OlliOlli Switch Stance - Review

I have some wonderful memories of skateboarding games, playing Tony Hawk 1 so much the disc was like rubber, so when the OlliOlli games first released, I was there, to see if they could capture that magic and now those same two games are on Switch, so do I still get that same wonderful feeling?

The answer is no, but that is because OlliOlli is a very different game compared to the likes of Tony Hawk or Skate, where those games were about taking a portion of the world to complete your run, collect items or such, OlliOlli is more about making it to the end of a level, whilst completing a challenge or two. Achieving each of the goals in a level is much harder than you might think, partly because some of them are a little demanding, but also due to the controls, something that you are either going to love or hate. Due to the games rigid 2d nature, there is nothing to worry about, when it comes to ensuring you are straight when you land from an Ollie, however you need to be careful when it comes to your landings, as a bad landing can hurt your ability to maintain momentum and clear the stage.

Depending on how you are at complex moves, your enjoyment of OlliOlli is going to vary quite a bit, for me, I am perfectly suited to twitch-based movements, but the combo style of say Street Fighter, is not my thing. In order to do an Ollie, a simple jump, you can pull the stick down and then flick it up, sounds easy right, the issues arise when you then want to pull tricks, you begin with pulling the stick down and then rotating it to another direction, the results are less that easy. Sometimes a level will task you with completing a specific move, either once or multiple times, but because I had issues in even getting the basic moves down, I was never able to clear those challenges, which also rolled into not being able to complete the high score missions, giving me the simple tasks only to complete.

What I did like was that the games don’t hold you back, making you repeat each level until you complete each objective listed, though that would be the ideal goal. All you need to do is make it to the end, to unlock the next one, something that I enjoyed attempting to do, even if I was bad at it, the downside to all of that though, is that if there was a level that was a real challenge, you were staying put for a while. This is only an issue if you struggle with the controls, something that I did for a long time on the Wii U version of the game, because of the games way of jumping and landing, it took me a long to adjust in Switch Stance, most other Skateboarding games don’t make a big deal about landing, unless you are turned sideways. Here though, you have to press the button to land, to early and its sloppy, to late you might bail, the problem that I had with this is that there never seemed to be a clear indication of when it should be pressed, even in the earlier stages, it was more guess work.

Because Switch Stand includes both games, when you boot it up, you are given the menu to select which game you want to play, the catch, once you are in that game, there is no going back. If you want to start OlliOlli and then a little later swap to OlliOlli 2, then you have to actually quit the entire game, go back in and select the other game, there is no other way to describe it, other than it being a complete mess and one that needs to be fixed right away. The other issue that I had, is that the game has no understanding that you have played the other one, so if you start with 1 and then go to 2, you have to play through the same tutorials, the game does not get that you have already achieved success on the other. While it is not as massive a problem as the other, it is still a little weird.

The other weird part is the games presentation, there is nothing wrong with it, but as each game sports a different look, they don’t really blend well. The first game was very well known for its pixelated graphics, which removed the attention from the visuals and focused on the gameplay, something that is easy to do here. The second game goes for a more animated look and it works for it, the problem is that the juxtaposition of the two style does not work here, about the only way I could see them working side by side, is if the games were released years apart, like they did on the other platforms, in a package, not so much. The presentation differences aside, there is nothing bad about the package, the games simplistic menus still carry across here and they work as smoothly here as they had done in the past. From an audio point of view, I did notice some issues where it was hard to hear some sounds, but that might have been just my Switch, over all, the audio quality was very good.

If you have played either of the OlliOlli games before, then you know exactly what you are getting, the later stages require a mastery of the controls, that will take a lot of practice to obtain, but if you persevere then you will find a rewarding experience, especially in short bursts. The game not being able to let you swap from one to another is quite strange, and honestly an oversight that should not have been allowed through, but considering that is the most annoying thing about the collection, you should be ok.

Review copy provided by Good Shepherd