There hasn’t been many PS Vita exclusive games released recently these days so it is nice that OlliOlli comes to break the drought. OlliOlli is developed by Roll7 a new developer looking to make their mark on the pavement. Does their charm translate into this new and quirky skateboarding game?
Skateboarding games have been around for a long time and peaked with the popularity of Actvision’s Tony Hawk series. After the Tony Hawk games faded into the distance, EA took the skateboarding crown with their excellent Skate series. Now it seems both series have been buried so its nice that skateboarding fans have a new game to play in the form of OlliOlli.
OlliOlli is unlike any other skateboarding game I’ve ever played frankly because it is played from a 2D perspective as opposed to the 3D worlds seen in the Skate and Tony Hawk games. OlliOlli emphasizes on street skating which is fun, but can get boring if you love the high flying antics of vert skating.
The main things you will have to do in OlliOlli is to bust out combos and big tricks. This is easier said than done because the game’s difficulty curve is very steep as it took me quite a while to get used to the game’s controls. To make the game even more difficult, you cannot even bail even once in the game. If you bail one time, you will have to start the whole level all over again.
The trick to beating this game is to simply never fall off your board and try your best to land every trick you try and execute. One wrong move and your skate will fall off and you will have to start from the beginning all over again. The game tries to make things slightly easy since you don’t have to complete every goal in order to unlock the next level. All you really have to do is finish the level itself and the new area is unlocked for you.
The one thing I found difficult about OlliOlli is its controls as they are unique, yet every hard to master. Every trick is mapped onto the left stick only and you have to be very precise with your movements or else you end up doing nothing. You have to hold the left stick in one direction and then let go at the right moment to do most tricks. You can also rotate your skater by pressing the R button to score extra points.