Review: OlliOlli Steam Edition
OlliOlli is a 2d skateboarding game that mixes addictive one-life gameplay with over 120 tricks and grinds with 100 deviously crafted levels & 250 challenges across four gameplay modes. OlliOlli rewards the most skilful and riskiest of players, always tempting you to go for that massive 360 Inward Heelflip and ludicrous chain of combos. Leaving you to time your landing to perfection – or risk losing your score!
Pros:
- Great HD graphics with some silky smooth animations. The game looks brilliant on the big screen.
- Full 360/PS3 pad support and highly recommended.
- Controls are really easy to learn. Left stick is used for doing tricks and jumping. Grinding is automatic and can be halted by jumping off. The left shoulder button is used for spinning whilst airborne with the right shoulder button used for grind variations. The one key button used is the X/A button as that is the one you press just before you land and is solely responsible for the outcome of your score. Press it too early and you get a sloppy land and lose all your points, Whilst a perfect timing press will give you a green glow to confirm you nailed it and get all your points.
- You can use d-pad or analogue.
- When you mess up you can instantly restart by pressing select/back
- and insta re load the level. Yes insta is a new word I like to use.
- Tutorial section where you can go when ever you like to learn how the game plays, Brush up on technique and generally get to grips with the game.
- Banging soundtrack with songs by great acts like Qemists, Dorian Concept and Flako, The sound effects shine through as you hear every grind,bail, scream for help or that crunching sound that can only be heard whilst face planting the floor! You can change the music track playing at any point by pushing the right stick right.
- The game has a distance meter that you may have seen in other games like Jetpack Joyride, It doesn’t really serve a huge purpose but does give you a sense of how far in the level you are.
- Always available to you is the Tricktionary, Your bible that displays all the moves in the game with a description of how to pull them off.
- Visible on screen combo counter and move performed.
- Daily grind is, If you cannot guess, your daily event. Allowing you infinite practice runs, you only get one proper shot at setting a high score. At the end of your run you can see your ranking score.
- When finishing a level you get a score and a best combo score and a brief look at your standings on the leaderboards. Every level has its own individual leaderboard.
- Levels are split up into 5 areas with all 5 having their own 5 levels. Merely finishing a level (no easy feat) will unlock the next level and a spot. A spot is basically the daily grind but with the daily part taken out. Every level has 5 tasks ala Tony Hawks like score x amount of points or collect every spray can etc. Finish all 5 and you unlock a pro version of the level. Pro is harder and faster and again gives you 5 more tasks. Finishing these unlocks RAD levels which notch the difficulty up to insane levels. All levels and spots have leaderboard descriptions at the end.
- Proper twitch crazy, level learning,fist pumping,lightening fast gameplay.
- You get only one shot at level just like in the spot sections. Face plant and the dream run is over, miss a jump and the dream run is over. Annoying you may think but any points banked before your epic fail is saved which is amazing! Be a pro but be careful.
- Steam achievements included.
Cons:
- No video options like AA or V-Sync.
- Slight screen tearing at times.
- Difficulty spikes especially when going for 100% completion as some of the tasks are crazy hard from the get go.
- Controls do have a learning curve about them, This is a skateboarding game yes, But it aint no Tony Hawk, Expect to learn the controls and understand the importance of landing the trick. This is OlliOlli.
In Summary, This is a really good port of the classic game from the PlayStation Vita. The game looks brilliant up on the big screen and runs really well for the most part. I had a few screen tears running it at 1080p but overall you will be too busy lining up tricks than whats going on in the screen. New players will have a hard time at first as they learn the mechanics whilst new players get to conquer all new leader boards again! The game is just so much fun, Grinding, tricking and generally going all Tony Hawk up in here is the order of the day. The levels are plentiful and busy, Multiple routes,play styles can be used and you will strive more and more for that epic run. I still think that bar the original 2 Tony Hawks game and maybe Skate, This is one of the best Skate boarding games and one of the best wee have had in recent years. Buy it, love it, hate it, swear at it whatever…You will have fun and you will be back for more.