Rollerdrome

My goodness, what a pleasant surprise this game was! One of the best elevator pitches for a video game I’ve heard in years: “Imagine Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, only with guns and fast-paced frenetic combat as well.” Somehow it really delivers on that concept too, the roller skating mechanics are so fluid and fun to mess around with. The trick system, maybe could use a little refinement in my opinion. I found myself wishing for the ability to control movement and set tricks with the Directional pad as opposed to analog joysticks, but that’s a minor personal gripe, and I understand why with the weapons system they used the D-pad for inventory purposes. The decision to link ammo replenishment with the trick system is brilliant and what marries what could be two disparate systems.

Having to use both aspects of the game in tandem forces you to play much more creatively, and actually integrate both aspects in order to succeed. And trust me, if you don’t integrate all the aspects of this games system, you will get caught out by a quickly escalating difficulty curve. Some of the levels towards the end and the final boss battle in particular had me pulling out my hair. Still it only came close to feeling unfair a couple times, but really all it took was reassessing strategic priorities and a little bit of better understanding to eventually progress. Seriously, if you have Playstation Plus and like any THPS game or anything with fast, twitchy, chaotic, flowing gameplay do yourself a favor and try this one out. Its pretty remarkable and absurd that such a concept for a game even exists let along the fact that they pulled it off very well and made such a fun game.