At the climax of the dystopian 1975 sports film Rollerball, James Caan’s Jonathan E. (yes, that’s actually his name) makes the momentous decision to ignore the wishes of his corporate overlords and spare the opposing team’s last remaining member. Rollerdrome is not like that. Rollerdrome takes the ball from Rollerball and replaces it with the concept of murder.

The skates are still there, though, and you’d best believe there’s some nefarious corporate shit going on in the background. Some things never change (it’s not just my bad work ethic, Darren).

As mentioned, Rollerdrome portrays a sport that combines roller skating and murder (primarily via the generous application of firearms) to great effect. Players fight through waves of enemies in a variety of highly-skateable arenas, using a small collection of weapons and a recharging slow-motion ability to massacre their way to the top of the Rollerdrome rankings. The game’s unique reloading mechanic encourages adventurous skating; a player’s weapons all draw from a shared ammunition pool, which can only be refilled by performing tricks. The game’s library of stunts is small but still allows for expression – as well as for frantic button-mashing, when the need arises.  

Rollerdrome’s art style is quite reminiscent of Sable’s; you may recall from my partial review that I quite enjoyed Sable’s visual design (although, unfortunately, it failed to compensate for the title’s loathsome tutorial segments). Fortunately, Rollerdrome dispenses with the tutorializing fetch quests while maintaining the graphic novel-esque style I so appreciated before.

Rollerdrome’s levels are organized into tournament stages – quarterfinals, semifinals, etc. – with three or four levels to a stage, apart from the finals. In order to progress from one stage to another, the player must have completed a certain number of challenges, ten of which are assigned to each level.[1] The challenges are in line with what one might see in the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, asking you to perform specific tricks in a certain location, attain a high combo score, or collect floating tokens – although, much like the act of coitus, this is significantly harder to accomplish with a roomful of people shooting at you.

Each new tournament stage opens with a short scene where players control protagonist Kara Hassan from a first-person view. These first-person segments shoulder most of the world- and character- building work, as you invade your competitors’ privacy by rummaging in their lockers, check Kara’s email and listen to news broadcasts on the radio. So long as you aren’t insistent on a tremendously fleshed-out cast and intricately detailed setting for your skate-murder game, I think you’ll enjoy the story segments and the nebulous context they provide for your skatepark slaughters.

Not to say that playing Rollerdrome is all smooth skating: much like the Zapruder film, this thing has some notable negatives. First of all – and this is very much a personal taste thing – I only found two of the game’s four weapons to be enjoyable to use. The dual pistols are snappy and adaptable, and the shotgun feels great to shoot, particularly when you fire “slug shots” in slow motion using almost rhythm-game-like mechanics. The other two weapons aren’t awful, but I tended to avoid using them in most cases: the grenade launcher felt clunky and gobbled up too much ammo to make the damage output worth it, and the laser gun takes longer to charge than the heat death of the motherfucking sun. That would be fine in a slower-paced game, but Rollerdrome’s hyperactive tempo necessitates the use of more reactive weaponry, essentially halving (for me, at least) the already-sparse four-weapon arsenal.

It was noticeably more difficult for me to consistently pull off tricks in Rollerdrome than it is in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater – the stick inputs for certain moves only seemed to work half the time and, while this was only an issue with a few of the more involved stunts, it was frustrating enough that I remembered to write about it, which, you might recall, is the same way the Gospels got written.

I have mixed feelings on the composition of the game’s enemies. Kara’s foes are easily distinguishable based on their visual design, and present unique challenges based on which types show up in combination. I’ve got two problems, though: there aren’t any enemies on roller skates (in fact, most enemies remain stationary)[2], and those fucking snipers. The snipers are like the turd in a really nice salad. It’s not that the snipers have cheap mechanics – their attacks are telegraphed clearly and fairly. Rather, I absolutely despise having to dodge every three seconds because another one of these eagle-eyed fucks has a bead on me. If I had to pin it down, my problem is with the density of sniper enemies; since their attacks are easy to dodge, they tend to be low-priority when it comes to murderin’, which means there’s always a group of them lurking around like a goddamn inconvenience, trying to paint your brains on the half-pipe while you’re just looking to bust out a sick grind and dump a full pistol mag into some dude’s crotch in glorious slow motion.

Rollerdrome’s accessibility options are limited in number but individually quite useful; they include toggles for infinite bullet time, infinite ammo, and invincibility, as well as the challenge requirements for unlocking more advanced tournament stages. Turning on infinite bullet time and infinite ammo before letting rip with the dual pistols is the most empowered I’ve felt since I went to a men’s rights conference and learned that all my poor personal choices are actually the fault of the women I haven’t had sex with.[3]

All in all, I had fun with Rollerdrome. It’s a short, focused bit of white-knuckle murdersports, with a side of light worldbuilding and an eye-catching art style. The skating might not be as good as the Tony Hawk games, and the shooting might not be as good as Doom, but I don’t see Tony Hawk shooting people…or the Doomguy putting on roller skates.[4]

Rating: 7.75/10 (+.5/-.25)

---

[1] Approximately. I eyeballed it. What am I going to do, count? Do I look like an abacus to you?

[2] I get that the developers might not have had the resources to add rollerskating foes, but a guy can dream.

[3] There’s a few of them.

[4] Can you imagine?