Rollerdrome Review: A blast if you don’t think about it too much

Rollerdrome can be accurately described as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with guns. The latest from Roll7, developers of the OlliOlli range, Rollerdrome is a score based arena shooter but on roller skates. The game challenges you to skate and shoot past “house players,” enemies decked out in spiked armor that would feel right at home in Mad Max. From the clean cel-shaded art to the pumping synth soundtrack, the game’s presentation is designed to draw you into the thrill of the eponymous blood sport.

In the fiction of Rollerdrome, set in an alternate dimension in 2030, is an extremely popular televised sport. You can see why: It’s really nice to see the protagonist Kara Hassan getting massive air out of a halfpipe, grabbing her nose, then pulling a pump action shotgun and knocking a sniper off her pole, all in one fluid motion. In the hands of a skilled player, Hassan’s runs through the game’s varied arenas look as much of an art as a killing spree.

This is a game that feels good, which of course is important Rollerdromeis the more serious narrative. Gunplay and skating are mechanically intertwined: tricks get you more bullets, and bullets get you fewer enemies, which in turn helps you pull off more tricks, ultimately allowing you to take down even more enemies. It’s frenetic, compelling, and surprisingly easy to analyze, which is important when bullets fly by and you need to dodge at the last second. This activates Rollerdrome‘s version of Bullet Time, Super Reflex that makes even the simplest kickflip look like something out of the Matrix. [Editor’s note: We now realize that you can’t really do a kickflip in roller skates, and apologize for the error. The grenade launcher distracted us.] From start to finish, the gameplay is as hypnotic as it is challenging. You’ll no doubt retry a stage immediately after beating them, sure to skip a kickflip over a two-pistol flaming baddie a little bit betterbecause you just missed out on the A rank.

Rollerdrome wants you to have an absolute banger, and it succeeds. Rollerdrome also wants you to know that the “blast” you have is in the service of the Matterhorn, a monolithic corporation becoming increasingly befriended by a fascist police state, and every run you complete helps that corporation, its growing arsenal of weapons to perfect what they have are of course sold to the police – a fact that has not escaped public notice and has led to a violent uprising by the working class, a coalition that includes some Rollerdrome participants like yourself, who fought at the start of the revealed earlier this year, enter the sport of rollerdrome by paying a six-figure fee and running up life-threatening debts that the company hangs on them as a threat and a promise that they will never be able to leave rollerdrome.

But good luck remembering that when you’re wall-riding with a grenade launcher in hand!

RollerdromeThe narrative parts of are separate from its gameplay. Occasionally you’ll find yourself in the dressing room before a game or on a train heading to the next round of the competition, reading notes, letters, and conspicuously unguarded memos written by evil capitalists. What you read is all very worrying, but the Game Part of the game, the part where you have fun is everything rush, pow, and whatever the onomatopoeia for rail grinding is. It’s entirely possible in the heat of a Rollerdrome Run to forget that you’re testing weapons and (possibly?) killing prisoners or some other disadvantaged class of people in the game’s near-future dystopia. It’s too funny! It’s way, way too much fun!

At first glance it seems like the two sides Rollerdrome don’t talk to each other. The seriousness of the story is out of sync with the sheer adrenaline candy of the gameplay. not how encryption or papers please — other games that make you think about what you do — RollerdromeThe gameplay of does not seem to reinforce the critical, political narrative, but obscures it. But the more I played, the more it made sense that entering Rollerdrome would wipe out everything but my adrenaline and desire to win. If Rollerdrome, the in fiction sport of RollerdromeIf it weren’t so fun to play or watch, how could it possibly overshadow the machinations of faceless monoliths out to control the public and force them into a state of surrender? Rollerdrome must then be so much fun to play that one wouldn’t do it want to disagree, even if one were inclined to do so.

So anyway, yeah Rollerdrome is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with a gun, but it’s also a commentary on violent entertainment’s ability to deaden our senses of the violence in our actual lives. Good luck remembering this when tracking an S rank score.

Rollerdrome was released on August 16 on Windows PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. The game was verified on PlayStation 5 using a pre-release download code provided by Deep Silver. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased through affiliate links. You can find For more information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy, click here.