What do you get when you mix Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with a third-person shooter? Pure magic. That’s exactly what Rollerdome is. When Rollerdome was announced at the Playstation State of Play earlier this year, I didn’t think I would be into this game. After playing it for review, I am happy to announce that Rollerdome is one of many favorite games of 2022. It’s a game you should pick up.
Published by: Roll7
Released: August 16, 2022
In Rollerdome you play as, Kara Hassan, a skater in the year 2030 who is entering this bloody sport. The basis of the sport is to kill waves of enemies to score points. The first section of Rollerdome has you walking around a locker room and reading notes that further explain the world. As you progress through the story you will come across more notes that will push the story forward. These notes are optional, you can ignore them to jump right into the action. If action is what you are looking for then Rollerdome has that in spades. Players will not be disappointed.
Excellent Gameplay
The way Rollerdome works is simple, skate, do tricks, and shoot enemies in the face with four different weapons. The gameplay in Rollerdome is perfect. You have to keep momentum to skate. And you have to skate to do tricks. Plus, you have to do tricks to reload your guns. You have to reload your guns to clear the waves of enemies to beat the stage. Everything you do in Rollerdome is helping you achieve something else, so it feels like you are never just wasting time.
Inside each stage, there are challenges to complete very reminiscently of the Tony Hawk games or Roll7 last game Olli Olli World. If you are a completionist like me these challenges will provide plenty of replay value to Rollerdome. The challenges can be as easy as collecting all bonus tokens to hard challenges like beating a certain score under a time limit. The challenges kept Rollerdome from just being another action third-person shooter game and added that skating challenge that I have not had since the days that I used to be obsessed with Tony Hawk.
Satisfying Skating
The gameplay is also accompanied by great skating stages. Each stage feels different and is beautifully drawn. All of the stages bring new challenges and enemies with them so it keeps the experience feeling fresh. I was always looking forward to getting to the next stage to see what new challenges await. What helps keeps the gameplay fresh as well as the four different kinds of weapons you have in your arsenal. Each weapon comes with its advantages and disadvantages. If you are wanting to take out enemies with one shot you can use your rocket launcher but you only have two missiles, so that means you will have to pull off tricks more often to keep your launcher fully loaded. This added a sense of risk and reward that I was not expecting in a game like this.
Rollerdome is a near-perfect game. The only bad thing I have to say about this game is that I had trouble sometimes with the way the camera acted. In a skating game where everything is about momentum having the camera act up can be a little frustrating. Luckily this was not a recurring issue for me.
Rollerdome Top 10 of 2022
Rollerdome will certainly be on my top 10 games of the year by the end of 2022. This game provides an arcade style of game that I didn’t know I was missing. I highly recommend this game to anyone that wants a good action game. Even if you are not a fan of skating games, I would still recommend Rollerdome to you because the action that you will find here is top-notch. So strap on your digital roller skates and get Rollerdome. Do it now, you won’t regret it.