It’s been a couple of weeks since the preview window on Roll7’s OlliOlli World closed and I basically haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
The OlliOlli series doesn’t hail from the Skate school of technical mastery. Instead, it comes from the Tony Hawk school of arcade score attacks. It thrives on the pleasure of stringing long combos together. This trick attack approach has always worked for OlliOlli, a series with a simple, effective visual style. Its complexities have always been mechanical, and more about rhythm than finesse.
Ascend to Gnarvana
OlliOlli World wraps these strong mechanical fundamentals around an ongoing story and a more open world. Indeed, it uses the conceit of an open world to great effect. If you find that a particular level isn’t clicking right now, simply leave and pick another. There’s so much going on in every corner of OlliOlli World that there’s always something else you can try.
I’ve seen it said a few times about the OlliOlli series, but it bears repeating: at a certain point, these games put you into a trance state. You begin an out-of-body experience and, upon returning to consciousness, your run has been completed. OlliOlli World wants to put you in this zen state sooner, and rebuilds its onboarding process to accomplish this.
Roll7 playfully references this skate state in-game. The place the greatest skaters ascend to is called Gnarvana.
Try not to die
While its higher-level gameplay remains every bit as complex, OlliOlli World is easier to learn than previous games. Its tutorial section walks the player through a series of escalating challenges, building the player’s trick vocabulary one piece at a time while also assuring them that it’s ok to fail.
As the list of verbs expands, so does overall run complexity. What begin as straightforward ollies from gaps to rails becomes gaps, rails, wallrides, manuals, and momentum. The levels fly by at rollercoaster pace, leaving you barely holding onto your board. You spot a ramp and wonder if risking a hardflip will bring your whole routine unstuck.
It’s addictive, in exactly the same way the previous games were. And now it comes with the added bonus of beautiful visuals, a great soundtrack, and more time to familiarise yourself with the basics before being thrown in the deep end. The by-design ability to get what you want from the game — whether its to leave a tricky run for later, to enjoy the zen, or hit the champion’s grind — is what takes an already strong foundation and turns it into something truly great.
OlliOlli World is the kind of game that bugs me when I’m at work. It’s the kind of game that runs on a loop in my head when I’m supposed to doing other things. The sticky, “one more run” moreishness of it cannot be denied. I couldn’t love it more.
OlliOlli World is out February 8, 2022 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Windows PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Leave a Reply