LifeisXbox’s OlliOlli World review | I never set foot on a skating board, far too dangerous for me. I’m sure I would break every single bone in my body if I tried to speed the board up. I’m all-in on skating games on my Xbox though! The skating genre has this special magical touch that keeps you going, you always want to nail that specific trick or reach that seemingly impossible high score. You just never become ‘board’ of the gameplay. That is if the game has enough quality, fans of the genre had ups and downhills. Some bad examples are the recent SkateBIRD or how about that 2015’s Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 eh? I still get angry about that unparalleled bad experience. British Developer Roll7, which is part of Private Division comes with the Holy Grail for the 2D skating genre. OlliOlli and OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood are both considered to be excellent games but the leap in quality with OlliOlli World is remarkable and unprecedented.
Most Memorable Moment
Something really funny happened during the embargo period, the game takes the avatars from friends and shows them with pre-recorded dialogue or loading screens. This is done so realistically that a few other gamers who had early access thought that I was featured in the game. As my avatar looks exactly like me, I got messages on Discord, Twitter and Facebook all congratulating me for being in the game.
âšī¸ Reviewed on Xbox Series X | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion from the writer.
What we Liked!
- Colourful new art style | Previous OlliOlli games had a strong flash game vibe, it definitely wasn’t an eye-catching skating adventure. It already showed the talent of developer Roll7 but the simple visual style hold it back a little. This completely changed with OlliOlli World! Beautiful and colourful locations welcome the player. It still plays in a 2D perspective but skater paradise Radlandia is created as a vibrant 3D world. Biggest strenght is how instantly recognisable everything is, if you see someone playing you immediatly know that it is OlliOlli World. Creating this new look for the franchise wasn’t without danger as visual clutter could have hurt the typical gameplay. Roll7 found the perfect balance between highly detailed surroundings and situational awareness. So I was relieved and happy with the visual result. You miss a lot of the details during normal gameplay but when you start to look at replays you’ll start to notice all the visual stuff. Especially the crowds do some really charming and often funny animations, I really recommend to check out your replays!
- Charming characters and a massive avatar customisation | Characters are heavily present in dialogue and in the Radlandia world. They burst with unusual personality and leave a lasting impression. You’ll find nice touches and references too, one of those is that you can see your Xbox friend avatars in dialogue moments and loading screens. The avatar creation tool is nothing short but impressive, you can literally change everything. From character animations, physique, clothes and your skateboard. You constantly unlock new character customisation options by nailing stage objectives and advancing in the campaign.
- Open for everyone! | Most players won’t even scratch the surface of everything that is possible with OlliOlli World. You are only required to reach the end of a stage and nothing about progress is locked behind skill or highscores. Traditionally, games like this normally have a huge skill wall for casual players. Don’t get me wrong though, hardcore gamers who pour hours into this skating game have some insane highscores and challenges to beat. Daily leaderboards powered by a random level generator is enough reason to become addicted, as the urge to beat friend scores never grows old.
- Addictive multiplayer | There are two strong reasons that give OlliOlli World huge replay value. Daily changing leaderboards (Gnarvana League) that pit you against nine other players to reach the highest score. Do well and you level up your global online ranked position. There’s also a random level creator (called Portal) that you can share, while I missed some additional options to change stuff here I do loved the fact that you have unlimited gameplay with this. All campaign stages have a leaderboard too, so if you are the kind of player that looks up scores from friends and do everything to beat them… this is your kind of game! You can also view the replay from friends and opponents from the Gnarvana League, this shows you how a player reached an insane score.. removing that – he cheated feeling – some players have mindblowing skills so be prepared that the skill difference between you and other players will be massive.
- To do’s while skating in the campaign | Roll7 wanted to give the players even more reasons to keep playing OlliOlli World so they created lots of challenges for the campaign stages. Each stage has five returning challenges, simply finishing the stage and finisning it without using a checkpoint (trust me, this is harder than it sounds) and three score-based challenges. They start of easy but later stages have some tough to reach scores. Each stage also has three unique challenges that require you to do something special, a specific advanced-trick under a waterfall with lots of frogs, hitting cat balloons, hit friendly bees and so much more. It keeps the game fresh and exciting, resulting in at least ten-hours of gameplay to finish every challenge.
Mixed Feelings
- Big emphasis on story | For this third entry in the franchise there’s another big new thing, a story focused campaign. One that slowly teaches you every gameplay mechanic, grinding, perfect landings, wall rides and combo’s. Your avatar does all of that to become the new link between humanity and the skate gods, for me it felt like a super long stretched tutorial. There a surprising amount of voiced dialogue that doesn’t feel like it gave value to OlliOlli World so I simply started to skip them. Annoyingly that’s not an option for the dialogue that starts after finishing a stage. I appreciate that Roll7 made sure that players have a useful and long tutorial, literally hours and that it is combined with some (cumbersome) story, it is something that many games don’t do.
What we Disliked
- Absolutely nothing | While I felt that the tutorial could have been done different it was still really fun. This is one of those rare games where eveything just feels perfect.
How long to beat the story | 8 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | Hard to say, but at least 20 hours.
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