{"id":7960,"date":"2022-04-01T00:00:24","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T23:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.xtremeservers.com\/blog\/olliolli-world-review\/"},"modified":"2022-04-01T00:00:24","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T23:00:24","slug":"olliolli-world-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xtremeservers.com\/blog\/olliolli-world-review\/","title":{"rendered":"OlliOlli World Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The last OlliOlli game, 2015\u2019s OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood, was a breath of fresh air for the skating genre. Its stylised art, intense level design, and challenging trick system all helped it stand out. Seven years later, OlliOlli World has all those things going for it, too, but it also takes a huge step forward for the series by shifting into 3D, giving its skating a better sense of scale, speed, and dynamism without sacrificing the 2D perspective. At the same time, it builds significantly on Olliwood’s technical gameplay by layering grabs, wall rides, and more atop the flip tricks, grinds, and manuals that were its foundation. And on top of all that, it goes out of its way to be more welcoming to players of all stripes, putting forth a host of changes that ensure just about anyone can have a good time without losing the fiercely high skill ceiling the series is known for.<\/p>\n

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OlliOlli World’s colourful, cartoony look and character-centric approach is the first thing that had me saying “ooo” \u2013 not just because it\u2019s very pretty in its own right, but because it\u2019s also very reminiscent of one of my favourite cartoon locations, Adventure Time’s Kingdom of Ooo. Whether we’re talking about your character’s skate wizard guide Chiffon, the ice cream-headed denizens of Sunshine Valley, the smiling trees of Cloverbrook, or the many \u201cSkate Godz\u201d that you’re tricking across Radlandia to meet, there are too many homages to miss the inspiration. It\u2019s also similar in its effervescent and eccentric personality but thankfully doesn\u2019t feel derivative, striking out on its own with a world populated by endearingly offbeat characters and a story that doesn’t take itself seriously, yet is enjoyably earnest at the same time.<\/p>\n

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The approach certainly works for me, and the insane level of character customisation available helped me realise my own oddball character to add to the world. The breadth of options here is truly impressive, letting you adjust everything from your physique and clothes to (almost) every component of your skateboard and even some of your animations. The potential for unique creations is on display in a bunch of other ways as well, from seeing your friends on the loading screens to the rival system, which challenges you to beat other players’ on each level… and even inserts that player’s avatar into the pre-level dialogue to put a face to the name. (That’s the character on the right in the screenshot below.)<\/p>\n

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Oh, and how’s this for an instant win for the character customisation system: You can try on any article of clothing and then revert back to what you were wearing before with the press of a button. No searching for the item to re-equip it again if you realise you made a mistake. Adding the equivalent of CTRL-Z to a character editor is so sensible it’s almost painful, and makes testing out new looks a breeze.<\/p>\n

It’s once you start skating, however, that the new presentation really starts to pop. The OlliOlli games have always felt fast and responsive, but World cranks this right up, running at a silky 60fps on PC, with super smooth character animations and a number of dynamic elements. Courses are full of absolutely thrilling sequences, whether that’s flying along an undulating networks of rails, holding long, lazy wallrides where the camera pulls way back to show the impossible scale of the trick, or launching at speed out of a grind to fly low over an arching factory rooftop and seamlessly into another grind. Levels are no longer just left to right affairs but sweep back and forth, utilising quarter pipes and complex switchbacks. The terrain can be dense with paths to take and planes to skate on, even looping back around to where you started via \u201cgnarly routes\u201d. And it\u2019s all set to a funky, laidback electronic soundtrack that helps make the skating feel even cooler.<\/p>\n

Levels are no longer just left to right affairs but sweep back and forth, utilising quarter pipes and complex switchbacks.<\/section>\n

One minor additional note on the course design: while all the levels proper are fantastic, some of the side quests \u2013 like popping balloons or rotating in the air \u2013 are rather unexciting, which makes finding the characters that host these challenges less rewarding than it could have been. On the plus side, one side quest does<\/em> see you try and outrace a bear riding an inflatable tube down a river, so that\u2019s definitely a win.<\/p>\n

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Tricknology<\/h2>\n

The trick mechanics are every bit as impressive as the levels. You’re no longer just grinding, flip tricking, and spinning \u2013 with manuals joining them together, but also wall-riding, pulling and tweaking grabs, fitting in late tricks, and even negotiating stairs via firecrackers (so-called because of the rapid-fire bangs as you clack down each step). The latter is a low-key game-changer, as landing in a manual on a set of stairs flies in the face of everything I\u2019ve learnt in skating games over the years, and makes extending combos via stair sets even more delicious than it might otherwise have been. And all these tricks are merely an analogue stick movement or button-press away.<\/p>\n

In OlliOlli World you can skate the way you want to skate.<\/section>\n

Hearing them described, it\u2019s easy to imagine how OlliOlli World’s mechanics could feel completely overwhelming. And yet, while it\u2019s absolutely crammed with things to learn, it takes a very relaxed approach to introducing them all, with tutorials peppered steadily throughout the relatively modest campaign. It’s not until the last of the five main areas, for instance, that you learn about late tricks and grind switching, and the gradual pace allows you to get used to each new addition as you incorporate them into your flow. Or not. Things like late tricks and the more advanced flip tricks and grinds are very much optional. In OlliOlli World you can skate the way you want to skate.<\/p>\n

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By and large the controls do a fantastic job of putting a lot of options within easy reach, and I almost always felt that errors were my own fault \u2013 either bungling an input, not having enough momentum, or getting the timing on something wrong. That said, I had a few minor issues with wall rides \u2013 especially on moving walls \u2013 that felt a little outside my control, while the grind switching system occasionally had me ollying into a flip trick instead of shifting to a new grind. That could cause some small frustration here and there, but never enough to distract me for long.<\/p>\n

On that note, OlliOlli World is a far more forgiving game than its predecessors. If you’re holding the left analogue stick in preparation for a flip trick, for instance, you can still push with your foot to build speed. There’s no penalty for setting yourself too early. And if you’re rotating in the air and land side on, you won’t crash \u2013 you’ll just get less points than if you completed the rotation and landed perfectly. You can even land side on in a manual and continue your combo… well, aside from on stairs, where you do <\/em>actually have to land facing forwards or backwards. In general though, OlliOlli World isn’t interested in punishing your mistakes, it’s focused on rewarding your execution.<\/p>\n

OlliOlli World isn’t interested in punishing your mistakes, it’s focused on rewarding your execution.<\/section>\n

And if you do bail it\u2019s not as painful as it looks, because getting back up and skating again is instantaneous. A tap of a button will reset you back to the last checkpoint, while holding it for a second starts the whole run again. The checkpoint system itself takes a little getting used to though, as these spots aren\u2019t just valuable for restarts but for banking points too, lest you lose them all through an overambitious combo. Once you\u2019re bearing that in mind, there’s very little friction in trying sections over and over. Well, aside from the friction of your virtual face repeatedly slamming into a virtual wall.<\/p>\n