OlliOlli World - Review
OlliOlli World looked like it could be a fun game, it had challenges, lots of replayability and an astonishing level of style, the likes of which I haven’t seen for a long. Now that I have put dozens of hours into the game, did my hopes come to pass, or was it nothing more than gnarly dream?
Unlike past games in the OlliOlli series, OlliOlli World has more of a story, with characters that mean something to the experience, you play as you, or at least a rad version of you and soon as you start, you encounter a special group of folks that are looking for the next skate wizard. The skate wizard is someone who talks to the four skate gods, who long ago, used their powers to shape a part of the world each and combined is the place known as Radlandia. The current skate wizard is Chiffon and she is going to retire, so she and her group of friends, Suze, Mike and Dad, are starting to look for the next skate wizard and they think you are the one. The story is super light on details, there is enough of it to connect the different stages and worlds together, but it is not something you could see adapted anywhere else. A lot of the story or character development takes place in the various stages as well, when you learn that Dad is a safety nut, or Mike just loves big tricks, thankfully it isn’t just those characters that we meet, because their general sense of self is established pretty quickly. The other characters all have their own style as well, like the skater who is working at a water park, even though she can’t swim, on the off chance she encounters the skate god for the region.
But playing a game like OlliOlli World for a story would be the same as playing Mario Kart for one, nice to have, but not why you came here, you want good gameplay and this is where OlliOlli World falls apart. Let me get this out of the way, the game runs great and the gameplay is solid, the problem is the controls, they are a mess and as there is not a single option to change anything, if you can’t get a handle on them, you are out of luck. The left stick is your jump function and depending on the direction you pull it, you will do a different style of jump, makes sense right, the catch is that if you don’t let it go enough, you won’t jump. This isn’t a real concern when the ground is mostly flat, but when you have to start grinding across gaps, or jumping from ramps and then into wall rides, it becomes a nightmare. There were countless times when I would hold the stick down, let go at the top of a ramp, jump up, but then coming off the wallride, it wouldn’t register right and I would fail to make the gap and have to restart the level.
Restarting the level isn’t hard, the game does that almost instantly, but the problem is that it was just so picky on what it considered a good jump and what wasn’t one, that I would honestly get stuck in a loop of trying over and over, to get it right. What makes it worse is that once you have finally cleared that gap, you then still have countless gaps, grinds and other obstacles in your way, until you reach the next checkpoint and if you stack it, like I did a lot, you end up back at the last safe point and have to do it all again. The game has no consideration for any players who might get stuck or just not be able to achieve the level of control it needs, going from jump into a wallride, then a grind, before jumping again and then smashing through an obstacle, without making a single mistake and it can take a lot of effort and the reward is just not there. That isn’t to say that the game doesn’t reward you, it does, it has many ways in which it does, but for the amount of effort and frustration I had to deal with, in order to pass some levels, it just felt like it wasn’t worth it.
Unlocking some rewards is as simple as passing the level, without needing to use a checkpoint, well that isn’t a simple challenge, but others are thankfully more straight forward. Mike has two sets of challenges on each course, the first are scores, beat all three scores and you will unlock a new piece of clothing for yourself. The game does tell you what the scores are, so you can head into a stage knowing what they are, but it is the second set of challenges that are more complicated, these can vary from don’t slam down after two wallrides, to knock a frog off a bee or perform four advanced tricks in front of the aliens. Some of them can be achieved without any real stress, some though require you to understand the course layout, including the more advanced gnarly routes they offer, in order to locate the space where you can attempt to check it off the list. With eight objectives on each course, you will never achieve all of them in a single run, if you were some sort of skate wizard, maybe you could, but most people will not be able to, so the game does give you plenty of reason to revisit each stage. But again, the rewards are more clothes, boards and accessories to enjoy and at no time, did I feel the need to change up my look, I liked what I selected from the start.
That is not a knock on the games presentation, the style is incredible and I did spend a good amount of time creating my character at the start, I just had no desire to change the outfit as I played. Each of the locations that you visit in the game, even Gnavarna, have a unique style, that seems to fit the theme of the skaters around there, the forest location is known for wall rides and grinds. With each location having a consistent theme, even if the levels themselves vary quite a bit, you won’t find yourself getting confused from one stage to the next, something I was appreciative of. As I mentioned earlier, the game is fast and you need a display that can keep up, when I started playing on my tv, even with it set to game mode, the screen couldn’t keep up with the starting portions of each level, which would leave my character feeling like a ghost as the tv tried to keep up, switching to my pc monitor removed that issue.
There is something that needs to be addressed though, the crew, at the start and end of each stage, they are usually all there to provide some commentary on what is happening or what is coming up next. The problem they have is that the game is buttery smooth when you are playing, but they are animated in such a way that it feels like they are missing half of their animation frames. This could be a style choice by the developers, but whatever the cause of it, I don’t like it, each time you see them moving, it feels like they are unable to render correctly and just feels wrong.
On the audio side of things, the game is much smoother as it offers mumble speech for the characters, not quite Banjo-Kazooie levels of it, but enough to indicate they are talking. This works well for the game, as it puts context into who is speaking, but never drives home a point of ‘pay attention to me’, but should the talking get to much, you can skip over it. The music though, that is the star of the audio, each of the tracks is wonderful, they are lowfi enough that they never push to the front, letting you focus on attempting to complete a course, but they have enough energy to them, that it doesn’t feel like a collection of songs to fall asleep to. What is interesting is that you can skip any song, at any point, even on load screens, so if one does pop in that you don’t like, you can just tap the right shoulder button and its gone.
OlliOlli World has a lot of potential and an insane amount of style and players will be sure to embrace each, but the controls are such a mess, that it will turn many players away. Given the lack of control options, if you can’t get your head around them or you can’t physically make use of them, you are out of luck, you either play with their setup, or you don’t play at all. If you can adapt, there is a lot of replayability to be found, some courses double back on themselves, most of gnarly routes to enjoy and of course all the extra challenges to keep trying to complete. OlliOlli World is a decent game, it just needs to be more open in its controls, if it wants to welcome everyone to gnarvarna.
The Score
7.5
Review code provided by Private Division
The Pros
+Levels are inventive and offer a lot of challenge, even if you only just try to clear them
+The game is just leaking out style and with each new level the wow factor increases
The Cons
-The controls are a hot mess and there being no options to customise, means if you don’t get them, you are done
-Seeing the characters move like they are animatronics before and after each stage feels wrong
