good. I absolutely adore the 70s futuristic aesthetic, the accompanying soundtrack, and the character art. The progression from the first few arenas to the finals is very rewarding. There were a few times I’d get stuck but I was given the tools to keep trying.
The Final Word
Rollerdrome offers an incredibly rewarding experience that keeps you coming back for more.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
